Jesus & the Prom

I don't have cable to watch Comedy Central this year, but from time to time I get summaries of two favorite shows, The Daily Show and The Colbert Report, from various personal and online sources. This week Sojourners magazine/community picked up on Stephen Colbert's (satirical) response to the cancellation of prom at a Catholic high school on Long Island.

SojoMail, their free weekly email-zine of spirituality, politics, and culture, reports it this way:

While [Principal] Hoagland was disturbed by the sex, booze, and drugs that have become part of the prom weekend experience for many, he primarily denounced it for "the flaunting of affluence, assuming exaggerated expenses, a pursuit of vanity for vanity's sake - in a word, financial decadence."

Hoagland wrote the parents to inform them of the reasons for his decision. He argued, "We are concerned about how our young people are being educated in the use of wealth and the experience of power that wealth gives.... The current culture of the prom on Long Island does not represent to us a proper Christian use of wealth."

Comedian Stephen Colbert tackled the prom story on his new show The Colbert Report, a spin-off of Jon Stewart's The Daily Show.... "Yeah, I know that this is a Catholic school and Jesus said it's easier for a camel to pass through an eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven. But may I remind Brother Hoagland, our nation is rich enough to buy some really huge needles..."

Read the full story at SojoNet (requires free registration).