{"id":81,"date":"2008-09-04T12:00:35","date_gmt":"2008-09-04T12:00:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/pontifications\/2008\/09\/jumping-the-shark-frog-on-a-cr.html"},"modified":"2008-09-04T12:00:35","modified_gmt":"2008-09-04T12:00:35","slug":"jumping-the-shark-frog-on-a-cr","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/2008\/09\/jumping-the-shark-frog-on-a-cr.html","title":{"rendered":"Jumping the shark? Frog on a cross is one animal the Pope doesn’t care for…"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Frog<\/span>Pope Benedict XVI is quite an animal lover (as we noted here<\/a>). But he is also quite the esthete, and this sculpture, in a museum in Bolzano, the northern Italian town near where the pontiff vacations, apparently went too far for his tastes.
\nAccording to a CNS story<\/a>, the sculpture set off protests this summer that reached the pope’s ears when he visited in July. His Secretary of State (sort of the vice-pope) then sent a letter of support to a local official who was leading the charge to have the frog, er, dissected. The letter reportedly said the pope believes the sculpture “has wounded the religious sentiment of the many people who see in the cross the symbol of God’s love and our salvation.”
\nYes, on one level. As the CNS story says, the sculpture “depicts a green frog nailed to the cross, holding a beer stein in one hand and an egg in the other. Its eyes are crossed and its tongue hangs out of its mouth.”
\nBut let me play froggy’s advocate here–this isn’t an Andres Serrano “Piss Christ” or Madonna of the Elephnat Dung or whatever that Brooklyn Museum of Art piece was a few years back.
\nThe sculpture is the work of the German artist Martin Kippenberger, who died in 1997 at the age of 44, a tormented figure himself, it seems:<\/p>\n

“Museum officials have defended the work, saying it was intended as a self-portrait showing the torment faced by the artist. The sculpture was made in 1990, and the artist, who was said to consider the frog his alter ego, created other variations on the same theme.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

In a more detailed ANSA report<\/a>, museum officials said they have moved the frog to a less prominent place, but have delined to remove it altogether. They said it is a self-portrait of the artist ”in a state of profound crisis” and is not an attack on religious feeling.
\nSure, not quite the imitation of Christ most might like–certainly not B16–but powerful in its own way, perhaps. Intention is everything. Almost.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Pope Benedict XVI is quite an animal lover (as we noted here). But he is also quite the esthete, and this sculpture, in a museum in Bolzano, the northern Italian town near where the pontiff vacations, apparently went too far for his tastes. According to a CNS story, the sculpture set off protests this summer…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":128,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,2,6,4,1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-81","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bishops","category-catholic","category-church","category-pop-culture","category-pope"],"yoast_head":"\nJumping the shark? Frog on a cross is one animal the Pope doesn't care for... - Pontifications<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/2008\/09\/jumping-the-shark-frog-on-a-cr.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Jumping the shark? Frog on a cross is one animal the Pope doesn't care for... - Pontifications\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Pope Benedict XVI is quite an animal lover (as we noted here). But he is also quite the esthete, and this sculpture, in a museum in Bolzano, the northern Italian town near where the pontiff vacations, apparently went too far for his tastes. 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He came by all those vocations by accident, or Providence, during a longer-than-expected sojourn in Rome in the 1980s. Gibson began his journalistic career as a walk-on sports editor and columnist at The International Courier, a small daily in Rome serving Italy's English-language community. He then found a job as a newscaster and writer across the Tiber at the English Programme at Vatican Radio, an entity he describes as a cross between NPR and Armed Forces Radio for the pope. The Jesuits who ran the radio were charitable enough to hire Gibson even though he had no radio background, could not pronounce the name \"Karol Wojtyla,\" and wasn't Catholic. Time and experience overcame all those challenges, and Gibson went on to cover dozens of John Paul II's overseas trips, including papal visits to Africa, Europe, Latin America and the United States. When Gibson returned to the United States in 1990 he returned to print journalism to cover the religion beat in his native New Jersey for two dailies. He worked first for The Record of Hackensack, and then for The Star-Ledger of New Jersey, winning the nation's top awards in religion writing at both places. In 1999 he won the Supple Religion Writer of the Year contest, and in 2000 he was chosen as the Templeton Religion Reporter of the Year. Gibson is a longtime board member of the Religion Newswriters Association and he is a contributor to ReligionLink, a service of the Religion Newswriters Foundation. Since 2003, David Gibson has been an independent writer specializing in Catholicism, religion in contemporary America, and early Christian history. His work has appeared in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Fortune, Boston Magazine, Commonweal, America, The New York Observer, Beliefnet and Religion News Service. He has produced documentaries on early Christianity for CNN and other networks and has traveled on assignment to dozens of countries, with an emphasis on reporting from Europe and the Middle East. He is a frequent television commentator and has appeared on the major cable and broadcast networks. He is also a regular speaker at conferences and seminars on Catholicism, religion in America, and journalism. Gibson's first book, The Coming Catholic Church: How the Faithful are Shaping a New American Catholicism (HarperSanFrancisco), was published in 2003 and deals with the church-wide crisis revealed by the clergy sexual abuse crisis. The book was widely hailed as a \"powerful\" and \"first-rate\" treatment of the crisis from \"an academically informed journalist of the highest caliber.\" His second book, The Rule of Benedict: Pope Benedict XVI and His Battle with the Modern World (HarperSanFrancisco), came out in 2006 and is the first full-scale treatment of the Ratzinger papacy--how it happened, who he is, and what it means for the Catholic Church. The Rule of Benedict has been praised as \"an exceptionally interesting and illuminating book\" from \"a master storyeller.\" Born and raised in New Jersey, David Gibson studied European history at Furman University in South Carolina and spent a year working on Capitol Hill before moving to Italy. He lives in Brooklyn with his wife and daughter and is working on a book about conversion, and on several film and television projects.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/author\/dgibson"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/81","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/128"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=81"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/81\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=81"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=81"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=81"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}