Just prior to the Pope's visit to Naples, this huge billboard was put up on the side of a building featuring a bare breasted woman wearing traditional nuns headgear. Rosary-clutching hands serve to conceal her - a bit. Ross de Serra is apparently a fashion house that maybe sells bluejeans. It's hard to tell.
This kind of depiction is increasingly stupid as most nuns don't wear wimples and veils anymore, and those who would recognize the model as a nun (or even know what a nun is) are increasingly few. Some people got in an uproar about the billboard, especially in light of the pope's imminent arrival. They complained that the sign was blasphemous. I don't agree.
What then? The advertisement is ignorant, dishonest, in poor taste, a cheap shot, low-end, mindless, pandering, an icon for the money-grab, over-board materialistic - but not blasphemous. Blasphemy is a God insult. The Genesis account tells us that human persons are made in the image and likeness of God, and Jesus spent his ministry-years in the closest union with the world's suffering people: Whatever you do to the least of my brothers and sisters you do to me. (Matthew 25)
So let's re-think blasphemy...
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| Bombing of Gaza - not an earthquake |
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| Syrian Refugees |
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| Trash City |
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| Homeless in Seattle |
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| God's Paradise Despoiled |
Billions upon billions, upon many billions, of dollars spent on traveling to Mars and asteroids and outer, outer space... while on earth.....
And God has gone to a great deal of trouble to be with us on earth. And God became a human not an angel. So we urgently need to rethink the meaning and use of the word blasphemy. Really!
