Newzity

The violent protest over the Mohammad cartoon is hardly over, and now there is a new controversy of art insulting religion. This time it is a painting in Vienna: homoerotic Last Supper of Christ.

Vienna’s Roman Catholic Cathedral hosted a retrospective of their beloved painter Alfred Hrdlicka to honor his 80-th birthday. The paintings are not new, and Hrdlicka is well known for his controversial depiction of physicality and carnal desires in religious imagery. The exhibition titled Religion, Flesh and Power included painting and sculptures that people found offensive and blasphemous. However, the paining Last Supper depicting homoerotic orgy caused most anger, and it was promptly removed at the request of Cardinal Schoenborn. Of course, according to his spokesman

“This has nothing to do with censorship, rather corresponds with the understood reverence for the sacred.”

Interesting how a Danish cartoon of Mohammad is just an exercise in freedom of speech and does not fall under the “reverence for the sacred” clause. It seems freedom of speech only applies to religions that are not ours.