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 the French Quarter 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, the Krewe du Vieux, the French Quarter 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 make public reparation 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 February 2006 when nearly 100 faithful Catholics walked through through the French Quarter to St. Louis Cathedral, praying the rosary.
“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.”