Controversial art work to be evicted from Church in time for Holy Week
Innsbruck Hospital Church: Compromise on Art Installation
Controversial contemporary Lenten hanging to be taken down on Friday before Palm Sunday - Bishop Glettler: "Art must stimulate discussion, but not lead people to harden their rejection because their religious feelings have been hurt"
Innsbruck, 21.03.2023 (KAP) The partly controversial art installation in Innsbruck's hospital church will be taken down on the Friday before Palm Sunday. This was announced by the Diocese of Innsbruck on Tuesday. The photographic work by the Austrian artist Peter Garmusch, which was installed in the chancel on the occasion of Lent, shows a large-format constricted heart floating freely in space. The Diocese of Innsbruck stated in its press release that the work had caused a stir, "at least in certain circles": "Quite a few people, who almost without exception only know the work of art from pictures on the internet, took offence at the fact that it was a pig's heart and that its naturalistic depiction was an imposition.
After numerous verbal attacks and protests, most of which formed on internet platforms, Bishop Hermann Glettler had now taken a step "which represents a compromise for the supporters and opponents of the art project": The photographic work will be taken down on the Friday before Palm Sunday. "Art must stimulate discussion, but not lead to people hardening their rejection because their religious feelings had been hurt," the Bishop stated in the release, and continued: "The fact that it is of course not a representation of the Sacred Heart was hardly communicable."
Cathcon: Because in a Church, the association is inevitable!
Since Ash Wednesday, the contemporary Lenten cloth, which in the tradition of the Passion cloths could be understood during the 40 pre-Easter days as a "suffering image of frightened man and the distressed creation", has covered the Pentecostal High Altar image. The possibility of personal prayer, which many people perform at the left side altar in front of the late Gothic crucifix and the icon of Our Lady of Good Counsel, is not affected by this," said Bishop Glettler. All the more incomprehensible, he said, were the claims that a sacred space was being desecrated.
Nevertheless, and this is what he attaches importance to, he said, "The heart tied up with a rubber ring should be a pictorial stimulus to overcome every form of tightness of heart and to try steps of reconciliation." The diocesan bishop again referred to his Lenten pastoral letter on the theme of "Reconciliation". It reads, "Only through reconciliation is there healing and a new quality of life. It is up to each one of us!" With the decision to take down the picture before Palm Sunday, he wanted to reach out and focus attention on the important themes and services of Easter week.
Cathcon: I don't often quote Oliver Cromwell but his words dissolving the Rump Parliament are singularly appropriate to the Synodalists in their religious parliaments together with their worldly shows:
“It is high time for me to put an end to your sitting in this place, which you have dishonoured by your contempt of all virtue, and defiled by your practice of every vice; ye are a factious crew, and enemies to all good government; ye are a pack of mercenary wretches, and would like Esau sell your country for a mess of pottage, and like Judas betray your God for a few pieces of money.
Ye have no more religion than my horse; gold is your God; which of you have not barter’d your conscience for bribes?
Is there a man amongst you that has the least care for the good of the Commonwealth?
Ye sordid prostitutes have you not defil’d this sacred place, and turn’d the Lords temple into a den of thieves, by you’re immoral principles and wicked practices?
Ye are grown intolerably odious to the whole nation; you were deputed here by the people to get grievances redress’d, are yourselves gone!
So! Take away that shining bauble there, and lock up the doors. In the name of God, go!"
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