Does anyone find it disturbing that the main churches in Rome including the sistine chapel have nudity and pagan symbols?  

I've notice devils and idols on many pictures of Churches in Europe.  

I wasn't aware that this had been going on since the 12th century.

In the 16th century the vatican hired an artist to paint over some of the offensive nudity that were even parts of the Last Judgment.

Maybe the seeds of vatican 2 were planted much earlier than was thought?

The Popes have consistently allowed such images, therefore they are safe.

I don't like nudity in Churches. If we allow nudity in the art, then why not allow nude people into the Churches as well?

I agree with the OP on this one.

Michaelangelo's stuff in the Sistine Chapel represent his own homo-erotic fantasies; that stuff should be sandblasted off the walls. not just covered up by "Il Vestitore".  Interestingly I heard on EWTN Radio today someone praising St. John Paul II the Great for having had the genitalia re-exposed.  Many of those Renaissance Popes were thoroughly corrupt, naturalist, and hedonist (as evidenced by their own lifestyles).  Bishop Williamson clearly traces the beginnings of the modern decline to the Renaissance.  Should someone really offer Mass while surrounded by exposed private parts?  Art is supposed to elevate the soul above nature (as in the idea of the Icons) and not draw the mind to the sensual.

I also agree that the gargoyle-type things on the Medieval cathedrals were uncalled for.

You needn't accuse the OP of Protestantism.  This junk is distasteful at best and doesn't belong in a church.

I guess if you're not into JP2-like theology of the body then you're Protestant now?  That's not to say that there's anything sinful or inherently wrong about the body, but the quasi-grotesque bare behinds and privates hanging over the Blessed Sacrament are borderline sacrilegious.

Quote from: Ambrose

Quote from: hammertojezabel

Does anyone find it disturbing that the main churches in Rome including the sistine chapel have nudity and pagan symbols?  

I've notice devils and idols on many pictures of Churches in Europe.  

I wasn't aware that this had been going on since the 12th century.

In the 16th century the vatican hired an artist to paint over some of the offensive nudity that were even parts of the Last Judgment.

Maybe the seeds of vatican 2 were planted much earlier than was thought?

This sounds like a Protestant, especially a Jansenist argument. Nudity in and of itself is not evil if it a meant to depict a biblical image and is not for the purpose of lust.  

The popes have consistently allowed such images, therefore they are safe.

You should not declare that an issue is black and white when it's not.

Before roll-your-own-religion became the tipple of choice in the aftermath of Vatican II (especially among SVs and papal absolutists), every adult Catholic understood intuitively or had it explained to him at length that people are not all alike and, specifically, that something morally harmless—even edifying—for one individual might be a proximate occasion of sin for another. When I was a kid, no responsible authority figure ever told a fourteen-year-old boy to read the Song of Songs. Must the rationale for this really be explained? Like it or not, "safe" is a relative term, not an absolute one.

The same holds a fortiori for Michelangelo's fresco of the Last Judgment. One famous and equally creative observer, Igor Stravinsky, called it "a riot of pederasty." Truer words were never spoken. It is thus hardly surprising that a great many people, not just the OP, have found it shocking and scandalous.

Does its (for some) scandalous nature make the fresco ipso facto immoral? No. Does it raise questions about the Catholicity of the commissioning popes (Clement VII and Paul III)? Only among people with too much time on their hands.

On a related note, the last place in Europe where castration was inflicted upon boy singers with particularly beautiful voices was the Vatican choir, housed in the selfsame Sistine Chapel. The practice was ended there barely a century ago, by decree of Pope St. Pius X. I submit that the blithe acceptance of mutilation for several centuries might more profitably be a matter of concern to Catholics than whether the taste of Renaissance popes* either baptized or damned a particular work of graphic art.

In short, there is no royal road to heaven through the messiness of earthly creation.
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*Gloriously good taste, in this man's opinion.