NEWS
Evansville's "Fr. Pontifex" Replies to YouTube Video
Before the Why I Hate Religion, But Love Jesus video went viral last week, an Evansville pastor saw it and knew he had to respond.
Known as "Fr. Pontifex" to his music fans, Fr. Claude "Dusty" Burns has a passion for hip-hop music and street poetry that are only matched by his passion for Christ and the Church. When the video, which soon racked up more than 15 million views, came out last Monday, Fr. Burns saw at once that its professional production quality and heart-felt emotions would make a strong impression.
"It only had about 70,000 views then," he says, "but right away I wanted to do a poetic response and I started writing. The next day I got the call from Rob."
"Rob" is Rob Kaczmark of Spirit Juice Studios (say it fast -- it sounds like "spiritus"), a Chicago design studio devoted to creating contemporary design for Catholic musicians, companies, and organizations.
Rob's response was slower. He saw the video mentioned on several web sites but didn't watch it until it became the number one video on GodTube, a website for Christian videos. "I knew GodTube has a pretty strong Catholic following, and it seemed to be promoting the video," he says. So during a break from a recording session with blogger Sr. Helen Burns, FSP, he turned it on.
"We watched it together, and we were so upset," he says. "There are a lot of anti-Catholic videos out there, but I felt more attacked in this one than I have in ages."
Rob and the Spirit Juice staff wanted to make a video response that would match the original in production quality and talent. "Right away we knew it had to come from a priest," he says, "and we only knew of two rapping priests: Fr. Pontifex and Fr. Stan [Fortuna, a Franciscan friar in New York]." And Fr. Pontifex was already hard at work. Matching the original video claim for claim, he wrote his reply all night Friday and into the morning Saturday while preparing for a full mass schedule at his parish, Holy Spirit.
Sunday, he found the perfect church for recording the video -- Queen of All Saints Basilica in Chicago. Tuesday, he left the rectory at 5 am for the five-hour drive, followed by a five-hour taping.
"All that time I was wondering if we should still do it," Rob says. "By then I had seen about five Catholic responses to the video, some with really good production quality. But then I got the lyrics, and I knew."
Street poetry, Fr. Burns says, is all about emotion. An effective video response had to hit the same emotional notes as the original. "It had to be right intellectually and spiritually, but it also had to be on the same emotional playing field," he explains. "If you look at the lyrics for the original video by themselves, they don't have the same impact. But when they're done in a dramatic and emotional way, it influences people."
That influence is a particular problem today, he says, when so many people are suspicious of institutions and moving away from organized religion. "We have to defend ourselves against spurious claims like many in the original video," he says -- for instance, that the Church builds cathedrals rather than feeds the poor, when the Church is the largest single charitable organization in the world.
Back at Spirit Juice, Rob worked all night Wednesday to finish the video, posting it on YouTube yesterday morning. It uses the same style and film shots as the original, and even the same music. Fr. Claude, he says, worked hard to try to project as much ease and confidence with his brand-new spoken word piece as Jefferson Berthke (star of the original -- who in fact attends and works for a church) showed in a piece he's worked on for months or years.
They hope the video: Jesus <3 Religion: Why I Love Religion, And Love Jesus, will get a lot of hits. Not for their own sakes, but for Christ.
"The main reason we made it is not for publicity," says Fr. Pontifex. "We just wanted it to be a video that defended our mother, the Church. We want people to kow that institutional religion is not something to be feared, not something oppressive -- it's an exciting, living organism. The Church is the extension of Jesus Christ. We are the light of Jesus Christ in the world."
