Chocolate Jesus bitter in the mouths of Catholics

It has been all over the news, so you know, Jesus has returned. And he's got HERSHEY stamped on his ass.

And CHUNKY on his woo-haa. Yeah, he the Chocolate Jesus and he's ALL MAN and ALL NATURAL...except for his preservatives...but come on the man's been to heaven and hell, let us cut him some slack.

Of course, one group won't be cutting him any slack, in fact they want to cut him down and deny him.

And the ironic answer is? The Catholics.

Yes, Catholics, through their loud and unstable spokesman Bill Donohue, Catholic League, is P-I-S-S-E-D.

Catholic League head Bill Donohue called it "one of the worst assaults on Christian sensibilities ever".

Nuns being slaughtered en mass, pretty bad. Chocolate rendition of Jesus, about the same on the holy scale...Right.

Come on, Bill, get over it. Shouldn't Abu Ghraib have been "one of the worst assaults on Christian sensibilities ever"? How about the injustice of our war in the Iraq? What about the ongoing denial of civil rights to homosexuals? There are a lot of horrors in the world that might prompt a good Christian man to unleash his righteous fury, but a giant chocolate Jesus really isn't one of them.

And on Anderson Cooper 360, he got to mock and threaten the artist of the work.

DONAHUE: Look, you lost. You know what? You put your middle finger at the Catholic Church, and we just broke it, didn't we, pal?

C. CAVALLARO: No. You're wrong. You're wrong.

DONAHUE: Yes, we did. You lost.

C. CAVALLARO: I have a lot of believers.

DONAHUE: We — we won. You're out of a job.

C. CAVALLARO: And I'm a Christian. And there's a lot of people like me, who are opposed to what you're doing, because you made a big…

DONAHUE: Yes? But I got a job, and you don't.

C. CAVALLARO: You made a — "I got a job, and you don't"?

DONAHUE: Yes.

C. CAVALLARO: You're acting like a 5-year-old.

DONAHUE: I got a job, and you don't.

C. CAVALLARO: You're talking — you're acting like a 5-year-old. And I feel sorry for you.

COOPER: All right. We're going to — we're…

DONAHUE: Well, I won on this, and you lost, didn't you?

And, from Digby:

I'm sorry to have to say this because I am generally pretty tolerant of religion and try to be respectful of others' beliefs. But until the Catholic Church steps up and says that this screaming nutcase Bill Donohue and his band of freaks don't speak for them, I'm going to have to assume that the Catholic Church agrees with his lunatic ravings. This is getting completely ridiculous...

As long as he continues to get to play leader of the Catholic League, and the League gets to be the Catholic rep on camera, and the Bishops and Cardinals are in hiding, he is the leader. He's the American Pope, dictater of religious law and morality, and infallible. Unless Catholics, and the Church, want to stand up and say something...Nope.

Here is what Donohue actually wrote on his website, via feministe:

Catholic League president Bill Donohue outlined his game plan today:

“The Roger Smith Hotel is located in the heart of New York City, and it boasts on its website that its Lab Gallery ‘is a high traffic, fast paced’ venue. Indeed it is: the gallery is located on street level, easily accessible to the public. But it is sure bet that in the years to come there will be little in the way of high traffic coming from the Christian community.

“As I’ve said many times before, Lent is the season for non-believers to sow seeds of doubt about Jesus. What’s scheduled to go on at the Roger Smith Hotel, however, is of a different genre: this is hate speech. And choosing Holy Week—the display opens on Palm Sunday and ends on Holy Saturday—makes it a direct in-your-face assault on Christians.

Hate speech? Chocolate figures are HATE! Man, what are we teaching kids with those choc bunnies, the HORROR!

“All those involved are lucky that angry Christians don’t react the way extremist Muslims do when they’re offended—otherwise they may have more than their heads cut off. James Knowles, President and CEO of the Roger Smith Hotel (interestingly, he also calls himself Artist-in-Residence), should be especially grateful. And if he tries to spin this as reverential, then he should substitute Muhammad for Jesus and display him during Ramadan.“

I am contacting hundreds of organizations about this assault. Our allied list contains scores of Catholic, Protestant, Jewish, Muslim, Buddhist and Hindu organizations, as well as secular groups, that share our concerns about religious hate speech and the degradation of our culture. The only thing that those who operate the Roger Smith Hotel understand is when they get hit in the pocket book. So that’s exactly where we’ll hit them. The boycott is on.”

How Christian! You're lucky we aren't Muslim, or we'd kill ya. So that is the only thing holding him back. Remember the bible, all those verses where Jesus had to held back by the disciples from handing out some whoop ass, and then he'd say, "Thou ist lucky my Dad's here." He was pretty butch and mean (Which he could actually be in the book...but still that isn't there claim.).

The hotel and the gallery were overrun Thursday with angry phone calls and e-mails about the exhibit. Semler said the calls included death threats over the work of artist Cosimo Cavallaro, who was described as disappointed by the decision to cancel the display.

``In this situation, the hotel couldn't continue to be supportive because of a fear for their own safety,'' Semler said.

Death threats...safety concerns. And, remember, they are not like Muslims. Not when bombs are put in medical clinics, snipers are shooting doctors, or when the try and force their ways into law. Completely different.

Since the Vatican itself is a veritable sausage fest, and its most renowned artist, Michaelangelo, sculpted the most famous nude Biblical figure in history, it simply cannot logically be the nudity that's the problem for the Catholic League. (Lord knows, the Catholic League is nothing if not logical.)

So it must be the medium. The fact that it is sculpted in chocolate is so offensive to Donohue's thugs that they are issuing death threats to those who display such alleged blasphemy. I don't exactly understand why that would be. Chocolate is no more meaningful than clay or bronze or marble. It doesn't carry any scatalogical meaning nor is it thought of as derisive in any way. Perhaps the Catholic League could distribute its list of approved artist materials so that they won't run afoul of the rules and cause themselves to be threatened with death and boycott or accused of hate speech.

It's really too bad the artist didn't think to do it in cartoon form because the entire right wing would be in a frenzy defending his right to free speech. Indeed, he would have become a martyr for all of western civilization. Unapproved sculpting materials, on the other hand, are so far out that death threats are entirely appropriate.

Why is it that I have such a problem understanding the alleged principles the religious conservatives lives by? And why am I so unimpressed with the leaders of a great religion who allow people to act like cretins in their name and yet cover up much more serious crimes against actual human beings?