Richard Corliss of Time has concisely cataloged the various hypocrisies of critics of “The Passion Of the Christ.” Sample:

[W]e defend Martin Scorsese’s “The Last Temptation of Christ,” which portrays Jesus as a human who slowly learns he’s divine, and Kevin Smith’s “Dogma,” a raw comedy about an abortion-clinic worker who is a lineal descendant of Jesus. Anyway, I defended these films in TIME, and I took at face value the testimony of Scorsese, who once contemplated entering the priesthood, and Smith, who describes himself as a devout Catholic, that their films were acts of faith.
The latest film of faith, by the movie industry’s other Church-going Catholic, Mel Gibson, has received a frostier, more fulminating response.

Corliss’s take on Mel’s Hollywood future:

One man convicted of child molestation has directed films for Disney and New Line. Gibson’s criminal rap sheet is clean; he is guilty only of standing by his deluded old man and expressing opinions that are less popular in Hollywood than they are in the rest of the country. For some of the industry’s moguls to deny him employment because they don’t like what he said, or because he made a controversial film, would send a creepy message to the public: that a liberal is someone who will defend to the death your right to agree with him.