This was one of the most bizarre misrepresentations of power and outright lying I have ever seen, and so contrary to the Roman Catholic faith and Catholics I associate with, that I’ve not posted because I’ve been at a loss for words.
The job of the privately funded US Catholic League is to:
The Catholic League is the nation’s largest Catholic civil rights organization. Founded in 1973 by the late Father Virgil C. Blum, S.J., the Catholic League defends the right of Catholics – lay and clergy alike – to participate in American public life without defamation or discrimination.
It’s been an unholy week.
Bill Donohue of the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights decided to threaten a conceptual artist - a Canadian Catholic immigrant who lives and works out of New York City, over a 200 lb bittersweet chocolate sculpture of Jesus.
Donohue boasts about calling up 500 of his closest friends to have the hotel and gallery remove the sculpture, and he blamed “non- believers mak(ing) it a direct in-your-face assault on Christians.”
The Roger Smith Hotel staff received death threats and hate calls, the creative director of Lab Gallery quit, the artist went into hiding, as Donohue said the hotel ’would will rue the day it sought to declare war on Christian sensibilities,” saying the hotel was “already morally bankrupt.”
The video is here.
Donohue and Cavallaro appeared on CNN’s Anderson Cooper.
Donohue has never protested chocolate crosses, Mary on a grilled cheese sandwich, Jesus on the side of a building, the last supper carved in butter, fake weeping statues or day to day anti-Catholicism affecting people in the pews and in their work place.
Donohue got exactly what he wanted, he then criticized hotel/gallery management for their announcement, now his public behavior has back fired.
Offers to buy or exhibit a nude chocolate sculpture of Jesus Christ have poured in since the piece caused a stir and lost its gallery space in New York City, said the artist who made it.
But artist Cosimo Cavallaro said Saturday he also has received some threats, so he is storing the sculpture for now in a refrigerated truck in an undisclosed location.
Someone got lost in this uproar.
Jesus.
I think paxdx gives me voice.
I challenge Bill Donohue to go back to whatever parish he calls home and ask everyone there to forego the new Easter outfit this year. Don’t buy chocolate bunnies for the kids, don’t hide eggs, and for God’s sake (said quite literally), don’t presume that the brightness of Easter morning, the joy of Christ’s resurrection, has permeated all of the dark corners and shadows of this world. Take what wasn’t spent on bunnies and peeps and bonnets and dresses and make from it soup and bread and coffee. Skip the Easter Brunch this year, and share a meal with those who have nothing. It’s not enough to sit in a pew and talk about the resurrection - go out there and be that resurrection for others. Get Christ off the cross and into the lives of people who are still sitting in Good Friday’s darkness come Sunday morning.
If “My Sweet Lord” offends some, I’ll posit that it’s because it hits too close to home. We’ve made Easter a retail holiday, and the outstretched milk chocolate hand points directly to our own hypocrisy.
As does David Kuo:
Jesus’ story isn’t nice, it isn’t neat, it isn’t comfortable. It is the opposite of all of those things. In so many ways those of us who say we follow Jesus actually want a sort of “chocolate Jesus” of our own - one that is sweet, one that demands little from us, one that we can mold into our forms - perhaps politically conservative, perhaps liberal, maybe happy with just a few of our dollars given to the poor every now and again, perhaps content with those who simply say they love him and then lead lives little different from anyone else.
Cosimo Cavallaro works with food, he is best known for a cheese hotel room, a ham house and now ‘My Sweet Lord.’
“My Sweet Lord” Cosimo Cavallaro 2007
It is indeed Holy Week for Christians all over the world who are facing far more than assaults on their ’sensibilities.’
Let us pray.
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I’m not Catholic and I don’t know any practicing Catholics myself. Anyway, I’ve done some searching online and I’ve found that the response from Catholic people at large has generally been in support of Cavallaro and against Donohue. It looks to me like many lay Catholics are disgusted at Donohue and often say that he doesn’t represent them or the faith that they subscribe to.
That being said, I have yet to see even a single statement from the Catholic Church’s hierarchy against Donohue or any of Donohue’s positions. In fact, Edward Cardinal Egan of New York has wholeheartedly supported Donohue. This total lack of opposition from Catholic clergy and leadership can only lead me to one conclusion: that the CC itself DOES support Donohue. After all, if he wasn’t representing the CC, then a single statement from the hierarchy (like a cardinal or archbishop) would be enough to completely destroy his credibility.
And yet they remain silent.
This can only lead me to the conclusion that there is a serious division between Catholic laity and clergy. If Donohue represents the beliefs of the clergy but not the bulk of the membership, then the laity accept membership in the church but not its doctrines. There is a word for people who are members of the Church but don’t accept its beliefs: Heretics. The CC has been quick in the past to speak out firmly against other people in the past, but has failed to do so here.
So my questions are: how do you reconcile yourself to the fact that your beliefs are not shared by the church that you support? If Donohue doesn’t speak for the CC or the Catholics that you know, then why is the hierarchy either supporting him or remaining silent? Or am I totally missing something?
Those are excellent questions, and I don’t know the answers.
I agree there is a wide divide between laity and clergy.
I know US Catholic lay groups do speak against Donohue, (ie: Voice of the Faithful and Catholics for a Free Choice) they encourage US Catholics to contact cable news shows that use Donohue and complain.
The only thing I can think of is money and the Leagues support of plutocrats. The US Catholic Church hierarchy gains nothing in publicly ticking them off and possibly cutting off the money flow to their parishes.
The Catholic League is outside the authority of the Church, so it wouldn’t matter if there was official public condemnation.
Donohue can do whatever the hell he wants, the League brought in 3.6 million in 2005.
Donohue and the League have taken stands outside official church positions such as capital punishment, the Iraq War, immigration policy and income redistribution.
Egan resigned as Cardinal April 2nd as per Canon law, haven’t seen if the Vatican accepted it yet.
He is also on the board of governors for Ava Maria School of Law, doubt he is going to annoy Tom Monaghan, neoconservative money spiggot.
Given the problems Egan had with priests and parish closings I doubt he had much energy to chastise Donohue. If the Pope accepts his resignation and Egan is free to speak up, would he?
One observer says: ” there is a power struggle going on in the Vatican between the progressives and the ultra-traditionalists, with a swing middle group. I definitely believe that the CL serves both the reactionary “Church within a church” (Opus Dei, Legatus types) as well as the fringe NEO/THEOconservative Right in America”
It would be helpful to have more informed input, wouldn’t it?
It sure would be helpful to have more informed input, both for outsiders and insiders. Which leads me to something else I’ve been wondering (you don’t need to answer if you don’t want to).
You admit that there is a wide divide between Catholic laity and clergy. I just wonder why that is. You’re Canadian (I presume), I’m from the US, and many Catholics are citizens of other democratic nations. We The People value the ideals of democracy: that the power to govern comes from the consent of the governed. But the Catholic Church is not a democratic institution. Indeed, it preaches the idea that the hierarchy is appointed by and answerable only to God. Not only that, but Benedict XVI has essentially declared that the best protection against political absolutism is ecclesiastical absolutism. I would have thought that he and his predecessor would have learned a different lesson, especially given their personal histories.
From an outsider’s perspective, it just appears that the upper echelons of the CC are insulated from the people they minister to. Isn’t that what has been leading to the decline of the CC in western developed countries? Not to mention the horrible negligence of Cardinal Law and his ilk. How many other churches have their leaders ensconsed in an enormous palace surrounded by Swiss Guard? How many other churches are also led by a foreign absolute monarch? I just wonder: where are the people in all this?
Yes, I am Canadian, 60% of the country identifies as Catholic. Catholics have always been neighbours and friends, so much a part of my landscape and life I don’t think about differences. I’ve seen pockets of anti-Catholicism, but nothing like what some US friends or media talk about.
A older friend who grew up protestant in a Quebec town (one of two families) grew up being taunted and hated, he lived the havoc the hold the church had on the community, particularly in areas of natural law and the inevitable economic clash.
Until the 1960’s the economic power in Quebec was essentially held by anglophones, the social and political power was in the grip of the Catholic church. That changed almost overnight and the traditional hold was lost.
To this day, most Canadians perceive the role of the Catholic hierarchy in our history in negative terms.
I spent some time yesterday talking with a Catholic friend about this thread. He is English Catholic, work tirelessly in the parish and knows all the gossip. Truth is the family doesn’t have much use for the hierarchy of the church.
The divide seems simple as an observer.
Catholics no longer need cradle to grave care and safety from the Church. While a Catholic family holds to the seven sacraments of faith (baptism, confirmation, communion, confession, marriage, priesthood and unction) their economic and social well being and life needs are no longer provided by the institution or those representing the institution.
Canada went through Catholic abuse scandals prior to the US - to this day the 71 dioceses in Canada are not willing to be forthright- it takes five to seven years for cases to go through the courts. Catholic church lawyers play hardball. It isn’t about abuse survivors at executive levels, it’s about preserving the priesthood.
The Catholic Church is not a democratic institution.
It never was, never will be, it cannot be.
Catholics believe in apostolic succession, that’s heady stuff, and while holding faith people understand power also corrupts it.
The structure is set up to be unmovable and preserve the priesthood at any cost.
History has borne that belief.
No one choosing to join the Catholic Church enters knowing otherwise.
But at the same time, I think you are correct. Some of the great tenets of the church clash with western reality.
What a great question, where are the people in all this.
The Catholics I know are busy making their communities a better place, serving others; their willingness to see social justice done may put them at odds with natural law, but they put feet to their faith in ways that put many of us to shame.
Parishioners adapt to social change, survival requires it, while acknowledging their place in their larger communion.
The Church leadership will not adapt.
They cannot.
There is no reasoned common ground.
Men that will assume leadership positions are groomed from the day they enter seminary to preserve succession and will die to do so. Or leave.
Catholic leadership will remain disconnected because adaptable isn’t part of the package.
The Swiss Guard are trained military, same as Buckingham Palace guards. Yes, they are a private army and well equipped with 21st century weaponry to defend the Vatican. 2 million visitors go through the place yearly.
The Catholic Church is growing elsewhere where governments and citizens have not yet incorporated the skills to take on roles in education, health care, community leadership.
US lay discontent will not change the Vatican, and will not change US Church leadership. US Church leadership will not change the Vatican.
Is that what is leading to the decline?
Good question.
If the billion Catholics in the world stopped putting money on the plate during mass, ignored fund drives and stopped paying indulgences, I doubt the Vatican would suffer. The Church (her people) would, but less in democracies where alternative social networks are in place.
Some branches of Orthodox churches are led by ‘absolute monarchs.’ A Patriarchate is the first among equals. They also believe in apostolic lineage.