January 17-21
Cincinnati, OH – The Annie Hendy play “The Catholic Girl’s Guide to Losing Your Virginity” was performed at the Cincinnati Playhouse In The Park. The play is about a 24-year-old Catholic woman who is determined to lose her virginity by her 25th birthday after she finds out her priest is having better sex than she is.
January 19-February 4
Albuquerque, NM – The Desert Rose Playhouse hosted “Agnes of God,” a play based on the notoriously anti-Catholic movie by the same name. In “Agnes of God,” a novice nun gives birth in a convent and claims that the baby, who is murdered, was the result of a virgin conception.
February 13-25
West Los Angeles, CA – A touring production of the musical “Altar Boyz” opened at the Wadsworth Theatre. The show is about an all-male band that sings “Christian-themed” songs that actually ridicule Christianity. In one song, a gay band member sings, “Your posse might not think it’s dope/if you confess you like the pope.” The choreography in “Altar Boyz” sometimes involves the performers striking crucifixion poses.
February 18-March 11
Indian Head, MD – The Black Box Theatre hosted “Agnes of God,” a play based on the notoriously anti-Catholic movie.
March
New York, NY – “Stairway to Hell,” a death-metal musical featuring a rock band whose members are killed in an on-stage accident, was performed at a bar called Snitch. On the journey to the afterlife, the band members mistakenly end up in Heaven instead of Hell. They convince the Devil to allow them one more concert on Earth to prove to him that they belong in Hell.
During the show, the band members are told they can’t go to Hell because one of them is too pure. A set of Rosary beads is pulled out of one band member’s anus. When a Jesus-character appears, he is beaten by Satan and the band members, and has his spinal cord ripped out.
March 27
Pasadena, CA – “The Comedy Jesus Show,” a one-man standup comedy act with ex-fundamentalist Troy Conrad as Jesus, opened at The Ice House; it played in six other cities in the U.S. and Canada through September.
The act featured Jesus answering questions from the audience, including:
٭ Question: “Why are Christians taught that premarital sex is bad?”
Jesus: “Because the church wants 10% of your money and this is how they guilt you out of it!”
٭ Question: “How come dogs can lick their n**s, but men can’t?”
Jesus: “You can if you believe you can, if you have the faith of a mustard seed!”
٭ Question: “Did the nails hurt?”
Jesus: “F***ing-A, they hurt!”
The “Comedy Jesus Tour” web site links to several short videos on the Internet, including:
٭ “Disclaimer for the Bible,” a mock TV ad saying that reading the Bible may cause a variety of conditions including bigotry, homophobia, sexism, and mass murder
٭ “Jesus’ Bad Day,” which mixes scenes from “The Passion of the Christ” with clips of the “Comedy Jesus” character falling off a bike, dropping an ice cream cone, and stubbing his toe
٭ “Jesus doesn’t like the iPhone,” in which Jesus become irritated at someone’s iPhone ringing while he tries to pray as he hangs on the cross
March-April
New York, NY – A six-foot anatomically correct sculpture of a naked Jesus made out of chocolate, created by artist Cosimo Cavallaro, was scheduled for display during Holy Week at the Roger Smith Hotel art gallery. The hotel planned to display the sculpture on street level where it would be visible through windows; the public was invited to eat the Jesus figure.
Cavallaro’s “My Sweet Lord” (altered for publication)
The Catholic League contacted 500 allied organizations in the religious and secular communities, asking them to join in a boycott of the Roger Smith Hotel. The hotel was soon bombarded with angry phone calls and e-mails, which led to a sharp rise in Catholic League membership as well as a surge in hate mail received (see below for a sampling).
The hotel cancelled the “Chocolate Jesus” exhibit two days before its scheduled opening—but not before Matt Semler, the hotel gallery’s creative director, accused the Catholic League of employing “hate speech” and engaging in a “fatwa” against the hotel. He resigned in protest.
When Donohue debated Cavallaro on a Los Angeles radio show, the artist admitted he had created sculptures with his own feces. Donohue responded, “You have just given new meaning to the term ‘B.S. artist’.”
Catholic League representatives granted numerous interviews to the broadcast and print media on the “chocolate Jesus” sculpture. They noted that not one newspaper or TV station in the country showed the entire sculpture.
March 6
San Francisco, CA – A touring production of “Altar Boyz” opened at the Orpheum Theatre.
March 15-16
Kirkland, WA – The Kirkland Performance Center hosted “Bigger Than Jesus,” a one-man play by actor Rick Miller. The performance center’s website described the play this way: “Two thousand years after his death, Jesus continues to be a potent and controversial figure, inspiring both devout worship and incalculable violence. Who was Jesus? Was he the Son of God or just another prophet? A politically correct social worker or the Messiah? This challenging new one-man show features the trademark humor and intelligence of Rick Miller as he grapples with these thorny questions.”
In the piece, Miller sings a satirized parody called “Gethsemene,” and includes Darth Vader, John Lennon and Judy Garland at the Last Supper.
April
Los Angeles, CA – “Christ Killa,” created by digital and video artist Eric Medine, was featured at the Niche.LA Video Art Gallery. The audience was invited to play a video game and shoot “homicidal Jesus Christs.” The person with the most “Christ-kills” was awarded a trophy. The game landscape featured Christian themes including an image of St. Peter’s Basilica.
April
Brooklyn, NY – Like The Spice Art Gallery exhibited “Organized Religion,” a collection of works dealing with religious beliefs. It included a statue of Mary painted black with obscenities written on it, and a photograph of a crucifix with Santa Claus hanging on it instead of Jesus.
May 11-12
Taos, NM – Art That Dares: Gay Jesus, Woman Christ, and More, a book by “lesbian Christian author” Kittredge Cherry, was exhibited at the National Festival of Progressive Spiritual Art. The book features images of Jesus with contemporary gay people, a “faggot crucifixion,” a sculpture of “a nude Adam and the new Adam,” and a female Jesus. “These new images are much needed now because Christian rhetoric is used to justify discrimination against women and lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people,” said Cherry. “Christ belongs to everyone. The gay Jesus and the woman Christ are here to free and empower people who feel left out when Jesus is presented as a straight man.”
June
New York, NY – The New York Philharmonic performed the opera “Sancta Susanna” at the Avery Fisher Hall at Lincoln Center. In the opera, while Sister Klementia and Sister Susanna prayed in the convent chapel, Klementia told Susanna that years before, she saw another nun strip naked and embrace the crucified Jesus on the cross. Susanna then disrobed and approached the crucifix. The other nuns entered the chapel and condemned Susanna as “Satana,” a devil.
We wrote to Zarin Mehta, president and executive director of the New York Philharmonic, asking him why the Philharmonic had the audacity to insult Catholics this way. Mehta never responded.
June
Burbank, CA – A play called “Dusk,” in which a woman sues the Catholic Church after her son’s suicide, was performed at the Grove Theater Center. In the play, the woman’s son had been molested by a priest and started using drugs before he killed himself. The play’s writer, James McLindon, also wrote “The Garden of Dromore” (another play involving sex abuse in the Church) and “The Ballad of Father Gallagher.”
June
State College, PA – “Do Black Patent Leather Shoes Really Reflect Up?” was hosted by the Millbrook Playhouse. The play cruelly caricatures nuns and priests, and ridicules Catholic sacraments.
June 22
Saugatuck, MI – The anti-Christian musical “Altar Boyz” made its regional premier at the Mason Street Warehouse Theater.
July 13
Lawrence, KS – The Jackpot Music Hall hosted the play “Naughty Needles Knitted Burlesque Revue.” One of the acts, “Nasty Habit,” featured a woman dressed as a nun who took off her habit to reveal a devil costume described by the Kansas City Star as “sultry.”
All of the proceeds from the show went to Planned Parenthood.
August
San Francisco, CA – “The Big Voice: God or Merman?” was performed at the New Conservatory Theatre Center. The two-man play, described by the San Francisco Chronicle as a “very funny chamber musical about growing up gay and religious,” stars gay men who grew up Baptist and Catholic respectively. In the play, one character achieves a “spiritual epiphany” during a religious pilgrimage when he sees a performance by Ethel Merman.
August
Culver City, CA – The play “Bob and Ed’s Discount Enlightenment Warehouse” played at the Fanatic Salon Theater. In the play, Bob and Ed are “con men” who sell “self-help theologies.” Members of a dysfunctional family named Larson, described in the play as Catholic, came to the “warehouse outlet” one by one looking to buy religious truth. God appeared as a sex-addicted man who is furious at people who don’t believe in him or who blame him for the world’s problems; he tried to seduce Mrs. Larson in a bar.
September 22 – October 7
St. Louis, MO – The anti-Christian musical “Altar Boyz” opened at the Repertory Theatre.
October 12
Sarasota, FL – The anti-Christian musical “Altar Boyz” opened at the Florida Studio Theatre.
“Chocolate Jesus” Hate Mail and Phone Calls
The Catholic League was deluged with nasty phone calls and hate mail after we succeeded in having the Roger Smith Hotel “Chocolate Jesus” sculpture exhibit cancelled in April. Here is just a small sample.
Phone calls
* “Good Lord! A chocolate Jesus with a penis! I think your Catholic League would do better to worrying about the priests touching the penises of young boys…”
* “There should be a chocolate Virgin Mary, a chocolate Joseph…you guys need to get a little bit more real about yourselves because your religion is as silly as Winnie the Pooh. It has no respect in the real world. Artists do what they want; you guys just worship a silly God…”
* “I express disagreement with your organization. When I heard that people from my church called and issued death threats, I thought of the times of the Inquisition where people were burned at the stake for having different beliefs. This sculpture isn’t bad. It’s from a different artistic point of view. Instead of criticizing this sculpture, maybe you folks should go after the Vatican for having sexually perverse pictures in its museum!”
* “You’re no better than the Taliban, I’m sorry to say.”
* “I was born and raised a Catholic and I am happy to say that I’m a recovering Catholic and your immaculate misconception is further being exhibited today with your denial of culture of Christ, in chocolate of all things!”
* “He [Bill Donohue] should worry about the pedophilia that’s rampant in the Church and not a statue of Jesus who’s naked…Worry about the pedophilia and stealing in your own church! It’s a free country and people can look at whatever they want. Catholic people are no longer ignorant as they were when they came off the boat!”
* “Yeah, I just like to say I think your organization is reprehensible especially in regards to the display at the Roger Smith Hotel in the gallery. Your organization, Mr. Donohue, are nothing but a bunch of thuggish terrorists, which is obvious from your members because you are the premier organization basically leading the charge trying to get this exhibit stopped. It had to be your members making all these phone calls to the Roger Smith Hotel threatening their lives and such. Your organization is just despicable beyond belief and the fact that you cloak yourselves in religion, as if you’re holy, makes it even more sick! You’re a terrorist organization and a bunch of thuggish, low-life scumbags!”
* “I would like to urge the Catholic League to press hard and stop with the molestation within the Church. At this point in history, the Church is now a criminal institution, which has been harboring pedophiles for years…Is he [Bill Donohue] working as hard on the problem within his Church, which is hurting so many people in such a despicable, horrifying, devilish, evil, satanic, blasphemous way? There is nothing as worse as the abuse of innocent children sexually by the Catholic Church so can you please focus on this instead of statues of Jesus? May God bless you and save you! I wonder what sins you have Mr. Donohue? I think we are going to start investigating that!”
* “I’ve been a Catholic all my life and I’m appalled by Mr. Donohue’s actions…”
* “I would like to comment on Bill Donohue’s remarks. I saw him getting worked up on this chocolate Jesus statue on TV, which I think is very hypocritical. Maybe he should be more concerned with priests f**king little boys than over an anatomically correct, naked statue of Jesus. I personally wonder who is going to s**k Jesus’ c**k! HEE HEE HEE, I CRACK ME UP!”
* “Organized religion is false and everyone who follows it is lost. Jesus Christ was an [inaudible] and we are probably too, so f**k you!”
Emails
All misspellings, punctuation mistakes, and grammatical errors are included.
* “I was completely disappointed in Bill Donohue’s behavior on ‘Anderson Cooper 360°’ tonight concerning the naked chocolate Jesus. His comments were ungodly, childlike, and embarrassing. As the president of the Catholic League, I pray that he will be more Christlike—full of compassion and mercy and be reminded that those in the Bible prayed for God to ‘have mercy on people because they do not know what they do.’ They did not say to attack verbally.”
* “Why did you bow down to that stinking pile of human s**t Donahue? That slimy Irish pig should take the jesus statue and shove it up his wife’s dried up c**t along with Bush! As for the pope, that old f**king drag queen…should take his beliefs and sit on it… Religious should be outlawed and taxed.”
* “I just saw Anderson Cooper. Bill Donahue, what can I say—I have never been so ashamed to be a Catholic. I am truly amazed that the corporeal nature of Christ, as specifically understood through Catholic doctrine, not only goes unrecognized but is violently, (yes violently, Donahue words were as hateful as I have ever heard within a ‘Defense’ of religion; truly unchristian) disputed by a so-called mouth-piece of Catholicism. Your organization has moved form that which was tolerable, irrelevance, to what is intolerable, a hateful, un-Christian presence. Your organization, and your surrogate Donohue, makes me regret the years I have spent in the service of the Church. I plan to speak to my pastor Sunday as I hope many others are.”
* “How many children did the Catholic Church RAPE? How many child rapists did you protect?”
* “Well leave it to the biggest hypocrites on the planet to once again censor the arts! I saw the sculpture. What’s the problem? Is it the dark skin, heaven forbid. Jesus look like an African American, does a sculpture have to be made of marble, stone, wood for it to be acceptable. Or maybe it’s the nudity? …Whatever the case, maybe The Catholics should be more concerned with stopping pedophile priests, than banning the arts. Instead you try to cover the truth with high powered lawyers and protect pedophiles by moving the to different parishes where they can continue to molest young children…”
* “So is this an attack on Catholics? I can only hope so. Every Catholic I have ever met has been a complete hypocrite, then again everything about your faith contradicts itself.”
* “I was born and raised Catholic, and the years of attending Catholic School I only really learned one thing about Religion and that is, all organized Religion is evil and that Catholics are the biggest offenders. Throughout the ages you have killed and maimed in the name of Christ. What kind of an “all loving God” would condone such a thing? My years in Catholic school were horrific. The methods of fear and guilt, still used to indoctrinate small children into your faith is disgusting. You should all be ashamed of yourselves. My parents after years have apologized for raising me Catholic, I have forgiven them. They no longer support or donate to your religion. I can only hope that more and more people do the same. A world without Catholicism will truly be a better place for everyone…you have become your own worst enemy. I read with joy everyday in the papers to see more and more Catholic schools and churches being closed. The school that I was forced to go to as a child will be closed this year, and I believe that is a great thing. No more will smack children be made to feel guilty and fearful so you can keep your horrific anti-vision alive.
“So label me a sinner, sentence me to hell for all eternity. If the alternative is going to be haven and spending eternity with pedophiles, murders, hypocrites and liars like I find most Catholics to be. I will openly choose hell. However anyone with any sense knows that Hell is what you have created for us here on Earth.
“I now proudly support Atheism and will continue to fight to have Religious symbolism removed from public places, prayer taken out of public schools and to keep Church and State separate.
“Please continue to make statements to the media condemning the arts, while protecting pedophiles. It makes my work and the work of many others much easier.
