According to the BBC, Italian gelato maker Antonio Federici has a new advertising slogan: "Immaculately Conceived." But the Advertising Standards Authority, Britain's independent regulator of advertising, has deemed the new ad campaign, which features a picture of a pregnant nun eating ice cream in a church, to be unacceptable: "We considered the use of a nun pregnant through immaculate conception was likely to be seen as a distortion and mockery of the beliefs of Roman Catholics.According to the BBC, "Antonio Federici says it will now put up new posters near Westminster Abbey." Pope Ratzinger will be visiting Westminster Abbey on Friday, and holding mass at Westminster Cathedral on Saturday.
"We concluded that to use such an image in a lighthearted way to advertise ice cream was likely to cause serious offence to readers, particularly those who practised the Roman Catholic faith."
The ASA banned another series of advertisements by Antonio Federici in July 2009. That advertising campaign featured a series of images depicting a nun and priest staring longingly into each others' eyes, while undressing and eating Antonio Federici gelato.
.
So eating lots of that Gelato will give you a big belly- more companies should be so honest ;)
ReplyDeleteSeriously, though, the Immaculate Conception is the most misunderstood Catholic dogma. Everyone thinks it refers to how Mary conceived Jesus, but what the dogma actually states is that Mary, "in the first instance of her conception, by a singular privilege and grace granted by God, in view of the merits of Jesus Christ, the Saviour of the human race, was preserved exempt from all stain of original sin." (Pius IX, Ineffabilis Deus). Aside from this special grace, she was conceived in the usual manner through sexual intercourse.
Absolutely -- and I found that one out the hard way. I had a friend in graduate school who was a devout Catholic, and one day I was saying something snarky about the Immaculate Conception, and she told me what it really meant. And I told her she was wrong! And she said, "look, I'm Catholic! I know what I'm talking about!" And I said, "well, being a Catholic doesn't make a person knowledgeable about Catholicism." And she said, "Holy shit, I can't believe how arrogant you're being. Go ahead, look it up -- you'll see I'm right."
ReplyDeleteAnd of course she was right. Of course I was also right, in principle, about the fact that simply being a Catholic hardly makes a person an expert on Catholic theology.
Yeah, if you are going to be blasphemous, at least know what you are talking about.
ReplyDeleteI usually dismiss most anti-Catholic media output as hopelessly misinformed. By far, the best "anti-Catholic" movie ever was Gutierrez Alea's "La ultima cena", which is all about how a slave owner uses his Catholic piety to commit the most atrocious acts against his slaves. Talk about ripping Catholicism apart from the inside out.