A charitable organization in Akron, Ohio is spending 1000 dollars to ship 250 homeless people to a screening of “The Passion of the Christ” this weekend. Unfortunately for the homeless, they will be forced to purchase their own “Sno-Caps.” Give a man a fish…

As a New Yorker, I can tell you that the homeless and movie theaters are an uneasy combo. On screen, Christ will be dying for their sins, which they will repay with some very loud snoring or constant spreading out of plastic bags over several seats.

Could this money perhaps be better spent? “Here’s 8 bucks, my homeless friend. You can use this to find a room at a shelter for an evening, or maybe you’d like to spend 3 hours watching a slightly-more religious version of a ‘Friday the 13th’ slasher flick, where Jason has lowered his hockey mask to reveal some telltale Semitic features.”

We are obviously in the grip of “The Passion of The Christ” fever. This morning on the Today Show, Martha Stewart’s brother compared her trial with Christ’s trials in the film. Especially during that scene where Jesus meets with the apostle shareholders to see about taking his name off the religion.

Right now, there’s even an on-line petition,
www.thepetitionsite.com/take action/765533849,
which beseeches Attorney General John Ashcroft to examine the possible anti-Semitic intents of the filmmakers. He’ll get right on that, I’m sure, although he may have to excuse himself because of a “personal relationship with God.” Either that, or his stigmata might flare up again.

Personally, I won’t see movies that star Jesus. He does a lot of things well, but starring in movies isn’t one of them. This all stems from one April 12th, 1980. It was my 13th birthday and I was living in my home town of New Paltz, NY. You’ve probably never heard of it. Sleepy little place, never makes the news.

Anyhoo, my parents thought I was grown up enough to have a birthday night, sans parents, with my friends. This meant eating at a diner, going to the “Casino Royale” arcade (and yes, it really had a feeling of Monaco! I often wore a white tuxedo jacket while in there. A “Members Only” white tux jacket) and then catching a movie in the one theater in town. It’s still there, except they managed to chop it up into a dozen different screens.

And you could imagine my heartbreak that Friday morning when, as our schoolbus drove by, I looked up at the marquee of the theater and saw that the new movie that had opened was a “docudrama” called, “In Search of Historic Jesus.” You can find it on IMDB. Five writers are credited. I might need some brushing up on my Bible, but I don’t think the Gospels needed that many scribes.

We did not go see it. My birthday evening was cut short. I turned my back on the Lord.