Don’t fall for old e-mail hoax

An e-mail currently circulating in the Christian community in South Africa warns about a movie called “Corpus Christi”, which portrays a gay Jesus and which is supposed to be released this month. My advice is: ignore it; it’s a hoax, and an old hoax at that. The mail has been around for years. In fact, it’s older than e-mail itself. It keeps surfacing, with just the release date of the movie changing.

Southern Cross editor Günther Simmermacher has told me of another hoax e-mail — also older than e-mail — in which an atheist called Madeline Murray O’Hare wants to cancel all manner of Christian television programmes. Trouble is, Murray O’Hare disappeared without a trace some 30 years ago or so.

The problem with these hoax e-mails is that we Christians can become our own worst enemies by perpetuating their circulation. I agree entirely with the wise Mr Simmermacher, who suggests that the best friend of Catholics in these situations is www.snopes.com which looks at urban legends and e-mail hoaxes, determining which are proven to be true, which lack evidence, and which are plain lies. It is an excellent guide in ferreting out all scams, hoaxes and urban legends. Read up on the Madeleine O’Hare hoax and the “Corpus Christi” movie.

These hoax e-mails do extensive damage because they all ultimately end up as “crying wolf” — to the point that when real outrage is required by many, there is none.

On the subject of outrage, just how should we Catholics, and the greater Christian community, respond to attacks on our beliefs, our God and our institutions? A common argument is that the news and entertainment media as well as authors rarely lampoon, criticise or belittle the Jewish or Islamic faiths because their response is both swift, hard-hitting and in some cases violent.

Why is it that we Christians just rant and rave among ourselves, yet rarely show in public our outrage or even mild annoyance? Why is it that our Christian church leaders always seem to take a long time to reflect on these attacks and then respond with what is never more than mild admonishment?

Well, there are a number of reasons. The most important is that perhaps as Christians we tend to try to follow the teaching of Christ as much as possible, most of which involves turning the other cheek.

It’s not something that’s easy to do. Certainly my 25% Irish blood tends to boil pretty quickly when the likes of author Dan Brown makes a mockery of everything I hold dear. Not to mention greedy newspapers, TV stations and movie makers who home in on something that involves Christian-bashing because they know that it will generate a lot of publicity and won’t get them into trouble. My immediate reaction is to go and toyi-toyi in front of parliament, or seek out those cretins and smack them on whatever cheek they’ll turn my way. Hardly Christian, I admit, but a natural human reaction.

I usually restrain myself from these radical and impetuous actions by reminding myself of Christ and the way he accepted crucifixion, when he could have brought all manner of horrendous retribution on everyone from Pontius Pilate to the entire Jewish and Roman nations in one swoop at the mere suggestion that he was some sort of charlatan. But he didn’t. He turned the other cheek.

I have come to the conclusion that this is not a bad strategy. As a fellow Christian wrote in a letter to a Sunday newspaper recently, the reason Christians don’t react in the same way as Jews and the many of the eastern religions is because it is not in our Christian nature. Besides, our Church has survived for more than 2000 years, and has endured far worse onslaughts than the likes of Hollywood and the news media can inflict.

Another reason is based on something my father taught me about school bullies. The best way to react to a bully, he said, was to ignore him, because what bullies want is some sort of reaction to justify their nefarious ends.

But most of all, I believe that the ploy of ignoring these attacks against us is beginning to work. The extremely prominent headline in a recent issue of the Sunday Times above an article on the Da Vinci Code sequel Angels & Demons read simply: “Flogging those Catholics again”.
The Vatican has no problem with Angels & Demons, but the headline is proof positive, I think, that even the secular media are getting tired of Catholic-bashing.