Have you seen the 2020 Vatican nativity scene?
Is the Pope trolling us and the birth of our Savior or what?

https://www.breitbart.com/faith/2020/12 ... rs-square/

Gives a whole new meaning to the word “fugly.” A friend of mine, who is the kindest, sweetest, most charitable observant Catholic I know, must have struggled with her impeccable writing skills to come up with her assessment of that travesty:

Dr Taylor Marshall on the Vatican Nativity

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=toBAk6bkuCE

After seeing the Vatican display and being very disappointed I hurried to get out my fifteen-inch high, fully decorated and lit up Christmas tree and put it where it could be seen in the front window of my house.

Next, I will get my miniature, authentic biblical style three and a half inch high figurines and set them underneath the tree.

That's more like it!

I am reminded of Paul Greenberg, then Editorial Page Editor of the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette. He went back for a visit to his Alma Mater, and said "Someone had transformed it into a junk yard!" The campus was covered with rusting hunks of junk. Then someone told him, "That's art."

Apparently you can call any piece of junk art these days.

Students at my alma mater knew exactly what to do with such “art” on campus. https://tinyurl.com/y3qy7f22

Oh, dear...

I would love to be able to blame Pope Francis for this, but the fact is that this kind of grotesque nonsense has been prolific for decades, so clearly the Pope himself has little to do with it. These kinds of decisions are made by mid-level bureaucrats who hold their jobs for decades and serve under several popes. In American politics, we call this 'the Deep State', but what do you call the same situation when it happens in the Vatican? The Deep Church?

Greetings:

Well,the donkey is still a donkey,that's important;I don't want my in-laws mod out.

bye

Unfortunately, these can't be thrown into the Tiber very easily.

Where can I learn more about the ugly Nativity scenes under previous Popes?

Not nativity sets per se. but surely you are aware of a the grotesque monstrosities that took place under Paul VI and John Paul II, particularly in the liturgy. In fact, I remember you complaining about them at the time they happened.

Odd looking, too.

To some people, anyway.

Very modern, academic, outre pieces. Would be at home on any European or South American campus, on the grounds of a government building, or at the entrance to a third-class museum. Being at the Vatican, it offers the possibility of yet another infiltration of tradition and reverence by modern, nihilist, iconoclasts. I'm sure its for our own good.

Which reminds me (aren't you glad?)

We have a significant pilgrimage site in our state - El Santuario de Chimayó. I was watching a short show in which two dowser, new-age, earth religion types essentially claimed the Santuario in the name of indigenous animists, hippie spiritualists, and access to a power nexus. It seems that the Santuario is popular, so it needs to be available to all people of all beliefs of all practices. Because the Church shouldn't have control of such a significant site -- where folks could sell crystals and joss sticks and mandalas.

Is that what that's supposed to represent? Ignorance is bliss.

Well, yes, and I hold those Popes to blame for the things that happened under them - they either made the decisions themselves, or ratified the decisions made by others, at least tacitly. Perhaps one grotesquery can be excused, but repeated ones can't be.

Odd man out, I find them lovely. I have a fondness for mid-century modern art.