Catholic activists celebrated Palm Sunday and Holy Week with a big protest on Saturday, and ultimately vandalism! Two disgruntled Catholic protesters burst into the Museum of Contemporary Art in Avignon, France, and smashed Andres Serrano’s infamous photo "Immersion Piss Christ" with hammers! On a roll, the two damaged a second work, depicting the torso of a nun with her hands in her lap. The vandals physically threatened guards – in a Christian way and escaped.
The actions weren’t entirely surprising, as a protest against the works on Saturday drew 800 people belonging to the organization Civitas, ("for a Catholic city"), which seeks "the restoration of the social reign of Jesus Christ over civil society." But for the Catholic spin, this fun group sounds a great deal like our own political groups which refuse to separate church and state. Censorship is never far behind.
The gallery’s director tells the Irish Times he’s gotten tens of thousands of emails demanding he remove the photo—which he derides as "injunctions from the Middle Ages."
[RJ – What passes such people by, and all such people who are reading about this and applauding, is that this infamous photo is infamous because of who well it expresses what these very KIND of people have done to Christ and Christianity. Making it intolerant, ugly, course and disgusting.]