mediawatchwatch.org.uk

The story is from The Guardian, but the irresistible headline is from The Sun.

Gunther von Hagens’ new exhibition, Cycle of Life, has caused outrage among Church representatives and a cross party group of politicians because it includes a couple of corpses having sex.

Fritz Felgentreu, an MP for the Social Democrats says

Love and death are obvious topics for art, but I find it quite disgusting to use them in this way

But von Hagens is unrepentant:

It should not be sexually exciting for the visitors.

We are showing everything from conception through to death.

Death and sex are both taboo topics and I am bringing them together. Death belongs to life and without sex there is no life.

The couple were both volunteers who consented to their cadavers being exhibited in this way.

However, Hagens has admitted that they had never met in life. This is casual corpse sex, people! No wonder the Churches are upset.

We can only imagine the outrage if it is discovered that the male is wearing a condom.

Ron Howard, the director of Angels and Demons, has accused the Vatican of trying to hamper the filming of his latest blockbuster “through back channels”.

When you come to film in Rome, the official statement to you is that the Vatican has no influence.

Everything progressed very smoothly, but unofficially a couple of days before we were to start filming in several of our locations, it was explained to us that through back channels and so forth that the Vatican had exerted some influence.

The Rt Rev Malcolm McMahon, Bishop of Nottingham, has been speaking out against the film in the usual irony-laden way:

This is so outlandish, it’s total rubbish

he said, with admirable scepticism not otherwise evident in his world-view.

It’s mischievous to stir up this kind of anti-Catholic sentiment. It’s a gratuitous knocking of the Church and I can’t see any reason for it. […] “I don’t think that Catholics will be interested in seeing this as it’s so far removed from the truth.

Ersatz Irishman Bill Donahue of the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights has done what he always does: play the victim card.

They wouldn’t dare treat any other religion like this.

The Holy See is showing signs of having learned a lesson, however. Archbishop Velasio De Paolis, the Vatican economics minister, is aware that the staggering success of The Da Vinci Code was due at least in part to the outraged squeals of leading Catholics:

Let’s be careful not to play their game… by giving them free publicity.

Oops. Too late.

Dermot Ahern tries to justify his introduction of a blasphemy law onto the Irish statute books by claiming that just wants to make life safer for blasphemers:

My intention is to remove the possibility of prison sentences and private prosecutions for blasphemy, currently provided for in Irish law.

If this is the case, why the 100,000 Euro fine and raid-and-confiscation powers to the Gardai? Surely, if the Constitution requires that blasphemy be a punishable offence and a referendum to change that is prohibitively expensive, a maximum fine of 1 Euro would be sufficient.

Meanwhile, church and mosque leaders claim they were not consulted on Ahern’s new proposal, although a spokesman for the Islamic Cultural Centre in Clonsskeagh did say they “would welcome any policy or law to maintain or strengthen respect for religion or faith”. Surprise, surprise.

At least one religious commentator is very strongly against the move. John Waters, in the Irish Times:

It is true that we now live in a culture where what passes for humour is often elevated beyond merit, but the right to speak and joke freely remains as precious as the right to religious freedom. In truth, because both relate to the fundamental impulses of humanity, they are almost co-terminous.

Which seems to be circumlocutory paraphrase of something we wrote here on MWW two years ago – the right to believe in shit is inseparable from the right to take the piss.

Atheist Ireland are organising active opposition. Join them.