Munich / Freising (dpa / lby) - The museum of the Catholic Archdiocese of Munich and Freising is dedicated to the sensitive subject of church and sex. This weekend the exhibition "Damned Lust - Church.Body.Art" starts in the Freising Diocesan Museum. The Archbishop himself had the idea for the project - Cardinal Reinhard Marx will open the exhibition on Saturday. "We dare something," said museum director Christoph Kurzder on Thursday.
In a welcoming address in the exhibition catalogue, Marx writes that the Archdiocese is dealing with a topic that is "timeless and highly topical and controversial at the same time". The discussion about how to deal with sexual abuse in the Catholic Church not only revealed "problems such as clericalism and abuse of power", "but above all a crucial basic problem, namely the often very strained relationship of many people in our church to physicality and sexuality". Marx went on to explain: "In the past, theology, preaching and pastoral practice often painted a very negative picture of human sexuality, burdened with guilt and atonement, which led to repression and double standards."
The exhibition, in which more than 150 works of art from antiquity to the early 19th century can be seen, shows this double standard in a very impressive way: for example, when Mary Magdalene appears as a penitent in paintings commissioned by churchmen, but above all is staged very lasciviously. "Here men's fantasies are set in motion," said museum director Kurzeder. "Here art debunks."
