This Lesbian Nun Movie Used a Virgin Mary Sex Toy & Catholics Are Mad

The infamous “lesbian nun” movie is finally hitting theaters in the UK and Ireland today, and the backlash among Catholics is happening just as one might expect.

Benedetta has caused waves from the start, fictionalizing the tale of a 17th-century nun who was accused of having an affair with another nun and faking miracles. In Paul Verhoeven’s erotic thriller, the lesbian nun aspect of Benedetta Carlini’s story is ramped up, crossing into territory that pearl clutchers have deemed “blasphemous.”

The Irish Society for Christian Civilisation launched a petition attempting to stop the release of the film (which premiered in the United States last year), calling it a “‘smart smut’ attack on the Holy Catholic Church,” which features “several Jesus-on-nun intense makeouts, [and] a statuette of Mary used as a sex-toy, and voyeuristic lesbian nuns’ ‘pornography.’”

Spokesperson Damien Murphy additionally lambasted the theatrical release coinciding with Good Friday and called the movie “a fraud and nothing more than a blatant attack on the Catholic faith.”

Of course, being that the film is based on true events chronicled through historical documents researched and presented in the 1986 book Immodest Acts: The Life of a Lesbian Nun in Renaissance Italy by Judith C. Brown, calling it either a “fraud” or an “attack on the Catholic faith” seems like a bad-faith argument.

Still, logic and reason didn’t stop Catholic protests when the film was released in the U.S. and it isn’t stopping them now. But Verhoeven doesn’t seem bothered.

“You cannot change history, you cannot change things that happened, and I based it on the things that happened,” he said at Cannes last year. “So I think the word blasphemy in this case is stupid.”

If anything, the ISCC’s list of very specific complaints about the movie only serve to raise further intrigue as people finalize their plans for Easter weekend. And hey, maybe if Jesus had spent more time making out with lesbian nuns it wouldn’t have taken him three days to rise.