Virgin Mary Used As A Dildo In A New Movie About Lesbian Nuns

VETERAN film ‘provocateur’ Paul Verhoeven, above, hit back at the weekend at Catholics who have condemned his latest movie Benedetta as ‘blasphemous’, not least because it contains scenes in which a statue of the Virgin Mary is used as a dildo.

The Basic Instinct and Showgirls director, told reporters at the Cannes film festival that he had nothing to be ashamed of.

In response to social media outrage as well as negative reviews in conservative news outlets, the Dutch 82-year-old director said:

I do not understand really how you can be blasphemous about something that happened … You cannot basically change history after the fact. You can talk about that was wrong or not, but you cannot change history. I think the word blasphemy for me in this case is stupid.

The movie tells of an illicit affair between a 17th-century Italian abbess and one of her novices.

Among the most outraged over the movie is head of the Catholic League, Bill Donohue, above, who is not only appalled by the film but also the manner in which reviewers and audiences are reacting to it.

Given our gay-crazy world, where every perverse act is not only tolerated, but celebrated, it is not surprising to learn that ‘the audience at the Cannes press screening applauded the film’s blasphemous nerve.’

Another film critic noted that at her screening, ‘the movie was received with shocked laughter and applause, ‘yielding a ‘five-minute standing ovation.’

Donohue then provides some salacious details garnered from various reviews.

The Telegraph, an English newspaper, was delighted. ‘Could anything be more Verhoeven than using a wooden Mary as a sex toy?’ When Verhoeven was asked if he thought the film was blasphemous, he denied that it was. It is also true that the Klan deny they are racists.

A critic cited in the New York Daily News called the movie a ‘blasphemous, sapphic nun fuck fest that’s horny, traumatizing, violent and unhinged’ adding it was ‘deranged on nearly every single level, a blasphemous, maximalist, hilariously erotic satire.’

He points out that anothet reviewer who adored the film, Rachel Handler, described one sex scene between Benetta and her lover, Sister Bartolomea, as:

Fucking one another with a wooden figurine of the Virgin Mary carved very carefully into the shape of a dildo.

Donohue concluded:

The hatred of Christians in many parts of the world these days results in torture, imprisonment, and death. In Western Europe and North America, the Christian haters do not resort to violence: They just seek to disparage and silence them. That’s why Verhoeven delights them – he appeals to the sickest appetites of these fully deracinated people.

In 1983, after the the release of his “breakthrough” movie The Fourth Man, Verhoeven was quoted here as saying:

In my opinion, Christianity is nothing more than one of many interpretations of reality, neither more nor less. Ideally, it would be nice to believe that there is a God somewhere out there, but it looks to me as if the whole Christian religion is a major symptom of schizophrenia in half the world’s population: civilizations scrambling to rationalize their chaotic existence.

Subsequently, Christianity has a tendency to look like magic or the occult. And I liked that ambiguity, because I wanted my audience to take something home with them. I wanted them to wonder about what religion really is.

Remember, that Christianity is a religion grounded in one of the most violent acts of murder, the crucifixion. Otherwise, religion wouldn’t have had any kind of impact. With regards to the irony of the violence, much of that probably comes from my childhood experiences during and immediately following the Second World War. In fact, if it hadn’t been for the German occupation and then the American occupation, I would have never been a filmmaker.