This picture courtesy of Catholic Church Conservation is of a church in Church of St. Andrä, Graz, Austria. Now at first I thought they were honoring the upcoming Talk Like a Pirate Day (Sep 19th) or maybe just Halloween. But no, it is Good Friday. The picture that he has up of some plastic plants used are also pretty surreal (think Day of the Triffids) as is the television at the foot of the cross. Skulls have long been used by some Catholics as a reminder that we are dust, but the above picture is just plain creepy.
Foolish mortals! Bow down lower and the collection better be bigger than last weeks.
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As I have said before, you have way too much free time on your hands.
Read the link. (Shakes head). And the US has liturigal abuse?
Make that liturgical.
Why, oh why do they have to do that to such beautiful churches? I wonder what the congregation thinks about this stuff being foisted on them. Do they ever wonder what craziness will appear next? Do they care? It must be more like attending a Vegas nightclub than a worship ceremony.
It’s the stuff they put in our food that’s doing this to us. It’s just screwing up our good sence. Yes Catholics have used the skull for years in paintings as symbols of our creation. Symbols! Not full blown mural at the front of the church. What was he thinking?
Geez, Jeff! I thought this was another parody. I kept looking for the punch line, and finally gave up and clicked on the link, and found it was for real. I mean, memento mori, and all that, but this is just waaaay too much.
Oh! That’s just wrong! It makes me sick to look at the pictures. It is as if possessed people were the architects and artists. People say the antichrist is coming…………..I think he’s here already and designing churches!
I don’t know if the symbol of the all-seeing eye has any place at all in Catholicism throughout the centuries, but it is surely a primary symbol of the Masons; and here it is located at the top of the altar. If I�m not mistaken, the skull is also used by the Masons.
I don�t know whether gigantic mutant dandelions have any place of honor among the Masons, but I bet True-Green Chemlawn would love to take a crack at those babies.
What is interesting here (if you go to Catholic Conservation) is that this Church is intact! Almost completely – The only thing that seems to be missing is the Altar rail. Yet they add all this goofy stuff each season for the heck of it. If this were in America and if Vosko were in charge they would have smashed all the altars and spun the seating ninety degrees! I wonder if they are forbidden to destroy the church by the Austrian gov’t or UNESCO or some group like that. So instead of destroying they just introduce the most obscure things imaginable to obscrure the beauty which is so much a part of the building itself.
I wonder if the priest gets to hold a big sword say something like “By the power of Greyskull!” in order to finish the liturgy.
My sentiments keep vacilating between, “This is goofy,” to, “This is grotesque.” Actually, this is the obnoxious cousin that comes to every wedding and funeral that you witheringly nod your head to strangers and weakly admit, “Yeah… that’s my cousin.” sigh.
What- was Ozzy Osbourne unavailable?
This certainly looks like a hoax to me.
I’ve done a lot of digital image editing with programs like Adobe Photoshop, and based on the textures of the colors found in the banner compared to the textures in the rest of the photo, it seems like the skull (and maybe even the black banner) was added to the picture later.
In addition, you might notice that the pillars have a slight curve to them. This slight curve is commonly found in cheaper cameras. Notice, however, that the banner is perfectly straight.
Finally, the wires that stretch from the top of the banner to the ceiling seem to just disappear into thin air. They don’t seem to connect to anything.
I can’t be certain of course, nor do we know the source of the photo, but I don’t believe it.
Rick Lugari:
The all-seeing eye isn’t all that uncommon in very old churches. Like a lot of the things the Masons and other cultish groups use, it was ours before it was theirs.
Katherine,
Thank you; my little brain has tried to digest too much information over the years, and like computer memory, old info gets written over entirely or partially. There was one bit left about the eye that made me think that it may have been a custom at one time, hence my wording.
Now that you have been so gracious to replenish the file, it should be there for a while, at least until I start compiling all the reasons why the USCCB should be disbanded. 😉
Eeeeeeewwwwww!
This is where I get up and go to Mass somewhere else.
m
I hope Tim’s right. This does scare me though – imagine the ideas it might give to Mahony in Tinseltown. IMAX churches! 3D Masses with SurroundSound so you can feel like you’re right up there on the altar with Our Lord! Interactive Stations of the Cross! Jeez, I’m making myself ill,…,
Not that I’m defending the Liturgists at the parish, but the skull is a venerable Catholic symbol. (Ironically, I was at Church today and happened to look up to a statue of St. Gerard Majella, and noticed a skull at the base of his feet which caught my attention).
A skull, on Good Friday, certainly is not wildly out of place, although the prominent placement of this picture is certainly questionably.
But, think of the “bone Churches” throughout Europe: definitely more creepy than this:
http://www.ludd.luth.se/users/silver_p/kutna.html
Even if a skull is a suitable Christian symbol, why does this one have glowing eyes? Did they just find a graphic off of Google?
I don’t think that’s a real photo. Looks fakey, what’s more, it looks anti-Catholic. It may have been made by some Jack Chick type and someone at the Conservation website may have thought it was real and ran with it.
At any rate, I can’t find that Church listed anywhere on the web.
Here are the Christian Churches in Graz, Austria: (Nothing even close to St. Andr� or the English, St. Andrew.)
http://grazau.ags.myareaguide.com/detail
.html?CatID=2&SC=36&SSC=160
Plus, another thing that made a red flag go up:
If a parish is that desecrated, that far from being remotely Catholic, they’re certainly not going to leave that gorgeous building ‘un-wrecktovated’. But to the average anti-Catholic, who never sees the inside of a Church, that’s what they still look like. Pre-Vatican II, beautiful, soaring structures. Why? Because in Hollywood movies, ALL Catholic Churches are beautiful, old gothic spaces whose walls themselves seem to praise God. You never see “Our Lady of the Woods Faith Community” being used as a backdrop for a scene in a movie.
Plus, scrolling further down on the Conservation’s page, some of those additional pics are not only obviously photo-shopped, but whoever did it did a terrible job…
In my opinion, of course. 😉
ONE: There IS such a church. Remember a lot of Europe only has a lite Internet presence still.
I found an artist who lists among his credentials a display there:
“Miami Blue”, Installation in der Kirche Sankt Andr�. steirischer herbst, Graz
http://access.graz03.at/servlet/sls/Tornado/web/2003/content/EAA5394D5BEC0EF7C1256CCC003891A7
TWO: There have been TONS of liturgical abuses in Austria! The Bishop of Linz was forced to resign over this very issue!
http://www.cwnews.com/news/viewstory.cfm?recnum=37213
And here are a few of the abuses:
http://www.cwnews.com/news/viewstory.cfm?recnum=37847
European Christians, even the heterodox, never got the urge to wreckovate their churches as happened here.
THREE: It’s probably not a fake photo. If anything, it’s been touched up by the church of Sankt Andr�. Remember, they’re PROUD of this performance art jazz.
Remember: Worse things and better are going in our Church than can be believed.
Yeah, I’m aware that Austria is something else.
(St. Judas anyone?)
Well, thanks, David, for spoiling my optimism.
😉
European Christians, even the heterodox, never got the urge to wreckovate their churches as happened here.
That’s probably because they didn’t have an ‘illustrious’ bishop’s conference pushing a nefarious pseudo-directive like Environment and Art in Catholic Worship.
Climb every mountain,
Ford every stream,
Run from this memory
Till it’s just one bad dream….
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