One of Paris’s most prestigious theatres was being protected by riot police and guard-dog patrols on Thursday after it became the latest target in a wave of Catholic protests across France against so-called “blasphemous” plays.
The head of the Théâtre du Rond-Point on the Champs-Elysées complained of death threats in the runup to Thursday’s premiere of the play Golgota Picnic by the Madrid-based, Argentinian writer Rodrigo García. Two men reported to have links to fundamentalist Catholic groups were arrested at the weekend while attempting to disable the theatre’s security system.
Several Catholic groups have called for peaceful demonstrations, prayer-vigils and the laying down of white flowers outside the building every night the play is shown, while the archbishop of Paris will lead protest prayers against the play at Notre Dame Cathedral.
The demonstrations over Golgota Picnic come after a rise in fundamentalist religious protest action against some of France’s most high-profile theatres, including pelting the audience with eggs, letting off stinkbombs and the invasion of the stage of Paris’s esteemed Théâtre de la Ville mid-performance by outraged Catholics carrying banners reading “Stop Christianophobia”.
Earlier this year, young French fundamentalist Catholics staged an unprecedented attack on a gallery in Avignon, slashing photographs including Piss Christ by the New York artist Andres Serrano. More peaceful Catholic protests outside theatres, including young people kneeling with wooden crosses outside venues from Lille to Toulouse, have led the French culture pages to question the rise in rightwing and nationalist feeling among hardline Christian groups.
Paris remains sensitive about Christian demonstrations since the fire-bombing of a cinema showing Martin Scorsese’s The Last Temptation of Christ in 1988. Political commentators have speculated that some traditionalist Catholics in the demonstrations had broken off from the Front National after the leadership was taken over by Jean-Marie Le Pen’s daughter Marine.
Golgota Picnic, which takes place on a stage strewn with burger buns, has several religious references including readings and a crucifixion scene. But Paris theatre critics said it was absurd to call it anti-Catholic or blasphemous and questioned whether its religious critics had actually seen it.
Yet in a move that went further than the recent protests over Théâtre de la Ville’s staging of On the Concept of the Face, Regarding the Son of God by the Italian Romeo Castellucci, Paris’s archbishop, André Vingt-Trois, deemed Golgota Picnic, which he had not seen, “deliberately offensive” and said he would lead a protest prayer at Notre Dame.
Jean-Michel Ribes, head of the Théâtre de Rond-Point, appealed for calm. He said: “The Théâtre du Rond-Point isn’t an anti-Christian, anti-Muslim or anti-Jewish place.” But he said the role of artists was to fight against “suffocating dogma”. Theatregoers have been advised to arrive an hour early to get through the airport-style security before reaching their seats.
Paris city hall’s art supremos rushed to defend the theatre community against what it said was fundamentalists holding art to ransom, saying a “silent minority” of Catholics did not share the notion of making threats or stifling freedom of expression.
Civitas, a lobby group that says it aims to re-Christianise France, has called for a large, peaceful street demonstration “against Christianophobia” this weekend.
http://apriestlife.blogspot.com/2011/12/who-decides-who-is-fundamentalist.html
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GOLGOTHA PICNIC: Blasphemy!
• Christ being compared to a terrorist and insulted with such profanity that I cannot reproduce it here.
• There are burlesque imitations of the crucifixion, such as a half-naked woman with a false stigmata — and a motorcycle helmet with a crown of thorns drawn on it.
Unspeakable!
“In the press kit of Golgotha Picnic, Rodrigo Garcia (director) explains how he built his own biblical imagination, translating it into an obscene language and images. Christ is here called “el diablo puto” (ndmg – whore devil) and is compared to a terrorist. He also shows Christ, crucified surrounded by banknotes. Burgers litter the floor of the stage, trying to parody grotesquelly the multiplication of the loaves. And then the Italian conductor Marino Formenti plays in the piano the “Seven Last Words of Christ on the Cross” by Haydn. “ Full article can be found at this link but please be aware that it is foul and disturbing! (teaandpolitics.wordpress.com is an informative, pro-Catholic blog)
Golgotha Picnic is on tour until February 2012 in several cities across France, starting in Paris and just in time for the Feast of the Nativity!
And it gets tax payer money funded by the French Culture Ministry and by prestigious associations such as the Fuoundation Pierre Bergé and the Baron Philippe de Rotschild Society, among others.
See, it is crucial that Christians from all over the world protest this unspeakable blasphemy.
Protest this before the blasphemies that take place in France spreads like a disease to other countries.
As Catholics/Christians, we have the serious obligation to protest and pray in reparation for this atrocious insult to the sacred honor of Our Lord Jesus Christ.
Besides sending your E-Protest message, Protest Now! ,to the French Ministry of Culture against GOLGOTHA PICNIC, I ask you to please offer this special prayer of reparation to the Sacred Heart of Jesus.
