Why are animal nativity scenes sacrilegious?

[Tabby]

Could I please ask for a clarification of this answer? Michelle Arnold stated:

By using the Holy Family as inspiration for cheap commercial kitsch, the objective result is a secularization (i.e., profaning) of the Incarnation, one of the central mysteries of the Christian faith, and therefore is objective sacrilege.

I think I understand the point, but wouldn’t that then mean that any inexpensive Christmas decorations are sacrilegious? Or is there something particularly sacrilegious about the cat nativity scene I was considering?

 

[Michelle_Arnold]

I think you are correct that I could have been a bit more clear. The secularization (i.e., profaning) that I was speaking of was not merely cheap reproductions of the Nativity, but specifically the creation of an “animal nativity.” When the producers of this particular “nativity scene” chose to turn the Holy Family into something it is not (a family of cats), purely for the sake of whimsy and commercial gain, it was secularizing (profaning) the Incarnation, a central mystery of the Christian faith.

Creating inexpensive traditional Nativity scenes for devotional or decorative purposes is fine, but “imagining” the Holy Family to be cats, dogs, birds, snowmen, or any other non-human “nativity grouping” I’ve been told exists on the kitsch market, is what should be considered objective sacrilege (whether or not the creators intend it to be so).