Remember Katrina! Protest Blasphmous Mardi Gras in New Orleans

TFP ^ | Robert E. Ritchie

[Coleus]

The devastation wrought by Hurricane Katrina is still overwhelmingly present in New Orleans today. Such an event should at least serve as a point of reflection not only about the city’s physical but also its moral devastation.

With this in mind, the American Society for the Defense of Tradition, Family and Property (TFP) through its America Needs Fatima campaign is asking members to join “Remember Katrina” – a massive crusade of protest and reparation for the terrible insults to God and His Mother, Mary Most Holy seen during Mardi Gras in New Orleans.  Many openly claim that a return to the debauchery and blasphemy seen at past Mardi Gras celebrations is part of the “recovery process” for the city. America Needs Fatima could not disagree more and is asking Catholics to protest to city authorities asking them to put a stop to the lewd and blasphemous displays that attack the honor and purity of Jesus and Mary in unspeakable ways.  The TFP effort is based on the documented accounts of what happened at the 2005 New Orleans Mardi Gras parades and revelries, some six months before Katrina.  On January 22, for example, the Krewe du Vieux, a Mardi Gras reveling group, opened the Mardi Gras season with floats and characters targeting Jesus Christ, the Blessed Mother and the Catholic Church with obscenities and blasphemy.

Just imagine this:

• A float with a Jesus-figure, his wife “JAP (Jieuxish American Princess), and
  the Mother of Jesus described as “the Virgin Bubbe, Mother of Cheesus…”
  
• Another float mocked the concept of Jesus as the Good Shepherd, showing an
  image of the Sacred Heart imprinted on a huge lamb chop. Surrounding this
  blasphemous image were signs reading: “…welcome Ewe to the Flock …He
  died for Ewe …Ewes for Jesus.”
  
• Finally, a member of the Krewe du Vieux dressed up to mock Our Lady of Prompt Succor, Patroness of Louisiana and the City of New Orleans. Written over her fake yet exposed breasts, were the words “Our Lady of Very Prompt Succor.”

Other floats are too graphic and lewd to be described.

Since the New Orleans Mardi Gras attracts revelers from the entire country, these blasphemies are a national, not just local, concern. Beginning on June 27, the American Needs Fatima director Robert E. Ritchie hopes to send tens of thousands of postcards addressed to the mayor and city council in which members register their personal objection to blasphemous anti-Catholic Mardi Gras floats. It further asks that, using existing obscenity statutes, such public displays of blasphemy and lewdness come to a halt.  In addition, Mr. Ritchie is asking members and supporters to public reparations for the public offenses committed against the Blessed Mother and her Divine Son. In addition, plans are already being made to stage an act of public reparation in New Orleans for the sins of Mardi Gras, in February 2007.  During the next Mardi Gras season, protesters will organize a walk through the French Quarter saying the Rosary and singing hymns of reparation. It will be similar to a organized rosary walk in February 2006 where nearly 100 faithful Catholics paraded through the city.

“In light of the tragedy and devastation that is so widespread in New Orleans,” Mr. Ritchie observed, “the last thing Mardi Gras revelers should be thinking about is offending God with new blasphemies.”  To register your objection and ask for a halt to such offensive floats, click here to send your e-protest..

Send your e-protest to the New Orleans City Council by clicking here.

[Pyro7480]

I'm waiting for the Catholic bashers and the "oh, God doesn't act that way" people to show up within hours.

[phoenix0468]

So, you're with Pat Robertson on the sent from God thing eh?

[JennysCool]

Protest Blasphmous Mardi Gras in New Orleans

How about putting on some zydeco and sipping a Hurricane instead?

[Extremely Extreme Extremist]

Yeah, I remember.

[SuziQ]

Oh please, these folks need to get a big dang grip!! Mardi Gras has ALWAYS been skating on the edge (and sometimes going over it) of bawdy. The French Quarter has had its homosexual bars and transvestites for at least 40 years, which is when I first realized they were there, and surely MUCH longer than that. Having Katrina wipe out the place will not remove sin from it, as long as there are human beings in the city.

That's one reason why there are so many different Mardi Gras parades in town. If families want to take their kids to one that is less rowdy, there are others in New Orleans itself, and in all the surrounding cities.

[kingu]

Must have missed the part where God got back into the revenge business. I seem to recall something about forgiveness though his Son, but it seems that others forget about it.

Look, let's remember Katrina. Let's remember the millions who were huddled in fear. Let's remember the total devastation of whole towns, not drowning rats, but good communities wiped off the map.

The hurricane was not your wrath upon New Orleans, nor was it God's. It was a devastating piece of mother nature, a natural aspect of life on God's most beautiful creation in the universe. And I think it's absolutely disgusting that you're playing the same game the MSM plays - that it's all about New Orleans. It's not. It hit a land area larger than the British Isles, of which New Orleans occupies three percent of.

[HairOfTheDog]

~Raises hand~

I second the call for "getting a dang grip"!

[narses]

+

[SuziQ]

Apply directly to the forehead!

Yeah, that's what that guy needs; a two by four, applied directly!

[bornacatholic]

The worst hurricane in U.S. history was in Galveston, Texas, in 1900. Between 8000 and 12,000 lives were lost.

*T'Heck were they doing in Galveston back in the day?

I have a better idea, use your time and money to support and build-up the local churches down there. IMO, TFP uses Katrina type scare tactics as opportunities for recuritment and fund-raisers.

The gentleman deserving of the name, Traditionalist, Romulus, might be able to give you some ideas

If he is too busy, try sending money to his Parish.

St. Pathrick's Church

724 Camp St.

New Orleans, Louisiana 70130

TEL (504) 525 - 4413

FAX (504) 568 -13224

St. Pat's hosts the Indult Mass and they have Eucharistic Adoration.

It is established Churches, like St. Patrick's, and their Masses, Sacraments, Misistries and exemplary layman like Romulus who will revivify N'Awlins whereas TFP has little to offer other than some politicking and fund-raising

[Richard Kimball]

I lived in NO for a couple of years. The only reason people go to NO is so they can do things they couldn't get away with at home. There is no reason to take a family vacation in New Orleans. New Orleans exists on alcohol, drugs and prostitution. Back in 1978, the pharmacies were all coated with bulletproof glass and had vault entrance doors.

One of the supermarkets, when I was there, had the box boys carry sidearms, and customers were strongly advised not to go to their cars unless they were escorted. On "Mother's Day" (the day the welfare checks arrived in the mail), gangs would catch people coming out from the store after having cashed their welfare checks and brought groceries, kill them, steal the food and money, and leave in the car.

New Orleans doesn't skate on the edge of bawdy, it is a hell hole. According to one cop I knew, every morning they would find anywhere from seven to fifteen wallets laying in the alley behind Bourban Street. All were most likely victims of muggings or beaten by pimps when they followed a girl up to her room.

You'll never catch me inside the city limits of New Orleans again, unless God directs me to go there. There's NO WAY I would enter that city again for love or money, much less as a form of entertainment.

[SuziQ]

I've only been there in the last 10 years because I flew in there on my way to MS. I have a niece who lives there with her husband and four girls. They live in Mid-City where the yuppies all live. They were part of the fortunate few whose homes were not damaged in Katrina, though they had to evacuate until just after Christmas.

SirKit was in college at Loyola for one semester, in 1975, and that was enough for him to know he'd never want to live and raise a family there. I used to go there for Mardi Gras every year with my aunt and her seven kids and my younger sister. We never had any trouble until the last year we went, in 1971, when I was a senior in high school. My sister and our cousin who is her age, and were Juniors in high school, were going through a crowd trying to find a bathroom, and my cousin was cut on the hand by somebody's knife. We didn't go back after that.

[Coleus]

Go Pat, Go

[Richard Kimball]

I lived there in 1978, when the police went on strike the week of Mardi Gras. The crime rate went down.

[Zuriel]

....."Suppose ye that these Galileans were sinners above all the Galileans.......Or, those eighteen, upon whom the tower in Siloam fell, and slew them, think ye that they were sinners above all men that dwell in Jerusalem? I tell you, Nay: but except ye repent, ye shall all likewise perish." Luke 13:1-5

"And should not I (the Lord) spare Nineveh, that great city,........?" Jonah 4:11

The Lord to Abraham: "I will not destroy it for ten's sake." Genesis 18:32 (must not have been ten there, though)

I become angry when thinking of immorality being promoted.
But, the Lord says through his word, "such were some of you". The Lord also says to those he has ordained, to be 'the light of the world', to: "Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works, and glorify your Father which is in heaven". Matt. 5:16

[SuziQ]

*snort*

[dangus]

Mardi Gras has always gone well beyond the line of bawdiness, this is true. The issue is that the line has moved unimaginable far! Somehow, what once was tasteless or improper became hatefully vulgar and deranged, and what was merely hedonism became an outright war against Christianity.

Clothing purposely reminiscent of strip teases and fan dances morphed into prominent displays of genitalia. Randy behavior became graphic simulation of intercourse or sodomy.

The most wild revelers of Mardi Gras 1900 would feint dead away in shock at Mardi Gras 1960, and those at Mardi Gras 1960 would do the same at Mardi Gras 2005.

I don't think that the God broke His laws of physics to send Katrina to punish New Orleans, as an act of divine intervention. I do believe that because Man tolerated all sorts of wickedness, he chose wicked and corrupt public servants, and because of their wickedness, a hurricane that was degraded to only class 3 by the time it struck, and even still largely missed, caused the destruction that a class 5 direct-hit should not have caused.

[ga medic]

If God sent Katrina to punish New Orleans, then he either made a mistake (which I think is highly unlikely), or he believed that those wild and out of control nursing home residents were causing all the problems. He spared the French Quarter, so he obviously supports what goes on there. /s