Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence, honored community 'heros' of The Dodgers, eat your hearts out.

Check out what the Vatican has cooked up to scandalize the faithful.

According to ARTNews:

Almost six decades ago Paul VI, then pope, organized a meeting of artists in the Sistine Chapel, an attempt to help usher the Vatican’s vast collection of art into the modern age. Last week Paul VI’s successor, Pope Francis, celebrated 50 years of the Vatican Museum’s expansion into modern and contemporary art with a similar assembly in the same place—and the guest list might have made prior popes wince.

“I was very surprised to be invited,” artist Andres Serrano told the New York Times. In 1987 Serrano debuted the photograph Piss Christ, depicting a plastic crucifix against a red background floating in a vat of urine. Conservatives and religious organizations lambasted Serrano for presumed blasphemy. But many years have passed since then, and the Church has broadened its patronage of all types of art, including the controversial. In fact, Pope Frances even blessed Serrano and gave him a “cheery thumbs up,” which the artist said surprised him even more than the invitation. 

No, I can't unread that.

That was the disgusting, repulsive "artwork" by modern artist Andres Serrano whose mission seems to be to épater le bourgeois in order to demonstrate to tout le monde how hip and with-it he is. His "art" is not about producing the kind of art that takes actual work, the way, say, Caravaggio, or even Picasso, once were able to do. It's more about making big dollars by insulting the Catholic Church and watching the society ladies sip their cocktails to it at the gallery exhibition over it.

Blech.

According to Wikipedia, here's who this guy is:

His exhibitions have often inspired angry reactions. On October 5, 2007, his group of photographs called The History of Sex were on display and several were vandalized at an art gallery in Lund, Sweden by people who were believed to be part of a neo-Nazi group.^[7] On April 16, 2011, after two weeks of protests and a campaign of hate mail and abusive phone calls to an art gallery displaying his work, orchestrated by groups of French Catholic fundamentalists, approximately a thousand people marched through the streets of Avignon, to protest outside the gallery. On April 17, 2011, two of his works, Piss Christ and The Church, were vandalized. The gallery director plans to reopen the museum with the damaged works on show "so people can see what barbarians can do".^[8]

Serrano usually makes large prints of about 20 by 30 inches (51 by 76 cm). He has shot an array of subject matter including portraits of Klansmen, morgue photos, and pictures of burn victims. He went into the New York City Subway with lights and photographic background paper to portray the bedraggled homeless, as well as producing some rather tender but sometimes decidedly kinky portraits of couples. One of these last shows what Adrian Searle of The Guardian described as "a young couple, she with a strap-on dildo, he with a mildly expectant expression."^[9]

Many of Serrano's pictures involve bodily fluids in some way—depicting, for example, blood (sometimes menstrual blood), semen (for example, Blood and Semen II (1990)) or human breast milk. Within this series are a number of works in which objects are submerged in bodily fluids. Among these is Piss Christ (1987), a photograph of a plastic crucifix submerged in a glass of the artist's own urine, which caused great controversy when first exhibited. The work was sold for $277,000 in 1999,^[10] which was far beyond the estimated $20,000 – $30,000. Serrano, alongside other artists such as Robert Mapplethorpe, Barbara Degenevieve, and Merry Alpern, became a figure whom Senator Jesse Helms, and Senator Alphonse D'Amato, as well as other cultural conservatives, attacked for producing offensive art while others, including The New York Times,^[11] defended him in the name of artistic freedom. (See the American "culture wars" of the 1990s).^[12]

Had enough? He's a regular emperor's new clothes artist, telling us his repulsive junk amalgamations are nothing but the sublimest of art, pure Michelangelo greatness, but visible to only the most artistically refined of cognoscenti. Everyone else who can't see that sublime vision of his, of course, is a philistine.

Yeah, sure.

Of all the artists out there, why did the pope pick this guy? There are a thousands of good artists out there who would have been finer candidates for this honor, both as good modern artists, and as bearers of just minimal Vatican values in art. At a minimum, they could have at least picked an artist whose art that doesn't make its key focal point the insulting of the Christian faithful.

Unfortunately, this crap is more about following the avant-garde herd.

Here's Serrano's lovely famous oeuvre in all its glory:

Wikipedia // Fair Use

Serrano of course insists he's a "Christian" artist and just wanted to criticize commercialism in religious art. He offered other explanations at other times, which kind of tells you he was making it up as he went along. Dollars to donuts he swims in an anti-Christian cesspool of ideas that is the current establishment, particularly in the arts, where he fits right in and helps lower the bar for others, and hasn't been to Catholic Mass in years. Color me skeptical, because this kind of mockery downright passé now. It is the bourgeoisie.

And nothing is sacred, at least not to the Vatican poohbahs who came up with this bad idea

If the Vatican wanted to be really radical and out there, it could have invited a Christian artist instead for the modern art ceremony. But that's too much to ask.

Here's another one they invited whom they should have kept hands off -- the anti-Christian Brazilian guru of Tropicana music, Caetano Veloso:

O.K., his music isn't repellent. We can give him that.

But he's got some values issues. Here's his Wikipedia:

Veloso married fellow Baiana and actress Andrea Gadelha (or Dedé) on November 21, 1967, in a ceremony that reflected the air of the counterculture era. Their son Moreno was born on November 22, 1972. On January 7, 1979, their daughter Júlia was born 3 months premature; she died 11 days later.^[24] Veloso's father died on December 13, 1983. Veloso separated from Dedé Veloso in 1983. In 1986 Veloso married Rio native Paula Lavigne, with whom he had two more sons, Zeca Lavigne Veloso, born March 7, 1992, and Tom Lavigne Veloso, born on January 25, 1997, in Salvador. Paula confirmed to Playboy magazine in 1998 that, "[Paula] was 13 years old when she lost her virginity to the musician, who was 40 years old at the time."^[25] Caetano has since been accused of pedophilia.^[25] This marriage lasted twenty years. Although separated since 2004, the two still work together. Veloso's 1989 CD Estrangeiro includes songs ("Esse Amor, which means "This Love", and "Branquinha") inspired by and dedicated to, respectively, his ex-wife Dedé and his wife at the time, Paula Lavigne.^{[26][27][28][29]}

Veloso is one of the few public atheist celebrities in Brazil. He was brought up in a religious Catholic family but left the faith early on. In an interview Veloso stated that he did not like to "lie to his own intelligence" by believing in God.^[30] In a separate interview Veloso generated controversy when he said that Brazil would be better off if most people in the country were to become irreligious or atheist.^[31] Despite this, two of Veloso's sons have become members of the neo-Pentecostal Universal Church of the Kingdom of God, with Veloso attending his children's baptism, stating that "what is good for them is good for me."^[30]

In 2022 Veloso talked about his bisexuality in a show commemorating his 80th birthday.^[32]

A guy who does the thirteen-year-olds? Maybe they should have sat that guy out, too.

This fascination with the profaners of Christianity is never a good thing and probably does explain why we've been seeing creepy, weird stuff from the Vatican in recent years in its Nativity scenes among other things. I know they're trying to biggen their tent, to be more inclusive, to invite people in who haven't been invited in in the past. But they're nurturing vipers, haters, those who would do all they could to eradicate Catholicism were they ever given a drop of power. They're Joe Bidens claiming to be Catholics while doing their darndest to persecute Catholics and Christians from following their consciences.

What's wrong with this picture?

Image: Wikipedia // fair use