Catholic Church as The Matrix

A Matrix-style poster depicting a Catholic priest as Neo isn't a spoof. The Catholic Church really is distributing these things. It's part of their
new recruitment campaign:
The poster's creator, the Rev. Jonathan Meyer, 28, associate director of youth ministries for the Archdiocese of Indianapolis, says pop culture is the key to attracting young men to an occupation that has gotten bad press.
"If we can get high-school youth to hang a picture of a priest in their room, that's huge in helping young men to answer the call to the priesthood," the cleric said. "Anyone who is a 'Matrix' guru looks at the picture and automatically gets it."
Crucifix in hand, Father Meyer posed for the poster, rated R for "restricted to those radically in love with Jesus Christ." Running time is "all eternity," and its title reads, "The Catholic priesthood: The answer is out there ... and it's calling you."
I'm wondering how far the Neo as Catholic priest analogy can be extended. In the second Matrix movie, Neo has sex with Trinity. So how are we supposed to interpret that? In one sense it seems appropriate (priests are dedicating themselves to God, or the Holy Trinity), but in another way it doesn't seem to be the message the Church intended. (via
Notes From the Lounge)
Posted By: Alex | Date:
Mon Aug 22, 2005 |
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Total Comments: 364
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Comments
Listed in chronological order. Newest comments at the end.
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I think that former Archbishop Levada of SF was elevated to the Vatican because he been had YUM-YUM!
Posted by choco in California on Sun Aug 28, 2005 at 12:58 PM
Catholic bishops, priests, nuns, deacons and church employees have already raped over 14,000 boys & girls in the US. Seems to me that the church already knows how to recruit kids so they don’t really need a new poster to recruit anybody. I can’t find any hard numbers about those guys who been heard G_d’s calling and decided to share HIV with the children that they’ve raped. As for the talking mules, Father Meyer and Miss Scarlet, have some hay!
Posted by choco in California on Sun Aug 28, 2005 at 07:59 PM
Let's all stop on the Catholic-hating, please.
Honestly, yes, thousands of people have been raped by people working for the Catholic church, but it's not THE organization doing it, it is individuals that are doing it, just like tons of Pastors and Preachers and Reverends have probably raped people as well.
Raping and child molestation is NOT a requirement or endorsed by the Catholic church, is a mental problem that is in an individual that is in individuals of all races, nationalities, religions, and sexes.
All of your spouting of unintelligible hatespeech is just making you look stupid because you can't even form a logical argument against the Church beyond, "THEY'RE BAD!"
Posted by Dewie in Northern Illinois on Sun Aug 28, 2005 at 08:55 PM
^
The Vatican actively covers up molestation incidents.
Posted by Jorge on Mon Aug 29, 2005 at 03:43 AM
Admit it, the Vatican uses the disguise of the Knights Templar's just to run a global peadophile ring, and brainwashes all it's Freemason Brotherhood into paying any crackhead to do their dirty work in getting rid of witnesses, while their Brotherhood, clergy, judge's, lawyer's, doctor's,police officer's, banker's, the Hollywood film industry, sit playing with all the kid's, that's a fact! So where's the Godly Virtue in man? Where's the Godly moral's in man? Where's the the Living Conscience in man for his abuse's of the purity and innocence of the children of this age? The Vatican isn't a church of any godly nature i know of, that's for sure! They've turned your brain's upside down on yourselve's, and not one of you would know how to get a Hey Day if you tried!
Posted by Ka~Os on Mon Aug 29, 2005 at 03:57 AM
Hey Folks, check out this page re: Bishop coverups in the US behind priest sex abuse of children. It's never OK to sexually abuse boys, girls or vulnerable adults. The Catholic church does not need a poster to recruit boys for the priesthood, the clergy already knows how to sniff them out. No new perverted posters are needed! If talking about the sexual abuse of children and the sick ways that the Catholic church sets up kids for abuse is "bad", then lets talk.
http://www.dallasnews.com//cgi-bin/bi/dallas/2002/priests.cgi
Posted by choco in California on Mon Aug 29, 2005 at 11:08 AM
Wow. Reality check, people. Its a poster borrowing from pop culture to show an idea to young people today.
Thats all. Like most of todays pop culture references, its not a complete analogy. Its just a picture.
Also, some people apparently have a lot of anger aimed at Catholics or organized religion in general, hard to tell. In reality, the priests who molested kids were a small minority, a tiny minority of priests. It was a horrible tragedy, an abuse of power. Its been exposed and those people are being punished. In no way is that behavior typical of, and certainly not endorsed by, the Catholic church or any other Christian religion.
Its a poster. Recruiting priests, not children. Chill out!
Posted by chyca on Mon Aug 29, 2005 at 04:40 PM
What exactly does “reality check” mean? It seems to me that a few writers are trying to makes the sexual abuse of thousands of boys, girls and vulnerable adults by Catholic bishops, priests and clergy invisible. “Was” makes it seem like it’s all over. NOT! Hundreds and hundreds of victims of clergy abuse are still coming forward; the Catholic church has paid out more than 1 billion dollars to survivors, many of whom have committed suicide. It is estimated that approximately 4% of Catholic clergy are responsible for the abuse. That still totals thousands of clergy perpetrators. The majority of convicted perpetrators and accused have not been punished. Some of the perpetrators have been defrocked, others have left the ministry voluntarily, some have served time in prison, a few have committed suicide and a whole lot more are presently awaiting trial. The sexual abuse scandal is by no means over and it will never be kept a secret or made invisible by anybody again.
You would be surprised at the numbers of survivors of clergy abuse who do not hate other Catholics; they do not hate the perpetrators and most want to be able to get on with their lives again. If you want a “reality check”, check out the following daily for the next 2 weeks and you will see that this mess is by no means over:
http://www.snapnetwork.org/index.html Click on News Headlines and that will give you a glimpse into how complicated the scandal can get. Don’t deny or minimize or pretend that the sexual abuse of children and vulnerable is adults is not for real.
The other web page to check out is Voice of the Faithful:
http://www.votf-sf.org/
This is not a time to buy or dismiss a seductive poster because it is not what it seems and what some people are trying to pass off as an innocent little nothing.
Posted by choco 2 in California on Mon Aug 29, 2005 at 06:19 PM
Wow! There is a lot of hatred here. I am a personal friend of Fr. Meyer. He is one of the coolest, holiest, funniest people you will ever meet. The point of the poster was to just look cool, not imply any sort of paralells between the priesthood and the movies(except the whole cool thing). And by the way, you guys are the biggest bunch of sick, twisted, perverts ever created. You are such stereo-typing idiots it is not even funny. Are you even aware that the child molestation reate for teachers is TWICE as high as it is for clergy. I don't here any violent slams about teachers! You have obviously not done any REAL studying of the Catholic Faith. All of the made up oppinions and dogmas are a bunch of crap! I can't believe I am even taking the time to respond to your blog of crap! GEEZ!!!
Posted by G. Lorenz in Indianapolis on Tue Aug 30, 2005 at 07:08 AM
choco2 said: “Was” makes it seem like it’s all over. NOT! Hundreds and hundreds of victims of clergy abuse are still coming forward"
Yeah but the abuse has stopped. The coverup has stopped. The restitution has begun.
"approximately 4% of Catholic clergy are responsible for the abuse. "
More than 4% of average citizens have abused people. That doesnt mean we view all people as child-molsters. 1% of clergy abusing kids would not be ok. But 4% is hardly a majority or even a fair representation.
:Don’t deny or minimize or pretend that the sexual abuse of children and vulnerable is adults is not for real. "
I dont believe I ever denied, minimized, or pretended. Its real, its sick, its heartbreaking - especially coming from people in a church that follows God when God expressly forbids abuse of children (or anyone else, minorities, women, etc). When Jesus was on earth he blessed children and healed them and its awful that some of his followers cant do the same. But just because some people who claimed to follow God were instead abusing kids does not mean all people who claim to follow God are child molesters.
"This is not a time to buy or dismiss a seductive poster"
Why is this poster seductive? Its about the movie the Matrix, a sort of metaphysical martial arts movie. Not a movie about sex. And once again the poster is aimed men - high school and college age - to become priests. Not children to serve as altar boys. The church needs young men with a heart to serve and impact the world around them for good and hopefully undo some of the damage that their leaders now have done. There are lots of people out there who want to make a positive impact on the world and this poster helps point out one way they can do so. Perhaps as many as 4% of priests have molested someone. The vast majority, the 96% are serving their people and their God.
Posted by chyca on Tue Aug 30, 2005 at 08:00 AM
Posted by choco3 in California on Tue Aug 30, 2005 at 10:11 AM
I would not be surprised if the real person that posed for the pin-up is none other than G. Lorenz, boyfriend to Father Meyer Fess up boys! Are you two an item?
Posted by choc4 on Tue Aug 30, 2005 at 10:42 AM
We of the Conscious Collective do not need to see what priest's have done to other's, we know the truth!
Posted by Ka~Os on Tue Aug 30, 2005 at 11:17 AM
Yes, and the truth hurts! So be it....
Posted by choco8 in California on Tue Aug 30, 2005 at 01:27 PM
Lorenz, have you heard about David & Jonathan? Well I think the poster is about Little boy and Jonathan! Pervert.
Posted by sygle on Tue Aug 30, 2005 at 07:09 PM
Hello,
I know the priest in this poster. In fact I know him quite well. He is an excellent priest and his whole plow with this poster was that he thought it would be something to get high school boys to step back and discern if they are called to the priesthood. He was simply taking a pagan thing and turning into a holy thing. The Church has been doing this forever. Take for example December 25th, it was the pagan holiday for their sun god. So Catholics use it for the celebration of Christ's birth. Taking something pagan and making it holy.
Also some information for all of the childish remarks about molestation in the priesthood. less than 2% of all priests were charged with sexual abuse cases (you could find that in any job, especially in the United States.) Interestingly enough, of that less than 2%, 95% were homosexual priests who had never dealt with their problem of being a homosexual. And, to think that some people are out their campaigning for "gay rights" when we can clearly see that effects of the psychological disorder of having homosexual tendancies.
Thank you for reading this and understanding. May God bless you and I'll pray for you.
Posted by Adam in Indiana on Wed Aug 31, 2005 at 12:54 PM
What do you mean by "pagan"? What people are pagans? How have you come to believe what pagan's do is unholy"? Racist? I don't know? Splain it pleeeeze.
Posted by choco on Wed Aug 31, 2005 at 02:42 PM
Posted by choco on Wed Aug 31, 2005 at 03:10 PM
adam said:
"Also some information for all of the childish remarks about molestation in the priesthood. less than 2% of all priests were charged with sexual abuse cases (you could find that in any job, especially in the United States.) Interestingly enough, of that less than 2%, 95% were homosexual priests who had never dealt with their problem of being a homosexual. And, to think that some people are out their campaigning for "gay rights" when we can clearly see that effects of the psychological disorder of having homosexual tendancies."
This is what happenes when statistics fall into the hands of those who don't understand them.
Let's see, 95% of 2% of priests were homosexual pederasts (if we assume your stats are accurate, that is) and that somehow "proves" something about the population at large? Um, just for starters, what percent of the public do priests represent? Less than 1%, right? Are you now beginning to see how small your "sample" is (and, of course, as mentioned, that assumes that your stats are accurate in the first place).
Unfortunately for your theory, the fact is that, in society at large, the majority of people involved in sexually molesting a minor are heterosexual men. The typical scenario is a father who molests his daughter, an uncle who molests a niece or a family friend molesting one of the children.
Even if your stats are accurate, they aren't taken from a small subset of society, so they prove exactly NOTHING about the general population. Nice try at gay bashing, though.
Posted by Cranky Media Guy on Wed Aug 31, 2005 at 03:57 PM
Sorry mate, the father of my children was amongst over 20 children in a Catholic Church choir for over 6 year's, and was abused by several priest's, along with the other choir boy's, and he has abused his own children for many year's as a consiquence of the abuse he suffered, and i also have evidance against him of child sexual abuse, yet, despite having undoubtable evidance against him from his children on video and audio, the UK Police, and Social Care and Health, ignore any evidance whatsoever. So your pathetic 2 percent is utter reverse psychology, that's what the whole of the Vatican Illuminati do, turn your brain's upside down over the word Pesdestary, from it's origin 'Loverboy' from the Book of Revelation 22; the spirit and the bride, which mean's the physical female gender, and the spiritual male of the female, which mean's Tomboy, NOT F*CK ALL THE KID'S! So where's you're intellect? Up you're colon? Didn't anyone ever tell you that the action to shit, begin's from the solar plexus to the brain before the colon disperse's your crap, not where were Vatican half brained priest's fudge packing the nation's children, completely brainwashed by the Vatican's incompetancy in interpretation's of Scripture's, when all you get is cancer, alhzeimer's, parkinson's, and brain degrade, because you lie to your soul's from first day you're initiated. What's a matter with you? Too scared to know the truth about yourselve's LADDIE'S!
Posted by Ka~Os on Wed Aug 31, 2005 at 04:36 PM
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