| I’m sure by
now most of you have heard about the chocolate Jesus
controversy. A world-renowned artist, who most of us have never
heard of named Cosimo Cavallaro, created a sculpture of Jesus on
an invisible cross that he was to put on public display in New
York City. It’s made entirely out of milk chocolate. 200 pounds
worth. If you were to eat it, not that anyone actually would,
you would consume 485,460 calories. However, it’s not the weight
or the calories that people seem to be upset about. Many people
don’t like the sculpture because; well they really don’t seem to
know why. They just don’t.
Cardinal Edward Egan of the Archdiocese of New
York described it as “a sickening display” in what we can only
assume was a tribute to mothers everywhere who have been giving
a similar speech to their young children about over-consumption
of candy since the Easter Bunny first showed up with all of
those baskets. Yes, Cardinal Egan, it would be a sickening
display, but only if you ate too much of it. In an even more
ridiculous over statement, Bill Donohue, who is the leader of
the Catholic League, an organization that, according to my
research which consists mainly of making things up, is sort of a
religious Justice League, called the sculpture “one of the worst
assaults on Christian sensibilities ever.” In rebuttal, Justice
League spokesperson Superman called Mr. Donohue’s statement “one
of the worst assaults on human intelligence, ever.”
The art gallery that was scheduled to display
the chocolate Jesus, which is formally titled, “My Sweet Lord”
has been swamped with angry phone calls and emails from outraged
Christians, some of who threatened the life of the artist.
Apparently, the Catholic League had no comment about whether or
not death threats are any kind of assault on Christian
sensibilities.
Superman said they might be.
Now, it could be that Cosimo Cavallaro’s
reputation plays a part in how people perceive his work and in
trying to figure out if he is showing proper respect to Jesus
and His followers. The truth is, Cavallaro’s previous work has
been somewhat odd. He covered a New York City hotel room in
mozzarella cheese, covered a house with five tons of pepper jack
cheese and decorated a bed with 312 pounds of processed ham.
O.K., so maybe he doesn’t show the proper respect for hotels or
homes or beds, but the chocolate Jesus actually looks pretty
good (and not in a tasty way). It’s a serious sculpture. There
are no bunny ears sticking out of Christ’s head. He’s not
holding an Easter basket and he’s not smiling. The thing that
seems to have Cavallaro’s detractors upset is his choice of
medium. “My Sweet Lord” is made out of chocolate, which I should
point out, is a universally loved confection, unlike plaster,
marble or steel, which is what most other sculptures of Jesus
are made of. I think that depicting Christ in a substance almost
everyone associates with enjoyment and pleasure and happiness is
more fitting than a material that is hard, inflexible and
nowhere near as attractive. Also remember, it could have been
worse. Just think, what would Processed Ham Jesus look like?
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