Pontifications

Octo-mel: Gibson yuks it up over infidelity

Wednesday May 27, 2009

Mel & Oksana.jpgOkay, it's one thing for uber-Traditionalist Catholic Mel to dispense with his marriage of 28 years and 7 children in private court proceedings. But what's up with the talk-show parade to promote his latest squeeze, Russian musician Oksana Grigorieva, who is pregnant with what will be Gibson's eighth child.

"I guess I'm Octo-Mel now," he told Jay Leno Monday night.

Har har.

After the requisite breast-beating (one joke Mel didn't make)--"Look, these things happen. It's unfortunate," as the PEOPLE mag relates it--Gibson and Leno go all frat boy, as The Daily Beast's Kim Masters has it:

Gibson apologized for his diatribe against the Jews, but with women he's digging himself in deeper every day. He told Jimmy Kimmel that he never used the phrase "sugar tits" but wished he had. Then on Monday he had an exchange with Leno that sounded like it was from five decades ago. First Gibson explained that he was drawn to Grigorieva before he ever saw her, when he heard her sing.

"So you were attracted to her voice," Leno deadpanned. "Did you hear Susan Boyle?"

Gibson laughed and then replied, "I could put the squeeze on Susan Boyle." (Who would doubt it?)

"There's very few people who are man enough for Rachmaninoff," Gibson continued.

"And I assume she has a nice Rach-maninoff?" Leno leered.

This followed an exchange in which 53-year-old Gibson revealed his girlfriend's age. "She's going to kill me for this--she's almost 40," he said. "Now I'm going to have two women mad at me." Ah, yes--your 39-year-old friend and the wife of 28 years who bore you seven children.

But are women paying attention? That depends on whom you ask. A veteran marketer says Gibson's female fan base is and they won't like this recent turn in his life. "A great percentage of the audience is female," she says. "It wasn't guys who were paying for What Women Want or even Ransom." She believes the same will apply to Edge of Darkness, [Gibson's first starring vehicle since 2002, to be released next year] which involves a father who investigates the murder of his activist daughter. "Avenging the death of a child skews female," she says.

Another problem is that Gibson's behavior is perilously at odds with his image, she continues. "Mel didn't build his career on being a bad boy," she says. "We're not talking about Kiefer Sutherland here."

So will this hurt Mel? Will it hurt the image of the faith? Sonia Sotomayor is already getting flack for being some species of "lapsed Catholic." And what is Mel Gibson? It shouldn't matter, except that Gibson has set himself up as a paradigm of orthodoxy.

 

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Comments
Cindy
May 27, 2009 10:43 PM

I have never considered Mel Gibson a poster boy for Catholicism.
Even after he made "The Passion."

Tony Turner
May 28, 2009 12:33 AM

Hey there, Mel has not one time ever claimed to walk on water or be perfect. He has a long history of saying he is 'flawed'. If he thought people were going to hold him up as if he were Jesus gone bad, like most people seem to be doing, he'd never agree.
He has never told people how they should behave in their marriages, never blamed people for getting divorced or relationship breakdowns although he does believe that marriage should be forever. His finished three years ago. Was he to blame? Highly likely. Did he want it to finish? No!

When did everyone get so judgmental on him? It's like everyone is fighting for their freedoms, but if he want as his freedom to start a new relationship, after the old one finished years ago, or to worship God the way he wants to in a manner that was the 'in thing' for centuries until Vatican 11... he gets a pasting.

Lot's of stone throwing is going on and he seems to be the target. I never realised how many people at large were without sin. Again, he has never claimed to be without sin. He has a life of making mistakes, but can anyone doubt his love of God? This guy did more to bring people back to Christ than the Catholic or any Christian church has in years. Hey, maybe that's why he is being attacked.

I'd rather not be getting quotes on belief net from a magazine called The Beast... but hey, it's your articles, your site and it's a free world... except, perhaps unless your name is Mel Gibson.
May God Bless and keep you all

Your Name
May 28, 2009 10:08 AM

Goodness => praise => ego inflation => delusional invincibility => near Godliness => the fall.

A preacher abandons his flock for the choir director.
A presidency teeters to the snap of a thong.
A successful investment advisor skims everything.
And now Mel.

Will these little Edens ever stop?
I know God loves us, and I know we have free will.
But does he have to keep setting us up?
Is he bored? Can't he be like the rest of us, and be happy with reruns of "Lost."

Your Name
May 29, 2009 1:31 PM

It looks like Mel's new girlfriend saw the divorce wasn't coming so she added a pregnancy to the mix, and now Mel's doing his best to play if off. Who knows what what a good God sees he is responsible for? We don't. However, Mel definitely did not respect the women in his life. He is educated in his faith knew his responsibilities as a Catholic. First comes divorce, then annullment, and then after the hopefully honest evaluation of that process he could look at another woman. He blew it all off and disrespected both Robyn and Oksana by not coming to either of them as an honest man. We should pray for him.

Your Name
May 30, 2009 5:51 PM

The claim that Mel Gibson is a Catholic ignores the fact that he is NOT in communion with the See of Rome. As Bishop Irenaeus of Lyons (Lugdunum) noted in 180 AD, the mark of the Catholic Church is that its constituent parts are in communion with the See of Rome (Adversus Haereses 3:3:2). Gibson may have thought that he was even more Catholic than the Pope, but that delusion is belied by his divorce. An earlier poster mentioned that Gibson should get an annulment after his divorce but that would be possible only if two things were true: 1) Gibson's 28 Year Marriage had never been a true marriage for some cognizable reason (unlikely); and (2) Gibson was willing to acknowledge the jurisdiction of the Catholic Church over his marriage (also unlikely given his claim to be more Catholic than the Pope).

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About Pontifications

This blog is no longer updated and is closed for comments. We welcome your comments about Catholicism in our Catholic forums.

David Gibson is an award-winning religion writer who specializes in writing about the Catholic Church, which he joined as a convert at the age of 30. He is the author The Rule of Benedict: Pope Benedict XVI and His Battle with the Modern World. He also wrote The Coming Catholic Church: How the Faithful are Shaping a New American Catholicism. He has written about Catholicism for leading newspapers and magazines, including the New York Times, Newsweek, The Wall Street Journal, New York magazine, Boston magazine, Fortune, Commonweal, and America. Gibson worked in Rome for Vatican Radio for several years and traveled frequently with Pope John Paul II. He later covered religion for The Star-Ledger of New Jersey. He has co-written several recent documentaries on Christianity for CNN. For further information check out his website at dgibson.com.

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