Hutton Gibson

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Hutton Peter Gibson (born August 26, 1918) is a writer on religion and the father of actor Mel Gibson. He was born in Montclair, New Jersey or Peekskill, New York[1] and raised in Chicago, Illinois, the son of businessman John Hutton Gibson and wife, married at New York in 1917, Australian opera singer Eva Mylott. He currently resides in Westmoreland County, Pennsylvania,[2] after living many years in Texas and for a time in Summersville, West Virginia.[3]

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[edit] Early life

Gibson's mother, Eva Mylott, died when he was two years old, and his father, John Hutton Gibson, passed away when Hutton was fifteen. Hutton supported his younger brother Alexis, who died in his early twenties.[4] Hutton graduated from high school at the age of only fifteen, ranking third in his class.[5]

According to Wensley Clarkson's biography of Mel Gibson, Hutton studied for the priesthood in a Chicago seminary of the Society of the Divine Word, and he left the seminary disgusted with the modernist theological doctrines taught there. However, Hutton himself said in 2003 that he left because he balked at being sent as a missionary to New Guinea or the Philippines.[6] Instead, he found work with Western Union and with the Civilian Conservation Corps.

Hutton Gibson served as a first lieutenant in the Pacific Theater during World War II after his September 30, 1941 graduation from the U.S. Army Signal Corps OCS program at Fort Monmouth, New Jersey. He was wounded in action at the Battle of Guadalcanal and sent to an invalid home in 1944.

He married Irish-born Anne Reilly on May 1, 1944 at the Catholic parish of Our Lady of Good Counsel in Brooklyn, New York. They had ten children and adopted another one after their arrival in Australia. Anne died in December 1990. Hutton has since remarried.

[edit] Jeopardy!

In 1968, Hutton Gibson appeared on the Art Fleming-hosted version of the game show Jeopardy! (as "Red Gibson, a railroad brakeman from South Ozone Park, New York"), winning $4,680[7] over the course of five games and retiring undefeated per the rules of the show at that time. He was invited back to appear in the 1968 Tournament of Champions, where he became the year's Grand Champion,[8] winning a little over a thousand dollars more, as well as a 2-person cruise to the West Indies.[9][10][11][12] Art Fleming noted on the show aired October 18, 1968 that Jeopardy! had difficulty informing Gibson about his Tournament of Champions invitation because Gibson had relocated his family of 10 children to Tipperary in Ireland.

[edit] Railroad lawsuit

In the 1960s Gibson worked for New York Central Railroad. In the early morning hours of December 11, 1964 he slipped on some spilled oil and injured his back. A work injury lawsuit followed and it finally went to court on February 7, 1968. Seven days later, on Valentine's Day, Gibson was awarded $145,000 by the jury.[citation needed] What remained of this money after paying off debts and lawyers was still a substantial sum, and with that he relocated his family to Australia that same year.

[edit] Move to Australia

Hutton said in 2003 that the move to his mother's native country was because he believed the Australian military would reject his oldest son for the Vietnam War draft, unlike the American military.[13] On moving to Australia, Gibson retrained as a computer programmer and participated in numerous Australian quiz shows, including Big Nine with Athol Guy and Ford Superquiz with Patti Newton.

After the promulgation of the reformed liturgy of Paul VI, the Gibson family home in Sydney, Australia was used as an unofficial chapel where the Tridentine Mass was offered. Also, Hutton used the house to store statues and altar relics which were being discarded in a rush of radical reform by Catholic parishes at the time.

Hutton was the secretary of the Latin Mass Society of Australia, but was ousted after becoming increasingly vocal about his belief that the See of Peter is vacant due to the Popes having allegedly embraced heresy (see Sedevacantism).

[edit] Notable beliefs

Hutton Gibson is an outspoken critic of the modern Catholic Church and is a proponent of various conspiracy theories. Gibson disseminates his views in a quarterly newsletter called The War is Now! and has self-published two collections of these periodicals: The Enemy is Here! and Is the Pope Catholic?

Hutton Gibson is a sedevacantist, and therefore his views represent a minority of the traditionalist Roman Catholic community. He believes that the Second Vatican Council introduced explicitly heretical doctrines into the Catholic Church, and he holds that every Pope elected since Pope John XXIII has been an illegitimate anti-pope. He has been especially critical of the late Pope John Paul II (whom he referred to as "Garrulous Karolus the Koran Kisser").[14] At one time Gibson favored the Siri Thesis (that Giuseppe Siri was elected pope in 1958 instead of Angelo Roncalli). However, in January 2006 he disavowed this position, stating that it was based entirely on a mistranslation of an Italian newspaper article.[15] Gibson has also used his newsletter to argue against Feeneyism.[16]

Hutton Gibson (left) with Holocaust denier Fredrick Töben, head of the Adelaide Institute of History, at the 2003 International Conference on Authentic History, Real News and the First Amendment.
Hutton Gibson (left) with Holocaust denier Fredrick Töben, head of the Adelaide Institute of History, at the 2003 International Conference on Authentic History, Real News and the First Amendment.

At the January 2004 We The People conference, Gibson advocated that the states secede from the U.S. federal government and that the national debt be abolished.[17]

Hutton Gibson first garnered notoriety when he made controversial remarks on the Holocaust to a freelance writer for a March 2003 New York Times Magazine article, questioning whether the Nazis could have disposed of six million bodies. He was further quoted as saying the Second Vatican Council was "a Masonic plot backed by the Jews'" and that the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks were done by remote control.[18]

Hutton Gibson publicly questioned the Holocaust for a second time on “Speak Your Piece” radio to Steve Feuerstein a week before The Passion of the Christ was released in American theaters.[19] He claimed that most of the Holocaust was "fiction,"[19] that the thousands of Jews who disappeared from Poland during World War II "got up and left",[19] and that census statistics prove there were more Jews in Europe after World War II than before.[20] Gibson said that Jews want to take over the world and establish a one world religion and government.[19] Hutton Gibson’s family claimed Feuerstein misrepresented himself when he called Gibson and never told him he was being taped for the radio.[21]

[edit] Local congregation support

Hutton Gibson has been trying to buy a suitable church building for a sedevacantist Catholic congregation called St. Michael the Archangel Roman Catholic Chapel. He and Mel have tried to buy land and a former Methodist church to turn them into a Roman Catholic center for the pre-Vatican II Latin Mass.[22] "Hutton buying Greensburg area church for traditional Catholic services." Rumors have been spread throughout and by the media that he and the Catholic priest of the congregation, the Rev. Fr. Leonard Bealko, are anti-Semitic. However critics of the group and of Fr. Bealko and Hutton, stated that, while being critical of them because of other reasons, they know nothing about any form of anti-Semitism prevailing among the group.[23]

[edit] Quotes

  • "We feel like hunted Christians in the catacombs - merely because we want to celebrate the Latin Rite which the [Roman] Church has used from time immemorial." Hutton speaking to his local newspaper in 1975 about what life was like for Traditionalist Catholics in the years immediately following Vatican II. Quoted in Wensley Clarkson's "Mel Gibson: Living Dangerously," page 43.
  • "The greatest benefit anyone can have is to be a Catholic. You have the lifelong satisfaction of being right. But we can't go to Mass, there are no sacraments and I feel cheated." Excerpted from Wensley Clarkson's "Mel Gibson: Living Dangerously," page 44.
  • "I entered the battle to preserve our faith actively in 1971, over heresy taught in religion classes in Australian Catholic schools. I soon read the decrees and documents of Vatican II, and branched out. I hate being robbed, especially by those charged with guarding the treasury." Quoted from a 1997 letter.[24]

[edit] Books

  • The Enemy is Here! - On the alleged subversion of the Catholic Church
  • Is the Pope Catholic? (1978) - Defending sedevacantism

[edit] References

  1. ^ Ancestry of Mel Gibson
  2. ^ Mel Gibson's Father Has Local Home, Church
  3. ^ Mel Gibson's Father Buys Home in West Virginia
  4. ^ Peggy Noonan. Keeping the Faith: Face to Face With Mel Gibson. Reader’s Digest. Retrieved on 2007-09-20.
  5. ^ Wendy Grossman. Is the Pope Catholic?. Dallas Observer. Retrieved on 2007-09-20.
  6. ^ Wendy Grossman. Is the Pope Catholic?. Dallas Observer. Retrieved on 2007-09-20.
  7. ^ As the clue dollar values on Jeopardy! have increased twentyfold since 1968, Gibson's 5-day winnings of $4,680 is equivalent to winnings of $93,600 today.
  8. ^ A listing of Jeopardy! Grand Champions, 1968–1974, may be found in Fabe, Maxene (1979). TV Game Shows. Garden City, New York: Doubleday & Company, 13. ISBN 0-385-13052-X. 
  9. ^ Clarkson, Wensley (1999). Mel Gibson: Living Dangerously. Thunder's Mouth Press, 27-30. 
  10. ^ "Where Mad Max found faith", Sydney Morning Herald, 2004-02-16. Retrieved on 2007-11-07. 
  11. ^ [http://www.thebiographychannel.co.uk/biography_story/16:580/1/Mel_Gibson.htm Mel Gibson Biography
  12. ^ Most episodes from the Art Fleming era of Jeopardy! do not survive, so there is no video record of Gibson's appearances; paper records indicating Gibson's appearances may be found in the NBC Master Books daily broadcast log, available on microfilm at the Library of Congress Motion Picture and Television Reading Room. A summary of those records may be found here.
  13. ^ Wendy Grossman. Is the Pope Catholic?. Dallas Observer. Retrieved on 2007-09-20.
  14. ^ Heinen, Tom. "Words of Mel's dad find a home", Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, May 23, 2004. 
  15. ^ Gary Giuffre & The 'Siri Thesis' by Hutton Gibson, The War is Now! #66, January 2006
  16. ^ http://www.mostholyfamilymonastery.com/Hutton_Gibson.html
  17. ^ http://www.givemeliberty.org/wtp-tv/default.htm
  18. ^ Christopher Noxon. "Is the Pope Catholic…Enough?", New York Times Magazine, March 9, 2004. Retrieved on 2007-09-21. 
  19. ^ a b c d Partial Transcript Of The Steve Feuerstein Radio Interview With Hutton Gibson; Movie City News; March 3, 2004
  20. ^ Halbfinger, David. "Mel Gibson Developing Holocaust Mini-Series", The New York Times, December 7, 2005. 
  21. ^ http://archive.newsmax.com/archives/ic/2004/2/20/125718.shtml Gibson's Family: Father Tricked Into Interview, Friday, Feb. 20, 2004
  22. ^ Mel Gibson, dad back church
  23. ^ Post Gazette Methodist church bid raises concern.
  24. ^ Comments on Vatican II

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