News

by Hilary White

AUCKLAND, February 27, 2006 (LifeSiteNews.com) – A New Zealand Catholic organization, Family Life International, has called broadcasters to task for showing an episode of the satirical animated series, South Park, that they say is libelous and blasphemously obscene. The programme, “Bloody Mary,” aired Wednesday Feb. 22nd and was brought to the country’s airwaves by Winnipeg, Canada-based CanWest Global Communications Corp.

The program aired first in North America in December 2005, and received similar complaints in the US from the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights. The show is intended as a satire on the miraculous statue phenomenon, but South Park has a long history of targeting Catholicism and has a reputation for vulgarity.

In December, the US Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights called the episode, “vile and viciously anti-Catholic,” in which a statue of the Virgin Mary is depicted spraying blood from the genital area. The episode was originally to air in May, but the company said because of the intense controversy the decision was made to move the date forward to Feb. 22nd.

Brendan Malone, spokesman for the Family Life International contacted LifeSiteNews.com asking that readers get in touch with CanWest to protest. Malone said, “the anger is growing” over the issue in New Zealand.

Family Life International said that not only did the program mock the Catholic Church’s most sacred figures, but attacked the Alcoholics Anonymous program implying that AA is a cult for the “weak minded” because of its focus on belief in a “higher power”.

“To call this particular South Park episode heinous and offensive to women and Christians would be putting it mildly,” the group says.

One New Zealand man has gone as far as to approach New Zealand’s Attorney General to ask if the broadcast could be considered as constituting libel. The Green party human rights spokesman, Keith Locke, said that the Bloody Mary episode and the issue of the Danish cartoons depicting the prophet Muhammad needed to be kept in a separate context. Locke said that the controversy brings forward a healthy debate on the possible limits of freedom of speech.

Local TV reviewers said that there were plenty of other groups besides the Catholic Church that would find the episode offensive but since the cartoon was intended to shock, anyone who lets it upset them has allowed the cartoon’s makers to win.

New Zealand media commentator, Dr. Brian Edwards, argued that there were “some fundamental issues of freedom of expression,” involved and that for CanWest not to air the episode, would be to “capitulate to religious blackmail.”

Not so, says Family Life International, “This program targets and ridicules women and sincerely religious beliefs using the vehicle of gross obscenity.” Many New Zealanders agree that there should be some line over which the media should not cross. The group’s website protesting the show received over 1500 respondents in the first two days.

Brian Edwards said in a radio interview that the Christian protests, which have included emails, letters, phone calls and a boycott of the TV station, “are not dissimilar,” though “a much milder version,” to the rioting, murders, bombings and terrorist attacks that have followed the publication of the Danish cartoons. A major difference between the Danish cartoons depicting the Islamic Prophet Muhammad and the protests over “Bloody Mary” however, is the eagerness of the western liberal media to apologize for having offended Muslims.

A New Zealand radio commentator said that CanWest has “given the finger” to the Catholic Church that protested against what it considers the show’s blasphemy. CanWest, however, was among the many left-leaning Canadian media sources that condemned the Muhammad cartoons and refused to publish them on the grounds that they offended Islamic religious sensibilities. CanWest added its voice in newspaper editorials to attacks on the cartoons’ sole Canadian publisher, the Calgary news magazine, the Western Standard.Â

Many Christians in New Zealand and abroad are decrying the double-standard. They are wondering, if it is such a terrible offense to insult religious belief in general, then where are the apologies for the longstanding liberal media convention of mocking Christianity?

Ottawa Citizen columnist, David Warren, wrote, “Did newspapers across the West hesitate to print photos of the ‘Piss Christ’, or the ‘Dung Madonna’? Why suddenly so sensitive to religious feelings?”

The South Park programme ran in the US and Canada on December 8, 2005, the Catholic feast of the Immaculate Conception. William Donohue of the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights contacted Joseph Califano, a practicing Catholic and board member of Viacom, the parent company of Comedy Central, the company that first aired the program. The next day, Califano issued a press release condemning the program for its anti-Catholic slurs.

The league received a call from Tony Fox, executive vice president for corporate communications at Comedy Central, saying that the company had no plans to rerun ‘Bloody Mary’.

Read related LifeSiteNews.com coverage:
https://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2005/dec/05120903.html

Visit the website from Family Life International
https://www.stopc4.org.nz/

Readers may contact CanWest International to express their concerns:
  Geoffrey Elliot,
  Vice President, Corporate Affairs,
  CanWest Global Communications Corp.
  3100 CanWest Global Place,
  201 Portage Avenue,
  Winnipeg, Manitoba,
  Canada
  R3B 3L7

Tel: (204) 956-2025,
  Fax:(204) 947-9841
  Email: [email protected]