CHRISTIANOPHOBIC PERFORMANCE IN POZNAN
A BLOW INTO THE HEART
FR. PAWEŁ ROZPIĄTKOWSKI
First there was a director of the theatre who made a disgraceful comment on the election of pope Francis. Practically she did not get punished. Now Poznań is famous for another demonstration aimed against faith.
In the program of this year’s theatrical festival Malta there was an iconoclastic spectacle ‘Golgotha picnic’. It was planned for 27 June 2014 – exactly on the day of the Blessed Heart of Lord Jesus, which is more emphasized by the character of the performance aimed against faith. What is worse, the festival is a performance financed by the public means.
The protest against the openly anti-religious performance was raised by many religious and social groups. It is raised, among the others, by the Rosary Crusade for Homeland and the Catholic Youth’s Association of the Archdiocese of Poznań. ‘Vulgarism, pornography and rudeness which we face in the street every day and against which we are fighting at schools is to be ennobled to the rank of art on the stage of the theatre in Poznań’ – we read in a protesting letter of the Rosary Crusade. ‘This art violates religious feelings of the Christians, distorting the history of the Passion and Death of Jesus Christ, insulting the crucifix being a symbol of salvation for us and introducing scenes into the history of Golgotha similar to pornographic films’ – the young write.
The ‘work’ by Rodrigo Garcii has already raised protests in other European countries, among the others, in France and Spain. Outraged Catholics were coming out into streets, and it was so in Paris, who were protesting against insult against Jesus Christ, who- in the opinion of Dominique Rey – was presented in this doubtful quality of the spectacle, as a ‘crazy man, a mongrel, pyromaniac, messiah of AIDS, a man possessed by the satan and a terrorist’.
The authorities of Polish Poznań are keeping silent for the time being, that over 50 thousand signatures against the spectacle were collected. Whereas the Catholics are getting prepared to express their protest because they cannot keep silent towards breaking other borders and spreading open hostility towards everything which is Christian, that is, ours. In the letter to the president of Poznań, the representatives of the Rosary Crusade reminded that Poznań and the whole Greater Poland had been famous for hard-working and meticulousness. It also changes with the passivity of the authority. Poznań is becoming a centre in which the acts of hostility toward religion, especially Catholicism, are visible. Inhabitants of Poznań would not like such a change of the image themselves.
However, everything points to the fact that the authorities will remain deaf to the protests of the Catholics. The latter ones are not going to remain passive. They announce a prayer in the intention of iconoclasts and are picketing expressing a protest against plans of ‘depreciating what is the dearest for the heart. They hope that their definite ‘no’ towards such practices will be expressed by lots of outraged people.
(AA)
"Niedziela" 25/2014