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Salt-Stain Mary and Priest Jokes: Media Returns to Normal
20 April 2005The media strikes the Catholic news while the public-interest iron is still hot, delivering these two cute, and ever-so-slightly irreverent stories to transition us from JP II praise songs to Hitler's Youth exposés: First, the Catholic priest-shortage has led to the realization of a Jay Leno joke, with the news that the work of running parishes and saying Mass will likely be outsourced to Indian priests in what's becoming a familiar historical reversal of the missionary spread of the gospel. Second, the Virgin Mary's been spotted again, this time in a yellow and white salt stain on the side of a train underpass wall in Chicago, in a pose that appears to some believers as an embrace between Mary and Pope John Paul II. The report doesn't go so far as to make the obvious "Piss Christ" reference, or raise much of an eyebrow at the types of "salt run-off" that tend to stain subway station walls, but it's probably safe to say this isn't a story that would have run last week, and may signal the nearing end of the accolade phase of this particular news cycle.
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