By LifeSiteNews.com Staff
NEW YORK, December 9, 2005 (LifeSiteNews.com) – Three weeks before Christmas and on the eve of the Catholic Feast of the Immaculate Conception, producers of the satirical television programme South Park are under fire for an unusually vulgar portrayal of the Virgin Mary. The show, which is popular with children, has a long history of Catholic-bashing but this time, according to William Donohue of the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights, they have gone way too far.
The programme, titled “Bloody Mary,” which aired Wednesday, portrayed a satire on the miraculous statue phenomenon. Accompanied by vulgar terminology, even by modern standards of acceptability, the programme depicts a bleeding statue of the Virgin Mary, but instead of weeping, the statue was bleeding from a lower bodily orifice. The characters are sprayed with blood and claims of a miraculous cure bring Pope Benedict XVI in person to investigate.
The show is set to air for the rest of the week.
The Catholic League points out that the programme is produced by Comedy Central, a division of MTV and Viacom, a leading global media company and one of the largest media distributors of obscenity and a promoter of sexual license via their television programs, billboards and other media .
A member of the Viacom board of directors is Joseph A. Califano, a practising Catholic and prominent public servant and chairman of the board of The National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse at Columbia University. The League is writing to Califano demanding an apology to Roman Catholics and a promise that the programme be “permanently retired.”
Read the Catholic League media release:
WARNING: excessively vulgar language
https://www.catholicleague.org/05press_releases/quarter%204/051208_south_park.htm
To Contact Joseph Califano:
c/o 633 Third Avenue, NY,
NY 10017;
phone, 212-841-5200;
fax, 212-956-8020;
email: [email protected].