Absolutely stunning, amazing post over at First Thoughts on the death of Michael Jackson, or more properly, the insanity that is the popular response. Essentially, it maintains that the cult of celebrity represents a failure to preach the Gospel, and as such, people (who are drawn to worship and will worship anything) will find something to place at the center of their lives. For many people, it seems, that thing was Michael Jackson, or at least anybody famous enough. The veneration of Michael Jackson, then, is a failure of the Church to do a good job of knocking down idols; oh, we can rail and complain, but we have not done much to put anything better before the people deserving of worship, such as, I don’t know, maybe Jesus?

As with the angels, we are created as creatures of praise. We seem to be hardwired to praise something, to worship anything. Just as we will eat rotten food and filthy water if no healthy food and clean water are available, we will venerate dogs and celebrities if we see no truly worthy objects of veneration before us.

Etienne’s effort to stamp out the cult of Guinefort failed because he did not address the need of the people to venerate. Their impulse was good; it was simply directed at the wrong object and without providing a new object for veneration, Etienne was dooming the people of Sandrans to eventually drift back to their old ways.

It does the Church little good to cluck and shake our heads at the dismaying display of veneration for Michael Jackson, for in truth he is a martyr, a martyr to our culture’s true god: Celebrity. If we simply cut down Celebrity’s Asherah poles—John & Kate, Paris Hilton, Barack Obama—we leave the job half-completed, ensuring new idols will spring up in their place. If we take away rotten food and filthy water, we must replace it with healthy meat and milk. The worship of false saints, be they greyhounds or pop stars, needs to be replaced by the worship of the Lord. As the Philistines found with their idol Dagon, false idols cannot stand in the face of the one true Lord (1 Sam 5:2-5)