I got an email from somebody loosely connected to the making of that Catholic Matrix poster that we talked about a few days ago. If you don’t remember it, it was an ad for the Catholic Priesthood which spoofed imagery from the Matrix movies, setting up the figure of the priest as a sort of real world Matrix warrior. Anyway, without naming names, the person who wrote to me seemed upset that I/we had criticized the poster at all, since it’s sole purpose had been to get people interested in joining the priesthood. They explained that it had become and unexpected center of controversy, and had since sold tens of thousand more copies of it than they had ever anticipated.

So I’m not really sure what the problem is, why this person would be upset over the whole thing. Isn’t the whole point of such a stunt like this to get people interested, talking and thinking about it? That to me seems to be the point. And if that’s so, then it’s obviously been an enormous success. Certainly not everyone is going to agree on the meaning or interpretation, but that’s the risk you run when you utilize pop culture language and symbols out of it’s original context to suit your own agenda. It’s nothing to be upset over really. I wonder though, how funny Warner Bros. thinks the whole thing is. Is it too close to the Matrix concept for their legal teams to stomach? In any event, I politely requested they send me a copy of the poster, but we’ll see if it works out or not.

UPDATE!

And for any persnickety Catholics who want to fight about this, check out the pope’s recent comments in this BBC article. This quote seems directly related:

He said the Church must not pander to youth, but must remain young in spirit.

I’d personally call this poster “pandering to youth”, wouldn’t you?