Encyclical 'Dominus Ludus'

(a one-act by Bob Zolnerzak)

"Dominus Ludus" may be loosely translated as "Lewd Lord," another name for the reprehensible "Lord of the Dance" now appearing at the Radium Civitas Musicum, known to New Yorkers as Radio City Music Hall. I, your Pope, speaking infallibly, ex cathedra, prohibit Catholics from attending this lewd debasement of the body, spirit, and very soul.

Aside from the obvious hubris of stealing the holy title of "Lord" from The Christ, Michael Flatley has appointed himself to degrade two millenia of Irish dance from a celebration of the control we must all have over the unruly casements of our corporeal flesh, to a series of lascivious posturings in black leather, obscured by clouds of smoke and fire, so clearly traducing our sacred ideology of the torments of Gehenna: Hell itself!

This Anti-Lord---nay, this Anti-Christ---has explicitly stated in his cheapening appearance on Public Television that he wants his audience, and I quote, "To be drawn from every age, culture, and religion." Not only does he want to stain the souls of consenting adults, he wants parents to drag in their children, he wants the Irish to persuade neighbors who may not be of the One Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church---he wants to demean all these people, getting, as he so baldly puts it, "as wide an audience as possible" for his evil plotting.

Who can deny the evil of his plotting? He has gone back to what he calls "the Celtic myths," those cesspools of pagan glorifications of fornication and aberrant sexuality, to get his narrative line, yet he denies in his very speech, degrading the audience because he---and I quote his very words---"Doesn't want the audience to have to think too much; there are no hidden messages." No, my people, he doesn't want you to think at all: his message is perfectly clear: revel in the sinuosity of the naked human body, pit woman against woman in the battle of the red dress---the symbol of Jezebel---against the white dress, which he then pulls off to reveal black underwear, showing a bare midriff and the naked tops of the thighs, showing the very forms of those sacred breasts which have nursed all of us in our infancy. Both women writhe in lust for the black leather-clad body of the so-called "Lord of the Dance."

And then Michael Flatley, who, nearing the age of 40, should know better, takes off his shirt to reveal a torso wet with unholy sweat, luring the television cameras in to take a close-up of his middle region! He isn't dancing with his middle region! Why should the camera zoom in on his middle region? Because his message of one of lust, Godlessness, and bestial fornication. His opponents wear black masks, looking more like animals than humankind, stressing their impersonality and sexual potency. And who can deny the unexpressed homosexuality involved in their rival dancing? Showing off their bodies to each other and staring into each other's eyes with the laughable excuse of competing for the attentions of the women, who at this point have actually left the stage!

And what a stage this is! Enormously broad, with the flies lowering phallic hanging pendants that collapse to the floor at the musics' climaxes! The symbolism is so obvious that it is beneath contempt. The orchestra plays so loudly that it muffles any thoughts of temperance, and at the ends of each number the audience screams with animal lust, and the Demon Flatley urges them on with shouts of "Yes, Yes!" Can it be denied that he yearns them to succumb to their lust?

The holy dance of Ireland had been so pure: hold your arms to your sides to show control, wear your family's tartans to show love of country, let the music be moderate for moderate dancing! Here the arms are flung in derision to heaven and in supplication to Hell; the tartans are replaced by the uniforms of the Eurotrash: black leathers and see-through fabrics of gaudy colors. Not a plaid in the lot!

Can you imagine Our Lord, Our Christ, flinging his legs to heaven, showing leather pants under his simple white robes? Can you imagine Our Mother Mary baring her bosom to the plaudits of the multitudes? Can you imagine the heavenly choirs being replaced by synthesizers and electronic music machines?

Do not be sucked in by this gaping gate to the Inferno below! Resist the blandishments of your non-Catholic friends to attend this orgy of sexuality and sensuousness. Invite them to Church, or hark back to the glorious past by celebrating with a lovely fish dinner on Friday evenings.