- Feb 5, 2002
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Just when we thought we had blessedly stamped out the cartoon, CCD “Jesus,” a newer, slicker incarnation of this caricature has seeped back into the Catholic Church in the form of "The Chosen".
My generation first met the happy, hippie “Jesus” in our 1970s and ’80s CCD classes. He was a super-nice dude, not scary or stern or particularly demanding. This was a new, enlightened era, after all, and the old paradigms would no longer do. As I’ve often described of those vacuous catechetical times, “the God presented to us was a God who hardly needs to be worshipped, since he’s our pal…” It almost seemed like we remade Christ in our own image and then began to worship ourselves.
We were told that everyone loved and wanted this new “Jesus.” But is that true? After a few years of this laughing, relatableJesus—and not the serious, mysterious, Man of Sorrows of the previous twenty centuries—the pews emptied. The cataclysmic loss of faith went on for decades, and it continues to this day. “You will know them by their fruits,” the real Jesus said (see Matthew 7:15-20), and the long-term fruit of happy, hippie, lopsidedly human “Jesus” has been utter destruction.
Just when we thought we had blessedly stamped out the cartoon, CCD “Jesus,” a newer, slicker incarnation of this caricature has seeped back into the Catholic Church in the form of The Chosen—a wildly popular TV soap opera created by Mormons and Protestants who admit that it is a fictionalized Gospel with fictionalized characters. The show has infiltrated the imaginations of countless Catholics, many of whom should know better. This time, the open promotion of relatable, bro-Jesus is not fueled by “progressive,” dissenting Catholics only, but by faithful, traditional Catholics as well.
Continued below.
crisismagazine.com
My generation first met the happy, hippie “Jesus” in our 1970s and ’80s CCD classes. He was a super-nice dude, not scary or stern or particularly demanding. This was a new, enlightened era, after all, and the old paradigms would no longer do. As I’ve often described of those vacuous catechetical times, “the God presented to us was a God who hardly needs to be worshipped, since he’s our pal…” It almost seemed like we remade Christ in our own image and then began to worship ourselves.
We were told that everyone loved and wanted this new “Jesus.” But is that true? After a few years of this laughing, relatableJesus—and not the serious, mysterious, Man of Sorrows of the previous twenty centuries—the pews emptied. The cataclysmic loss of faith went on for decades, and it continues to this day. “You will know them by their fruits,” the real Jesus said (see Matthew 7:15-20), and the long-term fruit of happy, hippie, lopsidedly human “Jesus” has been utter destruction.
Just when we thought we had blessedly stamped out the cartoon, CCD “Jesus,” a newer, slicker incarnation of this caricature has seeped back into the Catholic Church in the form of The Chosen—a wildly popular TV soap opera created by Mormons and Protestants who admit that it is a fictionalized Gospel with fictionalized characters. The show has infiltrated the imaginations of countless Catholics, many of whom should know better. This time, the open promotion of relatable, bro-Jesus is not fueled by “progressive,” dissenting Catholics only, but by faithful, traditional Catholics as well.
Continued below.
The False Christ of The Chosen
Just when we thought we had blessedly stamped out the cartoon, CCD “Jesus,” a newer, slicker incarnation of this caricature has seeped back into the Catholic Church in the form of “The Chosen”.
crisismagazine.com
