The Terrence McNally play, “Corpus Christi,” is currently being performed in Greenwich Village. The play depicts Jesus as an ordinary person who has sex with his apostles. In 1998, Catholic League president Bill Donohue led 2000 demonstrators in a protest against the play when it opened at the midtown Manhattan Theater. Because the play is not at a prominent location this time, the league has ignored it. However, Donohue is not ignoring what the New York Times has said about the play this past week:
“If only the New York Times thought of Catholics as if we were all gay, we’d have no problem with the newspaper. The vile play which they love—not for artistic purposes but for its assault on Catholicism—features the Jesus character, Joshua, saying to his apostles things like, ‘F—your mother, F— your father, F— God.’ The Jesus-character is dubbed ‘King of the Queers’ and the script is replete with sexual and scatological comments. At one point, a character named Philip asks the Jesus-figure to perform fellatio on him.
“Yesterday, Jason Zinoman of the New York Times applauded the play for its ‘reverent spin on the Jesus story.’ One wonders how debased a performance against Catholicism must become before this guy would call it irreverent. Moreover, one wonders what this guy would say if the play substituted Martin Luther King for Jesus. On October 19, Mark Blankenship said those who protested the play in 1998 offered ‘stark reminders of lingering homophobia.’ So when anti-Catholic homosexuals like McNally feature Jesus having oral sex with the boys, and Catholics object, it’s not McNally who is the bigot—it’s those protesting Catholics. One wonders what this guy would say if a Catholic made a play about Barney Frank showing him to be a morally destitute lout who ripped off the taxpayers. Would he blame objecting gays for Catholic bashing?
“So nice to know what the gay-friendly Times thinks about Catholics.”
Contact the paper’s ombudsman, Clark Hoyt: public@nytimes.com
