To: His Excellency Dr. Manfred Scheuer, Bishop of Linz.
To: the Reverend Fr. Maximilian Strasser, Dean of the Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception in Linz.
To: the Reverend Fr. Johann Hintermaier, Episcopal Vicar for Education, Art and Culture.
With a heart torn by grief, incomprehension and zeal for the good name of the Mother of God, we protest in the strongest possible terms against the dishonoring of our heavenly Mother on the very centenary of the consecration of St. Mary's Cathedral, the largest cathedral in Austria, which was built to commemorate the proclamation of the dogma of the Immaculate Conception.
As part of the DonnaStage project on the theme of “Women’s roles, family images and gender equality,” the cathedral exhibited a sculpture of a woman with ordinary facial features sitting on a stone and showing her intimate body parts in the midst of childbirth.
The “artist” wanted to depict the “Mother of God at the birth of Jesus” with her sculpture.
This depiction is blasphemous because it contradicts the Catholic faith. In fact, our Lord Jesus Christ, true God and true Man was conceived and born miraculously and in a completely different way from ordinary mortals, and not in a "natural" way, as Martina Resch, co-initiator of the project, claims. It is not only a dogma of the Catholic faith that the Mother of God was a virgin before, during and after childbirth (First Lateran Council), but also that she was freed from the pains that accompany childbirth.
Read what one of the most important Church Fathers, Saint Gregory of Nyssa (brother of Saint Basil the Great), wrote about this:
“Appearing as a man, He is not subject in all things to the laws of human nature; indeed, what is born of woman holds to humanity, while the Virginity that gives birth to Him shows that He is above man. So, His Mother bears Him with joy, His origin is immaculate, His childbirth easy, His Birth undefiled; He does not begin with heartbreak, He does not emerge from pain. She [Eve] who by her fault attached death to our nature having been condemned to give birth in pain, the Mother of life had to give birth with joy.” (In Cat. graec. Patr.)
Based on this truth, the sensus fidei (sense of faith) of Catholics is violently shaken by this blasphemous representation, as is the devotion they have for Our Lady. This devotion is fed with delicacy and good taste to the traditional representations of the Nativity. The worst kind of vandalism is to destroy faith and the feeling of faith in the souls of the common people and the little ones.
This blasphemous depiction also shocks the sense of dignity of all honest people, including non-Catholics, who would never agree to their mothers being photographed at the moment of birth or later represented in sculptures. Let us recall that Gustave Courbet's scandalous painting The Origin of the World, with a similar depiction, was exhibited for 130 years only in narrow circles of perverted art amateurs until it was acquired by the French state. Its reproduction was even censored by Facebook to comply with internal pornography control rules.
The justification put forward by the initiators of the project and the sculptor of the work is as reprehensible as the depiction, as it calls for a battle between the sexes in a radical feminist way. According to the initiators, the traditional nativity scenes in the cathedral served "as a model for traditional roles" in the family, and they see DonnaStage as a means of critically questioning and reformulating these traditional ideas. "Most portraits of the Virgin Mary were made by men and therefore often served patriarchal interests," said the sculptor. Not surprisingly, the artist who created the blasphemous depiction stated, in reference to the damage to the sculpture, that "there are still people who question women's right to their own bodies," echoing the well-known slogan of feminist abortion advocates.
As Catholics, we demand from the authorities of the Diocese of Linz involved in the exhibition a public apology for the insult to our Lord Jesus Christ, the Mother of God, the faithful and humanity, as well as a public act of reparation appropriate to the insult committed.
In the absence of such reparation, we fear that those responsible for the Diocese of Linz will incur the wrath of heaven, which is expressed in the biblical warning: “A father’s blessing strengthens the roots, but a mother’s curse uproots the cutting” (Sirach 3:9).
Sincerely,
