Is Christ's Passion a pious pornography?

Leon Wieseltier is a man who just doesn't get it. In an editorial in The New Republic entitled "The Worship of Blood," Leon Wieseltier, who is obsessed with the blood spilled and splattered in The Passion of the Christ, accuses Gibson of having produced a cinematic masterpiece of "pious pornography." He writes: "The notion that there is something spiritually exalting about the viewing of it is quite horrifying. . . . It is a repulsive masochistic fantasy, a sacred snuff film, and it leaves you with the feeling that the man who made it hates life."
Finally, he notes:

It will be objected that I see only pious pornography in The Passion of the Christ because I am not a believer in the Christ. This is certainly so. I do not agree that Jesus is my savior or anybody else's. I confess that I smiled when the credits to The Passion of the Christ listed "stunts." So I am not at all the person for whom Gibson made this movie. But I do not see how a belief in Jesus strengthens the case for such a film. Quite the contrary. Belief, a theory of meaning, a philosophical convenience, is rarely far away from cruelty. Torture has always been attended by explanations that vindicate it, and justify it, and even hallow it. These explanations, which are really extenuations, have been articulated in religious and in secular terms. Their purpose is to redescribe an act of inhumanity so that it no longer offends, so that it comes to seem necessary, so that it edifies.

This from the literary editor of The New Republic, that parish magazine of affluent and self-congratulatory liberal enlightenment, which devotes itself, among other things, to endless redescriptions of the gruesome slaughter of some 4000 unborn human beings each day in the United States with "explanations that vindicate it, and justify it, and even hallow it," so that "it no longer offends, to that it comes to seem necessary, so that it edifies" . . . .

When C.S. Lewis converted from atheism to the Christian Faith at Oxford University in the middle of the last century, he had been examining the world's religions and narrowed his choice to Hinduism or Christianity as the only two religions that were both "thick" and "thin." He compared religions to soups: some are thin and clear, like Unitarianism, Confucianism, and modern Judaism. Others are thick and dark, like ancient paganism, and mystery religions. Only Hinduism and Christianity are both thin (philosophical) and thick (sacramental and mysterious). But Hinduism, as Peter Kreeft once pointed out, is really two religions: thick for the masses, thin for the sages. Only Christianity is both together for everyone. But this means that Christianity is not just intellectually polite and satisfying. It is also bloody, involving the sacrifice on an altar as a propitiation for the sins of the world. This "deep magic" of redemption is something about which Wieseltier hasn't a clue.

For a truly discerning review of Gibson's film, see Mark Shea's brilliant discussion here.