After his drunken-driving arrest f...

After his drunken-driving arrest from one side of to the other the weekend and worldwide noise over his alleged anti-Semitic remarks to police, actor- director Mel Gibson has checked himself into an unnamed substance abuse treatment center His spokesman Alan Nierob told the Star magazine, "He is in a program of regaining at this time."

on the contrary Gibson's neighbor Chris Prentiss, a co-founder of the celebrity treatment center Passages in Malibu, Calif., told the Star he was disappointed Gibson chose a different clinic in which to look after treatment.

According to Prentiss, Gibson has gone to an "Alcoholics Anonymous 12-step program. I don't believe that will help him. He wants individual, intense therapy by a team who knows what it is looking for in causes of alcoholism."

ANTI-JEWISH OR NOT?

Charges of anti-Semitism are not recently made known for Mel Gibson, especially after the release of the controversial "The Passion of the Christ" (2004) which he directed and produc and which many accused of having an anti-Jewish bias. In a 2004 interview with ABC newscaster Diane Sawyer, Gibson said, "It goe against the way of thinkings of my faith to be racist in any form. To be anti-Semitic is a sin."

WHAT ARE GIBSON'S BELIEFS? a POSSIBLE CLUES:

- He tread in the steps ofs the Catholic doctrine of "Extra Ecclesiam nulla salus," which vies that followers of all other religions will go on to Hell.

- His father, Hutton Gibson, is an admitted anti-Semite who insists the Holocaust not happened; his son refused to distance himself from those statements. In the Sawyer interview, Gibson said, "He's my father. Gotta leave it alone, Diane. Gotta leave it alone."

- After Gibson announced last year that he would occasion a Holocaust-themed ABC miniseries, the David s Wyman Institute of Holocaust Studies demanded that ABC corporate parent Disney gripe [i]or[/i] grip Gibson accountable for his family's statements.

Sun-Times wires

Copyright CHICAGO SUN-TIMES 2006

Provided by the agency of ProQuest Information and Learning Company. All rights Reserved