Colombian Jesuit says Madonna’s concert “crucifixion” is example of evangelization

Bogotá, Colombia, May 24, 2007 / 10:54 am

The Colombian daily, “El Tiempo,” published a column by a priest who said he has seen Madonna’s DVD of her latest concert tour and defends her “crucifixion” and nudity and calls the show a model of evangelization.

In a column entitled, “Madonna: A Suggestive Presentation of Jesus,” Father Carlos Novoa, SJ, ex-dean of the Department of Theology at the Javeriana University, said he was impressed by the “deep spirituality” of some of Madonna’s choreography and claimed her parody of the crucifixion “is not a mockery of the cross, but rather the complete opposite: An exaltation of the mystery of the death and resurrection of Jesus” and a “creative and moving” work of art.

Father Novoa said the DVD recording of Madonna’s “The Confessions Tour” was something worth viewing for its “high aesthetic quality.”  The song “Live to Tell,” in which Madonna is “crucified,” “is one of the best sermons I have witnessed in my life,” and he challenged Catholics to follow the example of the singer.

“In this postmodern, skeptic world in which so many people abhor or are simply uninterested in the faith, will ministers of the Church and Catholics in general have this audacity and this creativity to communicate a Jesus who truly shakes people up on the inside?” Novoa wondered.

The Jesuit priest also defended “masculine and feminine nudity,” expressed not through “cheap pornography” but through “erotic beauty.” He compared Madonna’s choreography and nudity with the works of Michelangelo, “who filled the walls of the Sistine Chapel, the sacrosanct place where the Holy Father is elected, with frescoes of nude men and women.”
 
Father Novoa said renowned artists and art critics consider Madonna to be “one of the best choreographers of our times.”  “In her excellent stage presentations, she sometimes makes use of both male and female nudes, which scandalizes some, as in the case of Michelangelo,” he claimed.

Novoa acknowledged that some of Madonna’s antics are “ridiculous,” but, he claimed, “they said the same thing about Beethoven when he debuted some of his best compositions and about Picasso, one of the great guides posts of modern-day art, when he presented his master works in 1907: Les Demoiselles d'Avignon.