Extra Virgin, get it?

By Diogenes ( articles ) | Dec 15, 2005

The Jesuit publication America puffs itself as "the magazine for thinking Catholics." Accordingly, while the thinkers at my local library trot off with America to read the essays on metaphysics and exegesis, I always remain stuck in the corner with a box of Crayola washable crayons and my Rembert Weakland Coloring Book. Very sad. It's with a sense of wistful admiration, then, that I note Jody Bottum's report on some of recent advances in the beaux arts discovered by America's thinking Catholics. He says the December 5th issue carries an advertisement that

shows a statue of the Blessed Virgin Mary, eight and a half inches high, wrapped in a condom.

At least I think what the ad describes delicately as "a delicate veil of latex" is a condom. It covers the statue from head to foot, with a little reservoir knob on top, all forming a "unique contemporary religious art work for sale," which "Chelsea College of Art London Sculptural Artist Steve Rosenthal" has named "Extra Virgin." It can be yours for "$300 (plus shipping from UK)." America is "published by Jesuits of the United States," as it says on the magazine's masthead, and the issue appeared just in time for the Feast of the Immaculate Conception.

Don't you wish your parish had an original Rosenthal in the transept? The Feast of the Nativity, if you catch my drift, is just around the corner.