Spat over Jesus cartoons

2006-09-14 20:40

Charlottesville - Cartoons featuring Jesus Christ that ran in a student newspaper at the University of Virginia have prompted a barrage of e-mails to the paper and varsity from people who think the comics are blasphemous.

The university and The Cavalier Daily have received more than 2 000 messages about the cartoon, primarily from people outside the university, said UVa spokesperson Carol Wood.

The Jesus cartoons, drawn by a UVa student, ran in the August 23 and 24 editions of The Cavalier Daily and featured Christ on a Cartesian Co-ordinate Plane, with the figure of Jesus crucified on X and Y axes of a mathematical graph.

Another, A Nativity Ob-scene, showed Joseph and the Virgin Mary talking about Mary's rash, with her saying: "I swear, it was immaculately transmitted!"

Blasphemous

"I strongly protest about the blasphemous cartoons published in The Cavalier Daily on August 23-24, which grossly mock Our Lord Jesus Christ and attack the immaculate purity of the Mother of God," said the form e-mail, a copy of which Slaven provided to the Richmond Times-Dispatch.

"This is deeply offensive to the Catholic Faith and to me personally."

The controversy began early this month when the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights demanded an apology from The Cavalier Daily.

The paper declined to apologise for publishing the cartoons, saying they did not violate any newspaper policy.

Free speech

Wood said the university had no editorial control over the newspaper, which received no school funding, and had to uphold freedoms of speech, expression and the press.

Kevin Simowitz, chair of UVa's Catholic Student Ministry, said the comics fell within the constitutional bounds of free speech, but were in extremely poor taste.

"Just because something is permissible doesn't make it right," he said.

On the Net:

The Cavalier Daily

- AP