Word: pieta
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Dates: during 2010-2019
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...first artwork to greet the visitors to "Blasphemous" is a grotesque variation on Michelangelo's Pieta, with the Virgin Mary transformed into a malicious giant rat. Next is a multimedia piece called Resur-erection that references the Irish Catholic sex-abuse scandals of recent months and features stop-motion priests and bishops in suspicious scenarios. Another exhibit simply and bluntly declares "F___ Christmas" in baubles and fairy lights. The reaction of gallery-goers on opening day ranged from bemusement to gratitude that at least one venue in Dublin's capital was serving alcohol on the most abstinent of Irish religious...
...hoary doctrine but via our own reason, which is how Catholicism is supposed to be practiced anyway. (Yes, despite the Vatican's warnings, it's safe to try theology at home!) Because Catholicism so richly contemplates Jesus' human as well as divine nature - Michelangelo didn't sculpt the Pieta in a theological vacuum - real Catholicism promotes human reason as a door to moral understanding and spiritual redemption. The Church can be a valuable guide to that understanding, one that jerks like me can benefit from. But it's not the arbiter of that understanding...