[Home] [Headlines] [Latest Articles] [Latest Comments] [Post] [Sign-in] [Mail] [Setup] [Help]
Status: Not Logged In; Sign In
|
Religion See other Religion Articles Title: Virgin Mary Cartoon Stirs Debate Over Freedom To Offend Virgin Mary Cartoon Stirs Debate Over Freedom To Offend By Patrick Goodenough http://CNSNews.com International Editor February 22, 2006 http://(CNSNews.com) - While the Mohammed cartoon controversy rages around the world, a television channel in New Zealand was under fire Wednesday for a decision to show an episode of the South Park comedy series featuring a menstruating statue of the Virgin Mary. The episode, entitled "Bloody Mary," originally was scheduled to air in May, but after a religious row erupted, the network decided to move it up to Wednesday. Earlier, Catholic bishops wrote to TV Works, a New Zealand subsidiary of the Canadian media company CanWest, and urged it to reconsider. The letter also was signed by Protestant, Jewish and Muslim leaders. TV Works rejected the complaint, prompting the bishops to call on the country's half-million Catholics to boycott the channel (and others owned by it) as well as the network's advertisers. In a pastoral letter read to congregations across New Zealand, the bishops said the episode was offensive, not just to Catholics but to adherents of other denominations and faiths, and demeaning to all women. Catholic bishops conference president Bishop Denis Browne and fellow bishops said a boycott "might give them pause to consider that press freedom is not a license to incite intolerance or to promote hatred or derision based on religion, race or gender." TV Works responded by announcing Tuesday that because of the controversy, it would now screen the episode on Wednesday night, to give viewers the opportunity to make up their own minds. Rick Friesen of TV Works said the network encouraged viewers who did not appreciate the episode's "style of humor" not to watch, adding that anyone who felt that way was likely not a typical South Park viewer in the first place. The Catholic Church called the decision to bring forward the episode "arrogant" and "cynical." The New Zealand branch of Family Life International, a Catholic pro-life group, has launched a protest website identifying advertisers supporting TV Works and urging a boycott of their products. Catholics comprise 12 percent of the population of the small South Pacific nation. In neighboring Australia, the "Bloody Mary" episode was due to run on March 6, but The Australian daily reported that after complaints by Melbourne's Catholic Archbishop Denis Hart, the SBS network agreed to "defer" it, citing "the current worldwide controversy over cartoons of religious figures." 'Gratuitously offensive' The new controversy has erupted as New Zealand and other countries continue to debate the publication of cartoons satirizing Mohammed, which first appeared in a Danish newspaper last September. The publication of cartoons has triggered Muslim protests, boycotts, rioting, killings of non-Muslims, and calls by Islamic leaders for the U.N. to outlaw blasphemy. Two New Zealand newspapers and the country's two main news networks reproduced the cartoons. Other newspapers, which chose not to publish the Mohammed caricatures, took flak because readers recalled they had not demurred in the past from carrying images offensive to Christians - most notoriously when the national museum in 1998 exhibited a three-inch statuette of Mary sheathed in a condom. One regional paper's editorial writer Wednesday compared the bishops' response - calls for a boycott - to "the mullahs, who whip the faithful into a violent frenzy." "Christians have always been a soft target for those who find sport in causing offense," wrote Louis Pierard. "The queue of people willing to insult that which Christians hold dear is a great deal longer than that of those prepared to take a pot-shot at Islam." Catholic Church communications director Lyndsay Freer said the Mohammed cartoon issue had opened up a debate over freedom of expression versus the media's responsibility to uphold "good taste and decency," adding that the South Park episode was "gratuitously offensive." That assessment echoed the reasoning given early this month by the country's largest daily, the New Zealand Herald, in deciding not to publish the Mohammed cartoons. On the South Park issue, the Herald in an editorial Wednesday said, "it is one thing to be offended by an image put in a newspaper or on a television channel with a mass audience, but less clear-cut when the item is intended for a niche publication or channel." Anyone offended by the South Park episode should just "change the channel," it said. But a columnist for the same paper, Garth George, said that for Catholics, not watching the South Park episode was not the issue. "It is merely the knowledge of the sacrilege itself which will curdle their spirits and leave them sorely wounded." In the episode, a statue of Mary begins to bleed and is considered a miracle, drawing people seeking healing for ailments. "Pope Benedict XVI" arrives to observe and, after being sprayed with blood and identifying the source, declares that there is no miracle. The episode aired on Viacom's Comedy Central in the U.S. last December, one day before Catholics celebrated the feast of immaculate conception, marking the doctrine that Mary was conceived sinless. The Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights described it as "one of the most vile TV shows ever to appear" and Catholic Bishops Conference president Bishop William Skylstad said in a letter to Viacom chiefs the channel had displayed "extreme insensitivity." According to entertainment news services, the episode was pulled from the program's end-of-season rerun shortly after Christmas.
Post Comment Private Reply Ignore Thread Top • Page Up • Full Thread • Page Down • Bottom/Latest Begin Trace Mode for Comment # 4.
#3. To: Mind_Virus (#0)
Says it all. There's nothing new under the sun with these folks in 2,000 years. "Insults Against Blessed Mary Sanhedrin 106a . Says Jesus' mother was a whore: "She who was the descendant of princes and governors played the harlot with carpenters." Also in footnote #2 to Shabbath 104b of the Soncino edition, it is stated that in the "uncensored" text of the Talmud it is written that Jesus mother, "Miriam the hairdresser," had sex with many men....." http://www.revisionisthistory.org/talmudtruth.html Jesus: "They hated Me, before they hated you." I'm not Catholic, do not believe Mary was miraculously conceived, am not a malicious person, but am getting darn sick and tired of sick, perverted, Jew TV. They can do this to symbols some Christians hold dear, then turn around and arrest people for speaking the truth about "the" Holocaust, one of MANY against people of all nations, perpetrated by the Jews themselves [or as many agree, their Zionist "elite"]. The ONLY way they can portray a Christian is when they have sunk him to the level of the people writing their sewage. Only depraved minds could come up with such crap, and the self-chosen think GOD is PLEASED?? Their Satanic Seal of Solomon is dripping with the blood of millions. Too bad Mel Gibson doesn't make a movie about that. But that is what this is probably about: thesis, antithesis, synthesis. Inflame the Muslims about their symbols, get a few hundred or thousand people killed; do the same with the Christians, inciting Christian against Jews [or Mossad/CIA posing as Christians], and then pass a law outlawing any criticism of anyone's religion, so that they can propagate theirs unhindered, maybe even elevate it to "persecuted minority status" so that it needs to be taught in the schools to achieve "tolerance". It's already part of our Jewish President's No Child LEFT BEHIND Act. [Noahide training for the goyim]
oh, and by the way.... "....The source of Judaic bigotry and hatred for Christ and His Church is in the Talmud. I should like to add that nowhere in the religion of Islam is Christ defamed. In fact, Jesus Christ is upheld as a prophet by the Muslims and His Name is reverenced, as is His Mother, Mary....." Hoffman Demolishes ADL on Talmud - Part 1
There are no replies to Comment # 4. End Trace Mode for Comment # 4.
Top • Page Up • Full Thread • Page Down • Bottom/Latest |
||
|
[Home]
[Headlines]
[Latest Articles]
[Latest Comments]
[Post]
[Sign-in]
[Mail]
[Setup]
[Help]
|
||