You bet your ass that if a story about a giant mechanical spider terrorising a Catholic church pops up, we’ll be all over it like ants on a bloody lollipop. This is the reason this site exists.
Ottawa Archbishop Terrence Prendergast has been forced to apologise to parishioners at a local cathedral who weren’t so chuffed to see a huge robot spider on their roof of their church. The spider in question was a creation of the La Machine theatre troupe, who do installations and performances involving big mechanical puppets.
The spider, delightfully named Kumo, basically appeared on top of Notre Dame Cathedral – as it has on other cathedrals across the world – ‘climbing’ between the spires as organ music played from inside the church. It is, for want of a better word, pretty badass.
This isn’t footage of the actual event in question, but here’s Kumo fighting a big mechanical dragon. It is very cool:
Parishioners were not pleased by this. “I don’t understand how allowing a mechanical spider to stand on the cathedral is anything but disturbing, disappointing and even shameful,” wrote one on the archbishop’s Facebook wall.
Others called the spider’s placement “sacrilegious,” “demonic,” and “disrespectful” of a sacred space. None of them said “cool as all hell” which is the correct answer here.
Prendergast apologised to the scandalised congregation via a statement he issued to Canadian Catholic News:
My cathedral staff and I anticipated that some […] might object, but thought it would be minimal, as nothing demeaning was intended in the spider being near the church.
I regret that we had not sufficiently understood that others would see this event so differently. I say to those who were shocked that I understand that this would have been upsetting for them and that I regret that a well-intentioned effort to cooperate in a celebration was anything but that for them.
Again – Kumo has performed on other religious structures across Europe, so perhaps its only Canadian Catholics who are particularly humourless. Bloody political correctness these days. You can’t even let a big robot spider climb all over a cathedral without somebody getting ticked off!
Not everyone was annoyed by the display. One commenter defended Prendergast and the performance.
“While the viewer may find the juxtaposition jarring, I gather it’s supposed to be,” wrote Kris Dmytrenko on the archbishop’s Facebook.
“But sacrilegious? C’mon, give your archbishop a break. This civic engagement with art recalls the Vatican’s Courtyard of the Gentiles project. Culture is a bridge.”
Wise indeed.
