Austrians are locked in a nationwide debate touched off by the brief display in a prestigious Roman Catholic museum of an etching that depicts Jesus Christ and his disciples having an orgy during the biblical Last Supper.

A chastened and chagrined Cardinal Christoph Schoenborn, the top churchman in this largely conservative and overwhelmingly Catholic country, has ordered the offending artwork, by sculptor Alfred Hrdlicka, removed.

But the controversy rages on, and some have likened it to the furor triggered by the Prophet Muhammad cartoons.

Exhibition curator Michael Kaufmann says he's even seen Web postings from extremists "who have threatened to come to Vienna and blow up its museums with Molotov cocktails."