“How ugly, a society that denies its values.”
Brussels is the most Islamized major city in Western Europe, with a Muslim population that stands at 25 percent (an estimated 300,000) of the total. By 2050, Muslims are projected to exceed one-third of the city’s population. The multiculturalist, globalist Left views this as a great victory for diversity, but what it means in reality is that Brussels, the home of the European Union, is on a fast-track to an Islamic monoculture. As anyone with a clear-eyed view of history and current events is keenly aware, diversity, tolerance, and religious pluralism are not Islamic values. Much like the Left, wherever Islam gains a foothold, its zealous adherents work indefatigably toward religious, cultural, and political dominance.
As a stark recent example, the Brussels city government sparked controversy last Friday with the unveiling of a new Nativity scene at the Grand-Place, the medieval market square in the city center, to mark the beginning of the Christmas season. The city said it was necessary to replace its previous, traditional display featuring the Holy Family because it had become dilapidated and delicate to transport.
According to Breitbart News, the Mayor of Brussels, Philippe Close, a self-described secularist and Socialist Party politician, reportedly farmed out the design of the new Nativity scene to the Cathedrals of St. Michael and St. Gudula, which inexplicably approved the “iconoclastic” vision of Brussels-based interior designer Victoria-Maria, and now outrage is gathering over an installation that cannot possibly be seen as anything other than an insulting deconstruction of Christian heritage, tradition, and faith.
It is always a mistake to entrust artists with a modernist bent to design religious spaces or displays, because they are incapable of elevating God over their own egos. In a nod to environmentalism, which the Left has made a religion unto itself, Victoria-Maria draped the Nativity figures entirely in recycled fabrics that look like the ugliest castoffs from a thrift shop, and the traditionally expressive faces of the life-sized figures of Mary, Joseph, the infant Jesus, the Three Wise Men, and a shepherd were all replaced with a nightmarish, pixelated patchwork of beige and brown fabrics, apparently to create “an inclusive mix of all skin tones, so that everyone can see themselves reflected.”
Let me make a couple of points perfectly clear: first, there is no need to make the Christian faith more “inclusive.” Christianity already embraces every skin color on Earth, and has since the beginning. God became man in order to redeem the whole world. In Matthew 28:19, when Jesus states, “Go and make disciples of all nations,” the word “nations” in the New Testament Greek is the plural form of “ethnos,” meaning people of a shared identity. That includes people of all ethnicities. In Mark 16:15 he commands his disciples to “Go into all the world and preach the gospel to all creation.” You can’t get more inclusive than that.
Second, this may come as a shock to the narcissists of our secular era, but the purpose of a Nativity scene is not to see yourself reflected in the Holy Family. It is to honor and celebrate the birth of Christ, who entered the world as a real, specific, flesh-and-blood, Middle Eastern Jewish male – not as some faceless symbol of Everyman – and sacrificed himself not to affirm your specialness as you are, but to change you, to give you new life. --->READ MORE HERE
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| Credit: Maxim Van den Bossche |
A new Nativity scene featuring faceless cloth figures installed on Brussels’ historic Grand Place — and the theft of the infant Jesus — have ignited fierce debate across Europe, with critics calling it an erasure of Christian tradition and supporters defending it as inclusive art.
The traditional wooden figurines have been replaced with forms made from recycled textiles, with faces consisting only of patchwork fabric in beige and brown tones. Artist Victoria-Maria Geyer crafted the Nativity figures out of cloth with no identifying facial features.
The installation, titled “Fabrics of the Nativity,” was selected through a call for proposals after city officials said the previous wooden Nativity had become too deteriorated to use. The dean of Sts. Michael and Gudula Cathedral was involved in the search for a new project and approved it, according to both municipal and church sources.
The installation drew immediate criticism on social media. Belgian national team soccer player Thomas Meunier triggered widespread reaction on X with his comment: “We’ve hit rock bottom... and we keep digging,” a post that was shared thousands of times.
American conservative author Rod Dreher, who has written extensively about European Christianity, contrasted the Brussels installation with Hungary’s approach. Posting a photo of a traditional wooden Nativity scene outside the Hungarian Parliament, Dreher wrote: “A Nativity scene outside the Hungarian Parliament. A Christian country that is not ashamed of the gift of faith.”
Georges Dallemagne from Brussels’ Christian Democrats party called the missing faces “very shocking,” stating: “The Nativity is a message of universality, not a zombie exhibition.” Liberal party chairman Georges-Louis Bouchez called the installation an “insult to our traditions” and demanded its replacement.
Professor Wouter Duyck of Ghent University suggested political correctness and fear of angering Brussels’ large Muslim population was the real inspiration, noting: “In Islam, the faces of prophets are not depicted.” --->READ MORE HEREFollow link below to a relevant story:
+++++Faceless baby Jesus that sparked online outrage stolen from Nativity scene+++++
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