Cardinal wants to change Church's moral teaching
Munich Archbishop Cardinal Reinhard Marx has called for a debate on the Church's sexual morality. In the past, theology, preaching and pastoral care often painted a negative picture of human sexuality: "It was associated with guilt and sin, which also led to repression and double standards," Marx said on Bavarian radio on Saturday. In the process, he said, we have lost sight of the fact that the Christian image of man also wants to open up positive perspectives for sexuality.
The reappraisal of sexual abuse in the Catholic Church has shown "that there is a basic problem in the relationship between church and sexuality", the archbishop said. "Passion, lust and sex against reason, love and morality? It sometimes sounds a bit like there is either a sinful, drive-driven and unreasonable life or the ideal of pure love." But that has little to do with reality. The Freising Diocesan Museum is taking up this theme from Saturday in a new exhibition entitled "Damned Desire - Church.Body.Art".
The full text from the Cardinal
Damned Desire! On the necessary discourse on sexuality
Lust and sex versus love and morality? Sometimes it sounds - also in the church context - as if there is only sin or only love. But these two extremes have little to do with reality, finds Cardinal Reinhard Marx.
Passion, lust and sex against reason, love and morality? It sometimes sounds a bit as if there is either a sinful, drive-driven and unreasonable life or the ideal of pure love. We see that in the church context too. But these two exaggerated extremes have little to do with reality. It is true: in theology, preaching and pastoral practice, a negative picture of human sexuality has often been drawn in the past, it has been weighted down with guilt and sin, which has also led to repression and double standards.
The perception and processing of sexual abuse in the Catholic Church has also shown that there is a basic problem in the relationship between church and sexuality, which quite rightly plays an important role in the deliberations of the Synodal Way from a systemic perspective.
Discourse on Catholic sexuality teaching is necessary
The topic of the human being and sexuality is as timeless as it is topical. It reaches into the deepest grounds of the Judeo-Christian tradition and decisively shapes Christian anthropology to this day. A discourse on Catholic sexual teachings is therefore necessary. That is why the Museum of the Archdiocese of Munich and Freising is also taking up this broad topic in a current exhibition with the perhaps provocative title: "Damned Desire! Church. Body. Art."
Exhibition without ready answers
Already in the preparation of the exhibition, it became clear that even in art history there have been few insights into the extent to which the Church's sexual teachings have influenced artists in their works through the centuries. The exhibition therefore follows this trail by means of striking and outstanding works of European art history. The works of art show themselves to be astonishingly courageous, multi-faceted and ambiguous. They often move rather superficially in the well-ordered paths of the moral concepts valid at their time. They are thus very close to the reality of people's lives, in which physicality and sexuality ultimately elude any regulation and standardisation by society and the church. The exhibition at our diocesan museum does not provide any ready-made answers, but aims to stimulate questioning and to reveal new perspectives. Art can and should also challenge theology, pastoral care and the teaching of the Church.
The Church's teaching, often perceived one-sidedly as a "morality of prohibition", has itself too often lost sight of the actual core: the Christian image of man wants to open up positive and liberating perspectives even in the most personal and intimate area of human life, both for the life of the individual and for living together. For the sake of humanity, it is time to further develop a life-serving morality and doctrine that proclaims God's generosity at the height of contemporary debates.
Munich/Freising - Sex and the Catholic Church has always been a sensitive topic. The Freising Diocesan Museum, of all places, is now dealing with it in a remarkable exhibition. An offensive and quite courageous project in stormy times.
Mary Magdalene erotically staged for the male monastic audience, Saint Sebastian as a homoerotic fetish icon: the Museum of the Catholic Archdiocese of Munich and Freising is devoting itself to the sensitive topic of church and sex in an exhibition that is very unusual for the institution.
This weekend, the exhibition "Damned Desire - Church.Body.Art" opens at the Freising Diocesan Museum. "We dare to do something," says museum director Christoph Kürzeder on Thursday.
And indeed, it is an offensive project in stormy times for the Catholic Church in Germany - with its tough and repeatedly seemingly hopeless struggle for a more humane sexual morality in the "Synodal Way" reform process and the abuse scandal.
The idea for the project came from the Archbishop himself. Cardinal Reinhard Marx will open the exhibition on Saturday. Among the works on display are paintings by Lukas Cranach and Albrecht Dürer, a drawing attributed to Leonardo da Vinci and a naked Christ body by Michelangelo. Themes such as celibacy and sexual violence in the church are also addressed.
The Archdiocese is thus confronting a topic that is "timeless and highly topical and controversial at the same time", writes Marx in a greeting in the exhibition catalogue. The discussion about how to deal with cases of sexual abuse in the Catholic Church has not only revealed "problems such as clericalism and abuse of power", "but above all a decisive basic problem, namely the often very strained relationship of many people in our church to physicality and sexuality".
"In the past, theology, preaching and pastoral practice often painted a very negative picture of human sexuality, weighted it down with guilt and atonement, which led to repression and double standards," the Cardinal writes.
This double standard is also shown in a very impressive way in the exhibition, in which more than 150 works of art from antiquity to the early 19th century are on display: for example, when Mary Magdalene is staged as a penitent but above all very lasciviously in paintings commissioned by churchmen. "Male fantasies are put into the picture here," says Kürzeder. "Here art exposes."
A picture at the very beginning of the exhibition is already unmasking, showing the princes of the church animatedly discussing the key theological case. They do not even glance at the personalised Fall of Man, the naked Eve with the apple in her hand in their midst.
The theological discourse in the Catholic Church has been conducted almost exclusively by men for 2000 years, says Kürzeder, and art is also male-dominated. Only one work in the exhibition is by a woman, a painter who herself was a victim of sexual violence. Kürzeder speaks of a "counter-image": "The Baroque painter Artemisia Gentileschi painted the famous story of Susanna in the bath. There it becomes very clear how her own body was exposed to male violence, how oppressive she experiences being a pure object of lust that cannot defend itself."
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