The legacy of George Stallings is evident at his last parish, St. Teresa of Avila in Anacostia. Above the “high” marble altar (I don’t know what else to call the pre-Vatican II altar) is the painting shown in the conniption-inducing photos below. It bears a resemblance to the former priest, now “Unificationist” follower of Reverend Moon. Stallings, founder of the African American Catholic Congregation, married a Japanese woman in 2001 less than half his age, no doubt in the interest of unification.
I agree the match isn’t spot-on, but given the age difference between the photos and when the painting was probably done (he left the Church in 1989) it’s plausible. Is that a wound on the right arm or is it a visage of Christ at all?
Click below to see the photos. I didn’t wish to post them on the main page here because it would use a ton of bandwidth.
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That’s probably a wound on the figure’s right arm. Many scholars today think that Christ’s wounds were in his wrists because hands apparently wouldn’t support the body’s weight by the nails. So it’s probably supposed to be Christ, although his placement in space with planets around looks New-Agey.
A personal favorite of mine is Archbishop Rembert Weakland’s flattering portrayal of himself in the vandalized Milwaukee Cathedral. He put a bas-relief of himself and the vicar general welcoming the poor to the Cathedral, on the pedestal of the new “Olympic Track Star Mary” statue beside the former altar.
Weakland could have saved the faithful the money, considering he had just taken $450,000 from their pockets to buy the silence of his former boy toy. Of course, he might have done even better to save that money on the X-Files string-bean Christ-alien thing that hangs on jumbled sticks over the new nave altar. I expected to see agents Mulder and Scully checking it out.
Doesn’t look much like him. You would need a portrait of the “bishop” as a young man. Still, I wouldn’t put it past Stallings to do something megalomaniacal like that.