Padre Cutié, Listen Up: Mel Gibson Goes Off On Fellow Catholics Following His Extra-Marital Affair

Mel Gibson is to Catholicism what a Big Mac is to a burger - overblown, sloppy, and prone to give one indigestion. So it wasn’t particularly surprising when Gibson made a point of throwing his extra-marital affair in everyone’s faces. After all, it’s not as if we expect sloppy, drunken blowhards to ever practice what they preach. Several of Gibson’s fellow churchgoers at Holy Family Chapel in Agoura Hills, California, either because they shocked or tickled by Gibson’s affair with Octomom look-a-like Oksana Grigorieva and her subsequent pregnancy, had taken to gossiping about Gibson. Well gossip is, like, a sin or whatever and Mel Gibson absolutely hates those. So he did what any reasonable, God-fearing Catholic might do and shouted at the congregation from the altar. 

Says a witness:

Mel got up on his stage — the altar — and went off. He tried to intimidate the parishioners by staring at everyone with his angry eyes. Mel even threatened to shut down the church if people kept gossiping about him. The bottom line is that if Mel hadn’t cheated on his wife and gotten his Russian girlfriend pregnant, there wouldn’t be much to gossip about – he created this mess, and now he’s trying to control it.

Gibson apparently went off in front of two priests and a visiting bishop, which makes us wonder - Who gave him the ok to approach the altar? And, once he began ranting and raving, why didn’t anyone step in and escort him away? 

If we’re reading this situation accurately, we have to wonder whether a certain blogger’s great-grandfather have been saved from excommunication had he been famous, or rich. Not that we’re asking for anyone to excommunicate Gibson or set him on fire in a public square (although, hey, we’ve got marshmallows). However, the Church’s hands-off, suspiciously silent approach in dealing with both Padre Cutié and Mel Gibson’s very public decisions to ignore Church teachings when they have proven inconvenient is very troubling in light off the Catholic Church’s historical rush to deal with others who have committed similar infractions in a public and often shaming manner. Why not offer a statement hoping that Gibson will seek forgiveness, or open a discussion on celibacy for priests? The Catholic Church has the opportunity to use these high-profile scandals to discuss and articulate its stance in a way that would likely reach many eager ears. But, instead, a bishop sits by while an unbalanced megalomaniac threatens to close down a church? What message, exactly, is this sending?

As for Gibson, a simple, “I am a hypocrite. I apologize for that,” would have been sufficient. 

Mel Gibson’s “Crazed Rant” at Church [Radar]