{"id":422,"date":"2009-04-14T21:12:53","date_gmt":"2009-04-14T21:12:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/pontifications\/2009\/04\/the-passion-of-the-gibsons.html"},"modified":"2009-04-14T21:12:53","modified_gmt":"2009-04-14T21:12:53","slug":"the-passion-of-the-gibsons","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/2009\/04\/the-passion-of-the-gibsons.html","title":{"rendered":"The Passion of the Gibsons"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"MelPEOPLE magazine reports<\/a><\/a> that Mel Gibson (no relation, in so many ways) and his wife of 28 years, Robyn, have filed for divorce and joint custody of their one minor child, a nine-year-old boy. (They have six older children.) <\/p>\n

Granted, Mel’s fringe Traditionalism ain’t my cup of Catholic tea, but then again I don’t have enough money to build my own church, like he did. So I can’t imagine being married to him–not that Mel would marry me. Or I him. (There’s that California ballot thingy, remember?) But he’s also something of a tom-cat, though he’s always readily admitted that he’s no angel and that Robyn is a better person–but that she’d still wind up in Hell because she’s not Catholic<\/a>: <\/p>\n<\/p>\n

\n

“There is no salvation for those outside the Church,” Gibson told an Australian reporter in 2004. “I believe it…Put it this way. My wife is a saint. She’s a much better person than I am. Honestly. She’s, like, Episcopalian, Church of England. She prays, she believes in God, she knows Jesus, she believes in that stuff. And it’s just not fair if she doesn’t make it, she’s better than I am. But that is a pronouncement from the chair. I go with it.”<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

According to the PEOPLE report,the couple have in fact been separated since August 26, 2006, almost a month after Gibson was pulled over for a DUI in Malibu:<\/p>\n

\n

“The movie star regained his sobriety following the notorious roadside incident<\/a> in which he made anti-Semitic remarks that he later apologized for. <\/p>\n

Robyn’s initial divorce petition lists the date of separation as “to be determined.” <\/p>\n

“They’ll do this amicably,” a source tells PEOPLE. “There’s a lot of mutual respect and they’ve worked hard on their marriage and worked hard on their separation.” <\/p>\n

Adds the source, “They’ll handle the divorce in the same respectful way.” <\/p>\n

In fact, Gibson and his estranged wife attended church together with other family members on Palm Sunday, just four days before Robyn signed the divorce papers, PEOPLE has learned.” <\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

PEOPLE magazine reports that Mel Gibson (no relation, in so many ways) and his wife of 28 years, Robyn, have filed for divorce and joint custody of their one minor child, a nine-year-old boy. (They have six older children.) Granted, Mel’s fringe Traditionalism ain’t my cup of Catholic tea, but then again I don’t have enough money…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":128,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,6,7,3,4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-422","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-catholic","category-church","category-history","category-politics","category-pop-culture"],"yoast_head":"\nThe Passion of the Gibsons - Pontifications<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/2009\/04\/the-passion-of-the-gibsons.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"The Passion of the Gibsons - Pontifications\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"PEOPLE magazine reports that Mel Gibson (no relation, in so many ways) and his wife of 28 years, Robyn, have filed for divorce and joint custody of their one minor child, a nine-year-old boy. (They have six older children.) 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He came by all those vocations by accident, or Providence, during a longer-than-expected sojourn in Rome in the 1980s. Gibson began his journalistic career as a walk-on sports editor and columnist at The International Courier, a small daily in Rome serving Italy's English-language community. He then found a job as a newscaster and writer across the Tiber at the English Programme at Vatican Radio, an entity he describes as a cross between NPR and Armed Forces Radio for the pope. The Jesuits who ran the radio were charitable enough to hire Gibson even though he had no radio background, could not pronounce the name \"Karol Wojtyla,\" and wasn't Catholic. Time and experience overcame all those challenges, and Gibson went on to cover dozens of John Paul II's overseas trips, including papal visits to Africa, Europe, Latin America and the United States. When Gibson returned to the United States in 1990 he returned to print journalism to cover the religion beat in his native New Jersey for two dailies. He worked first for The Record of Hackensack, and then for The Star-Ledger of New Jersey, winning the nation's top awards in religion writing at both places. In 1999 he won the Supple Religion Writer of the Year contest, and in 2000 he was chosen as the Templeton Religion Reporter of the Year. Gibson is a longtime board member of the Religion Newswriters Association and he is a contributor to ReligionLink, a service of the Religion Newswriters Foundation. Since 2003, David Gibson has been an independent writer specializing in Catholicism, religion in contemporary America, and early Christian history. His work has appeared in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Fortune, Boston Magazine, Commonweal, America, The New York Observer, Beliefnet and Religion News Service. He has produced documentaries on early Christianity for CNN and other networks and has traveled on assignment to dozens of countries, with an emphasis on reporting from Europe and the Middle East. He is a frequent television commentator and has appeared on the major cable and broadcast networks. He is also a regular speaker at conferences and seminars on Catholicism, religion in America, and journalism. Gibson's first book, The Coming Catholic Church: How the Faithful are Shaping a New American Catholicism (HarperSanFrancisco), was published in 2003 and deals with the church-wide crisis revealed by the clergy sexual abuse crisis. The book was widely hailed as a \"powerful\" and \"first-rate\" treatment of the crisis from \"an academically informed journalist of the highest caliber.\" His second book, The Rule of Benedict: Pope Benedict XVI and His Battle with the Modern World (HarperSanFrancisco), came out in 2006 and is the first full-scale treatment of the Ratzinger papacy--how it happened, who he is, and what it means for the Catholic Church. The Rule of Benedict has been praised as \"an exceptionally interesting and illuminating book\" from \"a master storyeller.\" Born and raised in New Jersey, David Gibson studied European history at Furman University in South Carolina and spent a year working on Capitol Hill before moving to Italy. He lives in Brooklyn with his wife and daughter and is working on a book about conversion, and on several film and television projects.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/author\/dgibson"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/422","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/128"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=422"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/422\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=422"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=422"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=422"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}