Sculpture has since been vandalized by unknown person…
Revolting Blasphemy: Austrian Cathedral Exhibits Immodest Statue of Virgin Mary Giving Natural Birth in Agony
A cropped image of the disgusting and gravely immodest ‘artwork’,
which shows the Blessed Virgin suffering through labor
In a side chapel of St. Mary’s Cathedral in the diocese of Linz, Austria, a revolting sculpture with the title Crowning depicting what is supposed to be the Blessed Virgin Mary giving birth to Jesus Christ on a rock, was installed on June 27, 2024.
This abominable ‘artwork’, which is not only blasphemous but also heretical (more on that later), has been promoted on the diocesan web site in a feature article. As the write-up has since been replaced by another one, as we explain further below in this post, we are linking here a saved a copy of the original:
- Sculpture ‘Crowning’ in [Cathedral] Art Space Shows Mary Giving Birth (archived on July 1, 2024, from dioezese-linz.at)
The ‘art space’ in the cathedral, which the title of the above-linked post is referencing, is the western side chapel that is part of the spire (Turmkapelle). The cathedral is currently celebrating the 100th anniversary of its consecration, and this ‘art’ exhibition is part of the festivities. So this is how the Vatican II Sect celebrates!
Linz cathedral is dedicated to the Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary and for that reason is known as the Mariendom (Marian cathedral). It is an absolutely gorgeous sacred edifice, in fact the largest church in Austria. It was built in a neo-Gothic style beginning in 1862, and it was completed in 1924.
Unfortunately, we must now show some images of the abominable display at the Mariendom, but we will be prudent and censor the worst of it.
The first photo, taken from the diocesan web site, shows the sculpture from behind, together with the creator, Esther Strauß (b. 1986), a feminist ‘artist’ from Vienna:
(image: Ulrich Kehrer/fair use)
Some of Strauss’s other ‘art’ can be ‘admired’ at her web site, but we do not recommend it. Some of her work depicts full nudity, and some of it is just downright bizarre or idiotic.
The second photo, also taken from the web site of the diocese of Linz, shows a close-up of the upper part of the sculpture, clearly immodest and repulsive:
(image: Ulrich Kehrer/fair use)
The third photo, which is a screenshot taken from this video, shows an angled view of the whole sculpture. It dares to show the Mother of God with her legs spread and her entire lower body exposed. For the sake of modesty, we have censored the groin area, although from this angle, there is nothing ‘to be seen’ in the original photo:
This wicked, blasphemous exhibit was to last until July 16, but an unknown courageous person has since destroyed the revolting display by sawing the head off the sculpture.
On Twitter/X, Austrian Alexander Tschugguel — of ‘Pachamama Tiber toss’ fame — reports:
https://x.com/ATschugguel/status/1807760739114918054
https://x.com/ATschugguel/status/1807854441107763319
In case the tweets won’t display, this is the text content:
After a blasphemous “artwork” was displayed at the Cathedral of Linz, #Austria, an unknown #catholic hero took care of it and destroyed it.
May God bless our Heroes!
*******
UPDATE:
The Hero responsible got in touch with me and has just told me the following: “I did it first and foremost for the Mother of God!”
So let us pray to God through the intercession of Our Lady: Protect this man, O Lord, and continue to guide him!
#catholicchurch #mary #austria #catholicresistance
In a reply to an inquiring Twitter user, Tschugguel clarified that it was not he who destroyed the scultpure in Linz.
The news of the destruction of the offensive ‘artwork’ is being reported not only on social media, however, but also by mainstream sources, such as the official Austrian public broadcaster: “It was destroyed on Monday morning in an act of vandalism”, ORF notes in a July 1 article, adding that the sculptor is vowing to repair her blasphemous trash: “The statue will be just the same as before [the vandalism],” a defiant Strauss is being quoted as saying.
An image of the beheaded sculpture has been floating around the internet. Here is a cropped version of a still shot we found in this video:
A report by the official news portal of the ‘Catholic Church’ in Germany quotes Strauss showing her feminist colors: “Whoever removed the head of the sculpture acted very brutally… [This shows] that there are still people who question women’s right to their own bodies. We must take a firm stand against this”, the anti-Catholic ‘artist’ reportedly said.
As a commentator in the German Tagespost notes in a reaction published today, Strauß’s words are noteworthy in a twofold sense:
Firstly, because talk of a woman’s right to her own body is usually used in the context of the abortion debate and not in the context of childbirth. Secondly, because the true motivation behind the project becomes clear here. It is not about the pious veneration of Mary in faith but about feminist activism, for which the Mother of God is to be hijacked.
(Sebastian Moll, “Die Kunst stinkt vom Kopf her”, Die Tagespost, July 2, 2024; translation via DeepL.)
The diocese, too, has confirmed and reported on the vandalism of the abominable sculpture. Its original feature article on the Crowning has since been replaced by one reporting on its destruction:
- Sculpture ‘Crowning’ in Cathedral Art Space Destroyed (dioezese-linz.at)
The man ultimately responsible for the blasphemous exhibit is ‘Bishop’ Manfred Scheuer (b. 1955), who was appointed to mislead the diocese of Linz by ‘Pope’ Francis in 2015. This is the same ‘Bp.’ Scheuer, by the way, who also authorizes the Holy Hydra events that profane churches in his territory on an annual basis, as we reported on June 15 last.
The vicar general of the diocese of Linz, one Johann Hintermaier, has expressed his dismay — not at the sculpture, of course, but at its willful destruction. The diocesan web site quotes him as follows:
We were aware that we would also provoke controversy with this installation. If we have hurt people’s religious feelings with this, we are sorry, but I strongly condemn this violent act of destruction and the refusal to engage in dialogue, as well as the attack on the freedom of the arts.
Someone needs to tell this ‘vicar general’ that there is no right to blaspheme, and that it’s actually not so much about hurting anybody’s ‘religious feelings’. First and foremost, it’s about offending God through blasphemy, heresy, and sacrilege/profanation.
Yes, even heresy. Beyond the blasphemy and the deliberate desire to attack the sacred, there is also at play here an implicit (but nevertheless quite real) denial of at least two dogmas: that of the Immaculate Conception and that of the Perpetual Virginity of the Mother of God.
First, regarding the Immaculate Conception: The sculpture displays the holy Virgin in agony during labor, as suffering pain from the process of giving birth. But the pain of childbirth is a punishment instituted by God for original sin, from which the Blessed Virgin Mary was exempt on account of a singular privilege miraculously bestowed upon her by God.
After the fall, God told Eve: “I will multiply thy sorrows, and thy conceptions: in sorrow shalt thou bring forth children, and thou shalt be under thy husband’s power, and he shall have dominion over thee” (Gen 3:16).
This Scripture passage is the chief source for the Catholic teaching that pain in childbirth, labor pains, are a direct consequence of original sin. However, it is precisely original sin from which the Blessed Mother was miraculously and singularly preserved, according to the Catholic dogma of the Immaculate Conception:
We declare, pronounce, and define that the doctrine which holds that the most Blessed Virgin Mary, in the first instance of her conception, by a singular grace and privilege granted by Almighty God, in view of the merits of Jesus Christ, the Savior of the human race, was preserved free from all stain of original sin, is a doctrine revealed by God and therefore to be believed firmly and constantly by all the faithful.
(Pope Pius IX, Apostolic Constitution Ineffabilis Deus)
Second, regarding the Perpetual Virginity: The sculpture depicts the Blessed Virgin as giving birth in a natural way, violating her physical integrity. Yet, it is a dogma of the Faith that the Mother of God remained a virgin before, during, and after the birth of Christ.
It should not be terribly difficult to understand or accept that just as the Incarnation of the Son of God involved a genuine miracle, so did His Birth.
In the 16th century, Pope Paul IV condemned those who dared to hold that the “most blessed Virgin Mary was not the true mother of God, and did not always persist in the integrity of virginity, namely, before bringing forth, at bringing forth, and always after bringing forth” (Ordinance Cum Quorundam; Denz. 993).
The Spanish Jesuits in their dogmatic compendium Sacrae Theologiae Summa of the 1950s explain that the dogma of the Perpetual Virginity has three elements: the virginal conception of Christ, the virginal birth of Christ, and the denial of any other conception or birth. It is the second of these three elements that is impugned by the claim that she gave birth to the Redeemer (a) in agony and (b) in a natural way.
The author of the Marian tract of the compendium, Fr. Joseph A. de Aldama, explains that the virginal birth of Christ means it took place “without detriment to bodily integrity”. Then he elaborates: “The conservation of this bodily integrity and the absence of pain in giving birth are so connected in the perpetual belief of the Church and in patristic tradition with the virginal birth that they must be retained as necessary elements of the dogma of the virginal birth” (vol. IIIA: “On the Blessed Virgin Mary”, n. 104; pp. 409-410; underlining added). In a footnote the author adds: “Hence in no way can consent be given to the recent interpretation of virginity, which wants to prescind from this bodily integrity and absence of pain in giving birth” (p. 410, fn. 1). Touché!
That the holy Virgin was preserved not only from original sin itself but also from its consequences, is taught explicitly by Pope Pius XII:
When, during the Middle Ages, scholastic theology was especially flourishing, St. Albert the Great who, to establish this teaching, had gathered together many proofs from Sacred Scripture, from the statements of older writers, and finally from the liturgy and from what is known as theological reasoning, concluded in this way: “From these proofs and authorities and from many others, it is manifest that the most blessed Mother of God has been assumed above the choirs of angels. And this we believe in every way to be true.” And, in a sermon which he delivered on the sacred day of the Blessed Virgin Mary’s annunciation, explained the words “Hail, full of grace” — words used by the angel who addressed her — the Universal Doctor [St. Thomas Aquinas], comparing the Blessed Virgin with Eve, stated clearly and incisively that she was exempted from the fourfold curse that had been laid upon Eve.
…[St. Bonaventure] considered it as entirely certain that, as God had preserved the most holy Virgin Mary from the violation of her virginal purity and integrity in conceiving and in childbirth, he would never have permitted her body to have been resolved into dust and ashes.
…
Hence the revered Mother of God, from all eternity joined in a hidden way with Jesus Christ in one and the same decree of predestination, immaculate in her conception, a most perfect virgin in her divine motherhood, the noble associate of the divine Redeemer who has won a complete triumph over sin and its consequences, finally obtained, as the supreme culmination of her privileges, that she should be preserved free from the corruption of the tomb and that, like her own Son, having overcome death, she might be taken up body and soul to the glory of heaven where, as Queen, she sits in splendor at the right hand of her Son, the immortal King of the Ages.[48] (n. 40)
(Pope Pius XII, Apostolic Constitution Munificentissimus Deus, nn. 30, 32, 40; underlining added.)
The celebrated 19th-century theologian Fr. Matthias Scheeben (1835-1888) writes in his two-volume work on Marian doctrine:
…The first and most essential element in the supernatural birth of Christ lies in the fact that He appeared from the bosom of His mother utero clauso et obsignato [from a closed and sealed womb], as He later appeared at His Resurrection ex sepulchro clauso et obsignato [from a closed and sealed tomb], which formed as it were His second bodily birth. As a second element, naturally consequent upon the first, the birth of Christ was also effected without pain to the mother, just as it took place without the violation of the bodily integrity of the mother through effractio [rupturing] or violatio claustri virginalis [violation of the virginal enclosure].
(Rev. M. J. Scheeben, Mariology, vol. 1, trans. by Rev. T. L. M. J. Geukers [St. Louis, MO: B. Herder Book Co., 1946], pp. 103-104; italics given; underlining added.)
Any questions?
Catholic moral theology tells us that the sin committed by Esther Strauss and the diocesan prelates responsible for allowing the exhibit is that of heretical (or quasi-heretical) blasphemy, specifically the kind of “blasphemy that attacks what is especially dear to God, which consists in remarks or acts derogatory to the Blessed Virgin, the Saints, the Sacraments, the crucifix, the Bible, etc.” (McHugh-Callan, Moral Theology, n. 891 b). Such blasphemy can be “expressed not only by sentences that are complete and in the indicative mood, but also by phrases or interjections, by wishes, commands, or even signs” (n. 893).
It is unclear, by the way, who actually paid for this disgusting trash. The conservative-leaning Austrian Novus Ordo news portal kath.net has contacted the diocese regarding this question, as some are conjecturing that it was possibly paid for with church donations.
That would add yet another element of malice to this scandal, but would it really be surprising? After all, we know who has been in charge of the Catholic structures for decades now: genuine adversaries of Our Lord, His Church, and His holy Mother.
“An enemy hath done this” (Mt 13:28).
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