Chocolate Jesus or Big Brown Blob?

I've seen artists' depictions of Jesus — some going back ten centuries — that were made out of bronze, marble, and wood, not to mention canvas and paint. I don't recall Catholic protests against any of them.

But make Jesus out of two hundred pounds of milk chocolate and you've committed, um, a cardinal sin. The New York gallery that displayed the life-size chocolate sculpture received a barrage of furious phone calls and anonymous death threats, and so it hastily removed the exhibit.

I'm curious: what's perfectly fine about a bronze Jesus but blasphemous about a chocolate one? It's not like the gallery visitors were invited to take a bite out of the Lord. And even if they had been allowed to savior savor a toe or a finger, well, sorry, every Eucharist-celebrating Catholic has actually eaten Christ's flesh and drunk his blood. Chew on that!

Maybe the death threats sprang from the fact that the sculpture wasn't wearing a loincloth and you could see the Lord's willie. Was that a deliberate provocation on the sculptor's part, or simply a reflection of the historical truth that victims of Roman crucifixion were first stripped naked — a fact that preachers freely acknowledge in their sermons?

I submit that Massimo Cavallaro's sculpture was a smart, perhaps even pious invitation to reflect on what Easter has become: an event symbolized by consumers' idolatry of a Hershey's easter bunny.

Blogger Alex Blagg is probably with me on that:

I personally find a giant Chocolate Jesus to be an infinitely more appropriate symbol for a religion who currently chooses to celebrate their holiest of holidays by having their kids look for Cadbury eggs hidden by a giant magical bunny. Besides, you could fill the Chocolate Jesus with peanut butter, and effectively disprove all of evolution in the process — that’s two doves with one stone. 

Anyway, the chocolate Jesus is gone. You can't go see for yourself and form your own opinion because, well, the Catholic League and cardinal Egan, taking a page from the Islamic playbook, just don't want you to. It comes down to this: it's their call what you see.

I'm left to wonder what's going to happen to two hundred pounds of milk chocolate in the shape of a crucified demi-God. Is Cavallaro going to repent and melt it down? If he does, wouldn't that be an act of shocking blasphemy? And suppose he uses the big brown blob to fashion a thousand chocolate bars, would that constitute further religious insult — or something of a miracle resurrection?

Comments

[Ivan]

You may remember that for some reason this Christ seemed to hang in there:

http://www.tate.org.uk/britain/exhibitions/inagaddadavida/lucas.htm

I suppose it's a sign of the times that chocolate is now considered to be more dangerous than cigarettes.

[fish]

MMMMmmmmmmm..........Ghandi!

[Timothy]

In typically Catholic fashion, the sculptor put the nails through the hands. The Romans, of course, knew better than that: the ligaments and small bones of the hands just aren't strong enough to hold a person, so the nails went through the wrists between the radius and ulna. That is the only thing I find offensive about the statue.

[Paulie]

I think what drove them to ban this exhibit was fear of chocolate inspired fellatio.