Pope Francis unveils dramatic new sculpture in St. Peter's square

Waste of money.

If the church paid for them, then it is a total waste of money. Money that could be used for a good cause instead.

Interesting that the artist's last name is Schmaltz, which is Yiddish slang for any cheap, low-quality, shoddy product. The actual literal meaning of the word is "rendered fat" in both Yiddish and German, but the word used as slang occurs a lot more often than the word used literally.

Profaning the holy with this stuff

Re-gift it.

Lost4words said:

If the church paid for them, then it is a total waste of money. Money that could be used for a good cause instead.

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Or, you know, good art. Not a political statement.

New is always better
(Or maybe not... )

Wolseley said:

Interesting that the artist's last name is Schmaltz, which is Yiddish slang for any cheap, low-quality, shoddy product. The actual literal meaning of the word is "rendered fat" in both Yiddish and German, but the word used as slang occurs a lot more often than the word used literally.

Click to expand...

stole the words right out of my mouth.

Didn't Francis erect a statue of Martin Luther too some time ago?

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eastcoast_bsc said:

stole the words right out of my mouth.

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"Dem bittershten mazel ken men farshtellen mit a schmaichel."

(Yiddish: "In the worst circumstances, all you can do is smile.")

Or, if you're talking about bad artists and bad art, "Az me schloft mit hind, shtait min oif mit flai."

(Yiddish: "If you sleep with dogs, you'll get up with fleas.")

Hmm...we have a limited amount of funds, and we want to do something that sends a clear signal that we are on the side of immigrants. What should we do:

(1) Build a statue depicting their struggle
(2) Donate our money to the NGOs that are actually helping the refugees like the ones depicted with the statue

What a hard decision, isn't it?

I like art, and am generally not of the "the Vatican should donate all of its money to XYZ" train of thought, but this one seems obvious, since it's not about the depiction of some historically remote circumstance to help people remember what happened (like an icon or similar); it's what's actually happening now, so it seems callous to make a statue about it. Or at least not well-calculated.

I don't like things done for surface reasons. I'm not saying this is one of them, but I don't know if it would help people think about helping immigrants any more than any other thing does, so while the feelings may be deep and real, I'm not sure the thinking behind it was. If that poor drowned Turkish kid photographed on the beach didn't do much, I don't see how this thing will.