Outrage and the chocolate Jesus

Someone, I'm sure, has developed an offendability scale from 1 to 10. If you rate 1 or 2 you can’t be offended: you’re insensitive or a numbskull or you just don’t care. If you rate 9 or 10 you must wake up in the morning just ready to take offence: you roll over, listen to the clock radio, and there it is, you’re offended before breakfast; offence energises you and a day would seem empty without it. I think I might rate 4 or 5: I don’t want to be offended, thanks, but I’m not super-sensitive either. I think everyone, including me, deserves a bit of respect, and if you don’t get it you’re entitled to insist, but politely, with respect, because respect, like offence, tends to be a mutual thing.

We level 5’s and under just don’t get the fuss over Cosimo Cavallaro’s Sweet Jesus, a life-size sculpture of the crucified Christ made of chocolate, which has caused such a commotion in New York. Cardinal Egan is reported as saying it is “scandalous”, a “sickening display”, “an offence to faith and sensitivities”. The Catholic League says it is “one of the worst assaults on Christian sensitivities ever”, though as it only takes a few seconds to think of a whole list of worse things this can hardly be true. The gallery director, on the other hand, says it is “a meditation on Holy Week”. The artist seems to have run for cover: at least no-one is reporting anything from him.

What gives offence exactly? That the figure is chocolate? Our local baker here in Rome had a bread Jesus (and Mary and Joseph) for Christmas and no-one was offended. Is it the title “Sweet Jesus”? Pie Jesu has been an invocation through the ages. Is it the suspicion of irony? More than suspicion is required for a hanging offence, and anyway there’s plenty of highly-respected religious art suspected of irony still hanging in museums and churches round the world. Is it the nudity? Christ almost surely hung naked on the cross — it’s humiliation and torture in any age which is really shocking, not its depiction — and anyway there’s nothing really new here: Michelangelo, one of the most genuinely devout Christian artists of the Renaissance, did a nude crucified Christ in 1492 and another in 1495 and another, tender and heart-breaking, at the end of his life, and more besides. Is it the timing, just before Holy Week? There’s no better time. Is it the quality? I’ve only seen a fuzzy picture or two (have the critics seen more?) and Cavarallo’s Christ seems pretty good to me, maybe a lot better than much of the second-rate art in our churches.

Some people are saying, They wouldn’t dare show a naked Muhammad, and I’m sure they wouldn’t, but he wasn’t crucified, was he? — offensively, unjustly, shockingly, cruelly crucified. So where, exactly, is the offence?

Perhaps the artist is dumb, or insensitive, or faithless, or post-Christian, or post-modern, or exploitative; perhaps he intended to give offence, or perhaps he’s as devout as Michelangelo. He seems to be saying nothing just now, so we can’t know and should be slow to judge. I’d like to reserve my offendedness and take any opportunity, even if it’s chocolate and six feet tall, for a Holy Week meditation. If there’s real offence, I think we should insist on respect, but do so respectfully and without rushing to impugn the motives of others; but if there’s doubt, conversation is more in order than condemnation.

I read a story about some guys who lost their faith: the high hopes they had were disappointed, the religious stuff people told them seemed meaningless, their sometime commitment seemed a waste, and, like so many people we all know, they just walked away. Even though they were heading entirely in the wrong direction Jesus went along with them anyway: first he listened to them, then he explained a thing or two in a way they could actually understand, then he had a bite to eat with them in Emmaus. Sweet Jesus.