Not Yet Sikat

The Department of Health (via yehey) gives some tips for a healthy whipping your own flesh:

“…first check on the condition of the whip they will use before they lash their backs with it this Holy Week…

ABC News reports on Melchor Montoya’s 12th crucifixion and even has a photo of the grisly event.

The devotees’ palms and feet were attached to wooden crosses with 4-inch nails soaked in alcohol to prevent infection after a nearly mile-long walk to the mound, each carrying a wooden cross on their backs.

There’s also the story about the guy who decided to put the Passion of Christ into a videoke! This is traditionally recited or sung acapella during Lent so I guess this is a 21st century “twist” to the practice. (via Paulding)

Finally, foreigner Nancy Green has some remarks about these gory traditions:

“That the life and teachings of Jesus should get at least as much attention as his gory death. That you could express your faith by loving your neighbor, forgiving a wrong, doing good works so discretely that your left hand doesn’t know what your right hand is doing. Healing a wound instead of causing one.

As long as the Catholic Church is justifying avoidable suffering in this life as a ticket to glory in the next, they will have no good answers for the self-crucifiers.

And we Americans, who have so much, continue to enjoy violence as spectacle. Whether the blood is fake or real it’s nothing to be proud of. Low tech or high tech, we’re fixating on pain when we should be organizing to stop the bleeding.”