With Easter now just one week from today, chocolate starts taking shape in interesting form. There are crosses, bunnies, lambs.... and this year a bit of controversy over what should be in chocolate...Sweet Jesus.
This is a classic law school conundrum. It mixes freedom of religion with good taste. Do good catholics hate the big chocolate Jesus because he is poorly done? Or because a chocolate penis is clearly visible?
How different is this big chocolate Jesus issue from our ability to buy and eat a chocolate version of the last supper right near the Vatican? (See photo.)
And what about Pope Cookies? Will the Pope wear purple shoes to Palm Sunday?
What should this mean to the faithful? Yesterday I watched a news show with the artist who made big chocolate Jesus and an angry bald catholic guy who was behaving like an evil asshole, so proud that big chocolate Jesus had now been rejected by the original hotel that planned to see it. He was acting like a third grader who had won a playground fight. Smooth move xlax. Now instead of just a mediocre Jesus show at some little hotel in Midtown Manhattan, the issue and the picture of Jesus and his penis are on every major news wire--From CBS to BBC to Australia...we've got over 742 major news articles on this topic nicely organized by Google now.
What would Jesus do with the big chocolate Jesus? Feed it to the poor? I sat yesterday watching the artist and the catholic sparing as intently as if this were an issue over our United States Attorney lying or something. I secretly wondered how much chocolate the artist got to eat while making this and about when I could get myself to Sees.
I have surveyed several of the chocolate Jesus news articles Here's what a few other people thought about big chocolate Jesus:
1) "Big deal," wrote one reader. "It's a piece of chocolate for Christ's sake. ... Eat it!"
2) Another reader suggested that the statue might not offend its holy subject.
"People are so closed-minded," the reader wrote. "How do you know that Christ wouldn't like a statue of chocolate made of himself?"
3) "People need to grow up and get a life," another reader wrote. "So what if they made a chocolate Jesus. Does it make him less superior?"
4) The Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights has written to 500 religious and secular organizations and has called for a boycott of the affiliated Roger Smith Hotel. Kiera McCaffrey, a spokeswoman for the right-wing group, says it is delighted with the outcome. "We're glad that they came to their senses," she said.. "[It is] an assault on Christians during Holy Week. They would never dare do something similar with a chocolate statue of the prophet Mohammad naked with his genitals exposed during Ramadan," she said.
Interesting thought.
1 comment:
Well, this story was a-breakin' right about the time that ol' Lost was traversing the Inland empire, on the eve of the big trek Eastward to the cradle of Liberty and (Thanks-to-dubya-I-nearly-shudder-to-type-the-word) Freedom. The Cath-hole of which you speak is William Donohue - a man who spends his miserable life behaving as though he's never recovered from the fact that he finished second to Carroll O'Connor in the casting race for "All in the Family." Donohue is more than just a blow hard, fronting a false Catholic organization (when did Jesus wield -let alone ever advocate the use of - a sword, and yet, whadya think is the most prominent non-verbal symbol in the "Catholic League's" logo?). Donohue is a $300,000 per year pitchman for some of the most bigoted, narrow-minded sloganeering and prejudice to be uttered on behalf of Catholicism since Torquemada. He is a creep's creep, shillin, shuckin' and jivin' for an organization whose membership includes such other misanthropes as Bill "hit-my-eighteen-I'm-feelin'-lucky" Bennett, Kate O'(boy I'm unhappy)Beirne, and Domino's Pizza founder Tom Monahan. Twisted, narrow dogmatards all.
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