"The broadcast on ARD television from St Mary's in Stuttgart showed a manger in which a female performance actor was huddled up in a foetal position and covered with sticky rice paper. The officiating priest, Thomas Steiger, said during the service: The nativity scene shows a real human being, lying there miserable, naked and exposed."
"Next to him the actor breathed heavily and slowly writhed in the paper, which was apparently meant to represent vernix covering the newborn child. This is how radically God becomes human: close, touchable, without distance, real, said Steiger, who is employed as an on-camera clergyman by the regional public broadcaster SWR."
"Rightwing media outlets, which have for years campaigned against Germany's public broadcasters and the licence fees that finance them, went on the attack, calling the scene disrespectful to the faithful. Bild splashed with the headline ARD shows Christmas mass with slime Jesus. The newspaper quoted viewers who said the figure in the straw looked more like a breathing alien and condemned the spectacle as sick and twisted. SWR said it had received more than 1,400 comments about the televised service, many of them critical."
A Christmas Eve mass broadcast from St Mary's in Stuttgart presented a nativity with a female performance actor huddled in a foetal position and covered in sticky rice paper meant to evoke vernix. The officiating priest framed the scene as showing a real human being, exposed, and as an expression of how radically God becomes human: close, touchable, without distance. The show's designer identified the actor as Eleni Sismanidou and described the scene as a moment between safety and distress. The diocese of Rottenburg-Stuttgart distanced itself. Rightwing outlets and viewers condemned the depiction; SWR received over 1,400 mostly critical comments.
Read at www.theguardian.com
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