The priest of Saint Mark Catholic Church, Manchester, Teennessee, staged this baptism with a water pistol.
-
Saint Mark Catholic Church, Manchester Facebook
The photo of a priest targeting a child with a water pistol to baptize him has gone viral on social media in recent days.
This shot, published last May in the United States, is a humorous staging of a real priest.
In the United States, during the spring, several photos of this type were shared on social networks, some of them being real blessings with a pistol filled with holy water.
A priest - masked - playing a child and his parents with a water pistol to baptize him.
This image has since gone viral on Facebook for a few days.
She has been seen several thousand times in the past 24 hours, generating many ironic comments about the Catholic Church's new methods of bringing her flock into the house of God in times of the coronavirus epidemic.
This photo has gone viral on Facebook for a few days - screenshot
“You who think you have seen everything in life!
», Launches the author of one of these posts.
"Anything", commented many others while another notes, pragmatic, "that at least everyone respects the distances".
Another is indignant at the lack of respect for the religious fact “No, no and no!
We must not exaggerate and we do not "laugh" [not] during a baptism !!!
".
More suspicious, there are still a few who wonder about the period when this image was taken, and if it is not, in reality, a joke.
FAKE OFF
By looking more closely, thanks to the reverse image search tool of the Canadian site TinEye, we can go back to the date of the first publication of the photo on the Internet.
And this one does not date to September, but to last May.
At the time, the cliché had been re-shared and commented on thousands of times on the American community site Reddit.
By browsing the comments, we find a geographical indication that allows us to go back to an article on the American site Catholic World Report.
He explains that the water pistol is not a new technique of baptism instituted during the confinement, but a joke made by the priest, Stephen Klasek.
This pastor works in the parish of Saint Mark's, in Manchester, in Tennessee (United States).
Faced with the reactions aroused by this image, the parish split at the time of a press release on its Facebook page to clarify the context of this photo which has gone viral.
“First, the family asked him to do this pose imitating several posts of priests circulating on the Internet.
He accepted because he thought it was funny.
Second, the water in the gun is not holy water and was directed at the father of the child, not the baby for humor.
In the end, it was supposed to be fun, ”notes the parish.
A staging therefore.
Just like many others that have emerged in churches across the Atlantic since the start of the health crisis.
And with them, dozens of memes ...
if we only keep one thing from this pandemic, i hope it's priests with water pistols pic.twitter.com/2LNCjqEFtc
- beth (@bethbourdon) May 24, 2020
But if it was a joke for some, in April, Father Tim Pelc of the parish of Saint-Ambrose, near Detroit, decided to respect Easter traditions by blessing the food baskets with a jet pistol filled with Holy water.
He confided in Buzzfeed indicating that this particular use of the water pistol had the advantage of allowing the rites to be preserved while maintaining the social distancing necessary in an epidemic period.
So be it!
Society
Coronavirus: Are we "three times more likely to be contaminated in a bar", as Jean Castex said?
By the Web
Coronavirus: Indonesian newborns were fitted with a visor in June
Catholicism
Baptism
Photo
United States
Fake off
Covid 19
Coronavirus
Society