What do you think of Blessed Anne Catherine Emmerich, the visionary and stigmatist?
Robert Sungenis answers that he does not think highly of Anne Catherine Emmerich, whose account of the crucifixion, which Mel Gibson followed, he calls typical sensationalism. He holds that it was Christ's death, not the amount of His suffering, that atoned, so her exaggerations show she had gone off the path and begun inventing things.
A viewer asks what Robert thinks of Blessed Anne Catherine Emmerich, the visionary and stigmatist.
Answer
I do not think very highly of her, to be honest. I have read her account of the crucifixion, which is where Mel Gibson got his rendition, and it is all typical Catholic sensationalism that tries to pack as much suffering as possible into Jesus' road to Golgotha, because of a notion that the more Jesus suffers, the more valuable his atonement. That is a false notion, and there are people who go the other way and think one drop of Jesus' blood would have atoned for the world, which is equally false. The one thing needed for the atonement was the death of Jesus. The suffering led up to that death, but it was the death that atoned; suffering without the death could never atone, which is why the New Testament repeats over and over that Jesus had to die. So when a visionary gives an exaggerated rendition of what the atonement required, you know she has gone off the beaten path and started making things up, which is exactly what Mel Gibson is doing.