How poignant. A Catholic priest in Poland put up that giant statue of Jesus but it didn’t do any good. People in Poland are still wandering away from the church.
Just past the Polish border, passengers traveling by train from Berlin to Warsaw can see Jesus. He is 36-meters (118 feet) tall, made of concrete, and towers over the surrounding fields near the town of Swiebodzin, a gilded crown perched nobly on his head. His gaze is directed over the Recaro plant, which makes car seats…
Well that could be your problem right there. Maybe his gaze should be directed over a plant which makes bicycle seats, or zippers, or napkin rings.
The plaque at the base of the giant religious statue says that Jesus Christ is the true king of Poland and will rule for eternity. It is not for nothing that the country is, in the eyes of the church at least, Europe’s most Catholic nation.
Yet despite the monumental redeemer, Swiebodzin has not become a pilgrimage site. “The statue has not triggered a tourism boom yet,” confirms Waldemar Roszczuk, editor-in-chief of the city’s newspaper and publisher of a regional Internet publication.
I’m telling you, it’s that car seat plant. Thinking more broadly here, maybe Jesus’s gaze should be directed over something that’s not a plant at all, but something more attractive to tourists – an insurance office, a shopping mall, a meadow full of wild flowers.
After joining the European Union, Poland turned to the West and embraced the Western lifestyle more than almost any other country. Nowadays, Polish women dream of careers, self-fulfillment and children. Hundreds of thousands of young Poles live together without being married. In booming cities like Warsaw and Poznan, gays and lesbians live their lives as openly as in Berlin or Madrid.
“More and more taboos are falling by the wayside. But the church reacts by hardening its positions even further,” says Barto.
And putting its giant statues of Jesus next to plants that make car seats.
I read “napkin rings” as “nipple rings”. I think that sort of coloured my reading of the rest of the post because I was too busy thinking, “There are dedicated factories for nipple rings in Poland?”
Is it any surprise women would walk away? “Domestic abuse” had long been rampant in Poland, and the catholic religion used to justify it, much religion was used to cover up crimes in Ireland. After the fall of communism, the topic became public instead of being hushed up.
http://www.nytimes.com/1998/05/08/world/dark-underside-of-polish-family-life-violence.html?pagewanted=all&src=pm
“Domestic abuse”…what a disgusting euphemism, used to minimize the crime of assault.
We built a 36m Jesus; what more can we do? I guess nothing will work.
I’m sure the RCC was thriving in Poland before that, what with communism and all.
Look the statue is big but not big enough for that type of magic to work. If you want magic aura’s to work, you need to get another 3 meters. (being less regressive would help too)
I tried to find a picture of it, but all I could find were pictures of a hill, with some hideous plastic trinket Photoshopped over it.
I think the pictures of the statue’s construction symbollically convey nicely how we create our gods and decide to worship them.
It’s all human-made.
“Where do you want to go for vacation?”
“I don’t really care, as long as there’s a good insurance officer near by.”
</snark>
Recaro is a BIG name in high end sports car seats, folks. Porscehe, BMW, Audi sports cars all feature Recaro seats. I won’t have the Holy Name of Recarro disparaged here by you non-believers!
I’m thinking He will need those blinky lights to warn aircraft away.
After joining the European Union, Poland turned to the West and embraced the Western lifestyle more than almost any other country.
It seems like, when a strongly Catholic society goes secular, it does so with a vengeance. Witness Quebec, which was oppressively Catholic within living memory, and now has (or so I’ve read) the highest rate of common-law relationships in North America, and a lot of nice old empty churches. The younger generation just completely kicks over the traces.
No, Brian M, I’m sorry to disagree, but car seats are just not big enough. Now, toilet seats, now there you’re talking. Not everybody uses car seats, but everybody uses toilet seats (or would do if they could get at them.) After all, God invented shit, didn’t he, just so that we could all experience relief from suffering and gratitude to our Maker for making relief-from-suffering possible. Surely, this would be a most worthy focus for all pilgrims!
“Come unto me, all ye that travail and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest-rooms”. They really should have oriented the statue correctly and written this text on the plinth. I mean, it’s in the scriptures, for heaven’s sake! No wonder there are no pilgrims! God must be very displeased!! People are just so ungrateful.
What Poland needs is a creation museum.
Actually, I am more inclined to worship a savior who gazes at napkin rings. Also onion rings.
Am I the only one imagining some overweight cleric blinking in confusion and scratching his head, trying to understand?
way to ruin a perfectly picturesque area.
well, that’s probably a pretty accurate assessment. The only competition for that spot are Ireland and Italy, and at the former has been shaken in its religious foundation by the scandals.
nowadays?
That’s crap. The RCC has more influence on people’s lives now than it did during Communism. My mom studied physics and engineering in the… *counts*… 70’s, and it wasn’t weird. She had a career and two children and was unmarried, and was able to access IUDs and other forms of birth control without problems, and none of that was weird, either. There’s more problems with those things now than there used to be back then (especially with the BC part, since IIRC, IUDs are illegal in Poland now), and the church is simply whining because maybe they’ve reached the limit of how much influence young Poles will let the church have over their lives. Certainly very few young women will want a world in which they’re able to do less with their lives than their mothers could.
Our Concrete Lord is probably ruminating on the problem of His own comfort. He is going to have to stand there, ruling, for all eternity.
It would not surprise me if He is wondering whether Recaro could knock Him up a comfortable throne while they are at it. Something modest of course: more earthly than heavenly.
Then, on a day to be announced, He could step down off His pedestal in the manner of the statue in that memorable scene in Mozart’s ‘Don Giovanni’ and take His seat on the Recaro throne.
If that did not draw the tourists, nothing would.
It would probably help Recaro’s sales as well.
Witness Quebec, which was oppressively Catholic within living memory, and now has (or so I’ve read) the highest rate of common-law relationships in North America, and a lot of nice old empty churches. The younger generation just completely kicks over the traces.
That’s very true, however the end point of that process won’t be secularism.
Islam now has a very high profile here; in fact, it’s the only religion with a high public profile, and quite a number of the children born to those who left the Catholic church, children with NO religious background, are becoming Muslims.
The catholic schools systeme was also disbanded and all Christian religious symbols were banned.
However, in many of these schools female Muslim teachers are allowed to wear the hijab, and in more and more cafeterias of these same religiously-neutral schools the menus are being certified halal.
In heavily immigrant neighbourhoods it’s not uncommon to see a third of the girls in these religiously neutral schools wearing hijabs, and of course many broad-minded francophone secularists see religious accomodations such as “prayer rooms” as no big deal.
Yes, witness Québec.
I have.