Here are some spoof excerpts from a recent politically correct Stations of the Cross.
Actually, one of the paragraphs below is the real thing. A prize for the readers who can spot the authentic eco station.
In the station ‘Veronica Meets Jesus on the Way to the Cross’ Isobel Florsheim portrayed Veronica as a native Amazonian woman emerging from a hardwood tree. Veronica’s face is seen within one part of the tree trunk and it then merges into the image of Christ. Isobel’s caption reads, “The suffering Christ is one with the sufferings of the native Amazonian tribes as their ecosystem is destroyed by the forces of unrestrained greed. Christ’s image is merged with the hardwood tree in identification with the ‘crucifixion’ of the Amazon rain forest, the destruction of mankind’s last Eden.”
In the station “Jesus Is Removed from the Cross,” Catherine Symens-Bucher, Anne’s daughter who is now a junior at Bishop O’Dowd High School, painted Earth as a broken eggshell, with brilliant green butterflies emerging. The commentary reads: “A new paradigm is emerging. Our focus turns now to seeing ourselves differently. We see ourselves now as part of an integral natural world and no longer as the masters of nature. May we gently lift Earth off the cross of human domination and unreflective greed. May we know the joy and freedom of a world community.”
In the station, “Jesus falls for the Third Time,” Bryce O’Reilly, a high school sophomore, created a three dimensional model of a nuclear power plant in meltdown. Behind the mythical power plant was a photograph of Three Mile Island and Chernobyl representing the first two times Jesus fell. Bryce wrote his own commentary for his station which reads, “I think when the nuclear power plants blow up it is kind of like Jesus falling down. When he falls down its like the whole world is crashing in and it makes everyone very sad.”
In the station, “Jesus Meets the Women of Jerusalem” Nadine Swahala, a junior at Bishop O’Flanagan High, created a liturgical dance with four of her friends. Jesus, played by Jeanette Dworkin, is surrounded by three dancers dressed in leotards– one brown, one blue and one green. The dancers uphold ‘Jesus’ on his way of suffering. Nadine explains, “The three dancers represent the Holy Trinity of earth, water and growing things. As they go with Jesus, they share his grief and sadness. Eventually they die with him. Then they all rise gently together and Jesus is brought back to life by his three friends.” Nadine said, “My family is Hindu, and I don’t see any difference between what we are taught at Bishop O’Flanagan and our Hindu faith.”
Fr Z has more about it here.
and Curt Jester and Carl Olson link to more of such things here
UPDATE: The authentic eco station is number two. Brad, Bernadette, and Niggle your prize of $10,000.00 will be sent as soon as I receive a royalty check in that amount.
Oh, dear. I am really sad to say that any one of these could be true. Hmmm, I’m picking the last one with the liturgical dancers.I have no idea how to not be “anonymous”, but I’m really not. Mary Margaret
Father, sadly, the cynic in me says it is the last, agreeing with MM. Louise
If I must pick one….hummmm…. the second.I just hope it is not the last one, for obvious reasons, or the nuclear power plant one, because a high school student should write better than that!
The second. because it fits in with the ego-centric me,me,me liturgy that’s everywhere.
Truly a bastardization of the Stations of the Cross. I do not comprehend why these Catholic (?) school students were encouraged to re-write history. Yes, we are to take care of our environment, but when we take Our Lord’s Passion and make it about all the ‘bad’ humans … well – He suffers enough without that!As Burnadette writes – it is all about ME!!!!!
The amazing thing is that these green new agers (whose “ascending to the next plane of conciousness” is actually the hijacking of what should have been the original creative and proper honing of energies and resources (that is, in union with the Holy Spirit) in the advent of the industrial revolution) seem so stereotyped and exaggerated when you hear about them. But when you actually meet one of them, oh my. And you know the one your talking with is of a “milder” sort…oh my. There is no exaggeration. On their own, they are…well, on their own. But when they start “syncretising” their bullshit consciousness with Christian revelation, it gets really creepy.
Oh, I also vote for the second.
I shall vote for the first.
This reflects one of my pet peeves. On the one hand, we have fringe groups like this, who are so far out of the mainstream it’s not even funny. In general, things like this crop up and die out fast. Not many people have any patience with them.On the other hand, we have the blogosphere ( I don’t mean you. The parodies are a hoot. ) acts as if they’re the wave of the future and the Superblogger is the only one who can prevent the whole Church from heresy. Both sides muddy the waters so much that it’s not easy to remember that the Church calls for good stewardship of the environment. The vast majority of environmentalists aren’t anything like this.
I’m for sensible stewardship of the environment too. It just gets my goat when they confuse ecoreligion with Catholicism.
Well, who gets the prize ? And what IS the prize. And if you`ve given up blogging for Holy week, we`re not going to find out.
The prize is an autographed photo of me in my biretta…In other words, a booby prize.I will announce the winners in an update on this post tomorrow.
My daughter is in a “living stations of the cross” presentation at her school. It’s not rethemed, it’s the “regular old” stations. She is one of the woman who sees Jesus walk by and starts to cry, only to have him say “Daughters of Jerusalem, do not weep for me, but for yourselves and for your children.”Her line then is something like: “I thought about that, and then I realized he was making sense! What peace can there be in a community where even one person is treated so badly?”When I pointed out to her that that wasn’t what Jesus meant by telling the women to weep for themselves and their children, she just rolled her eyes. There goes Mom again, finding fault with EVERYTHING.My husband said he used the same script when he was in high school. Sigh.Gail in Cincinnati