Mark Zuckerberg is having an annus horribilus.

Now, as if Facebook didn’t have enough troubles, a Roman Catholic university in Ohio is charging that the social media behemoth rejected its Easter ad last weekend because the crucifixion it depicted was “shocking, sensational and excessively violent.”

Do ya think?

Isn’t the brutal violence of being nailed to a cross naked until dead part of what Christians have been observing lo these almost two millenia? Without the awful death for the sins of man, there is no resurrection. Perhaps someone in Silicon Valley knows that.

Franciscan University in Steubenville, Ohio (“We teach those who teach the faith”) sought to post a series of ads for its online theology programs last week. One of them included an image of the Crucifixion of Christ on the San Damiano Cross.

Soon, the ad was barred and the university received the following administrative notice:

“Your image, video thumbnail or video can’t contain shocking, sensational, or excessively violent content.”

Do you think anyone at Facebook has ever entered a Christian church at some point in the past 1,970 or so years and noticed the images of Christ’s Crucifixion witnessed by hundreds of millions of worshipers over all these years?

In a subsequent Tweet, Franciscan University announced:

An ad we placed was rejected by Facebook today for content that is “shocking, sensational, and excessively violent.” We must agree with them.

The tweet linked to a blog post containing numerous Biblical verses describing the barbarity of the Crucifixion:

The San Damiano Cross. Jesus in glory, reigning from his cruciform throne. This is what the monitors at Facebook consider excessively violent, sensational, and shocking.

And indeed, the Crucifixion of Christ was all of those things. It was the most sensational action in history: man executed his God.

The university’s post on Twitter attracted numerous statements of support and descriptions of other incidents of alleged Facebook censorship of Christian images, including a woman’s hands holding a rosary. Talk about offensive!

Maybe when Zuckerberg testifies before Congress this spring someone wants to ask him how all the Russian stuff got through so easily but a single Christian image couldn’t make it past Facebook’s screens.