Posted on 05/25/2005 4:57:31 PM PDT by wagglebee
When shareholders of media conglomerate Viacom show up for their annual meeting tomorrow, they'll face the wrath of Catholic League President Dr. William Donahue over a shocking Showtime episode that slandered the late Mother Teresa and her order of nuns in the vilest of terms.
According to Donahue, who plans a press conference in front of the hotel in New York City where the Viacom meeting is being held, an episode of Showtime's Penn and Teller show "Holier Than Thou” was a "Nazi-like assault on Catholicism, and on the person the show calls "Mother F***ing Teresa.” Showtime is owned by Viacom.
Stormed Donahue, "In the 12 years that I have been president of the Catholic League, I have never witnessed a more vicious attack on Catholicism than what appeared this week on the Showtime program, ‘Penn and Teller.’ The episode, ‘Holier Than Thou,’ was a frontal assault on Mother Teresa and her order of nuns, Missionaries of Charity (as well as Gandhi and the Dali Lama).
"Like most Americans, I like parodies and have no problem, per se, with irreverent humor. But when humor becomes insult, that is a different story. And that is what happens here: comedy quickly morphs to vitriol. Indeed, as the show progresses, the level of anger becomes palpable and the degree of distortion becomes mindboggling. This is no comedy—it is Nazi propaganda right out of the Leni Riefenstahl school of filmmaking.
"The Mother Teresa that the world has come to love and revere is made to look like a cruel, exploitative, self-serving nun who ripped off the poor. We are told that Mother Teresa intentionally let the poor suffer, providing neither beds nor bathroom facilities. ‘She had the f***ing coin and pissed it away on nunneries,’ says Penn. As for the nuns who worked with Mother Teresa, they are referred to as ‘f***ing c***s.’
"It does not bother me when they call me ‘Catholic Boy’ on the show (though the term ‘Jew Boy’ would never cross their lips), nor does it concern me when they talk about ‘f**ers like Bill Donohue [who] only see good in her.’ But when they mock the Catholic Church’s teaching on the meaning of suffering, and when they say of the poor that ‘They had to suffer so that Mother F***ing Teresa could be enlightened,’ then they are behaving like monsters.
"We will mail a tape of select portions of this broadcast to many interested parties, including the bishops. And we will hold a press conference tomorrow outside the hotel where Viacom is holding its annual stockholders meeting. They haven’t heard the end of this yet.”
Donohue, who will be joined by some Catholic League staff members, said he will answer any questions following a few remarks. He promised that copies the Catholic League news release on this subject, "Mother F***ing Teresa—Courtesy of Viacom,” will be distributed to Viacom shareholders as they enter the hotel.
Limbo or purgatory? If you are under forty you may not have learned the difference in a Catholic school.
We had old school nuns that did the limbo thing and the newer nuns that did the purgatory thing. You couldn't ask them any pressing questions about it, or you would be branded a pagan.
You are a fool.
Bar service, as in adult beverages? Oh yes, me too and I want Bingo games as well!
Now I am going to go watch the season finale' of L&O and count the number of pot shots that show will take at the GOP, Bush and maybe even the Church...lol.
You would seem to fit in Limbo all right.
And I have nothing but disdain for these types. They know better and yet them remain silent.
ROTFLMAO!!!
Okay, maybe I will rent the DVDs...
But I still say slamming on Mother Theresa is in very poor taste. There is a limit (there must be a limit) to how crude or cruel the culture gets.
Actually, I hope to be in the place full of people that don't spend their lives judging where other people will be in the afterlife.
Hey, if there wasn't poor taste, how would we judge what is good taste!
BTW, great documentary on IFC, "In Bad Taste, the John Waters Story" funny stuff.
Miracles? Need she perform miracles to be a saint? Do you know what the heck you're talking about?
Oh no. I suppose you (incorrectly) think the Church is against evolution? You're wrong. You might want to read the Catechism before you profess to be Catholic. Just because a mouse is found in the cookie jar, that doesn't make him a cookie. Just saying, "I'm Catholic too" means zip to me. John Kerry professes to be Catholic. So does Uncle Fat Drunk -- oops, I mean Ted Kennedy.
Several people were directly lied to in the first season about how they would be portrayed on the show. There is no in depth verified analysis of ANY of the topics they cover.
Just merely cursory superficial debunking. (Such as theyre discounting that Second hand smoke could ever cause any health problems whatsoever and Penn directly discrediting the FDA for goodness sake.)
Bullsh@t show has no opposing views, its purely slanted Cr@ppola.
So, was the bingo fixed in your parrish? The nuns seemed to win the big pots a lot...
Actually, to be made a saint, you have to do two miracles after your death.
I was taught evolution when I did K-12 at Catholic school, glad I did, it was an enlightened stand of the church to reject the creationist nonsense.
It must be cool to be omnipotent and be able to tell whether people are athiests or not, but God hates that crap, its his game, so put down the attitude. As for folks being decived, they still go on the show after two full seasons, even Michael Medved went on and made an ass of himself, and I like and listen to Michael's show. As for their show its OPINION, they say what they want, much like Limbaugh et al. Don't like it? Don't watch it!
No, its only damn funny if someone damns you for watching it.
A former fan of theirs picked them apart if in this insightful review of Bullsh@t:
(to expose some of the techniques that Penn and Teller use, and I started looking for them in other episodes, even those episodes with which I wholeheartedly agreed (in other words, all of them).
found something pretty standard in all their arguments.
For their opponent, they usually find the absolute most extreme camp they can find, a camp that probably represents 10% of the other side of the argument, and they use that as the face of the enemy.
example, in their episode on eating and feeding the world, whom did they choose as the antagonist? Greenpeace and a group of hippie-freakshows who only eat raw foods.
Of course we're going to disagree with these idiots, therefore agreeing with Penn and Teller. We leave the show thinking that any and all genetically-altered foods should be dumped into the 3rd World, bar none.
What they don't show you are the extremely intelligent, forward thinking scientists who recognize the *legitimate* problems with this. Most notably, while genetic engineering may have saved a billion lives it has also done something else very obvious - drastically increased the population.
Therefore, deaths related to overpopulation not associated with starvation - like aids, leprosy, and other illnesses - have drastically increased, inverse to the decrease in deaths from starvation, even exceeding it in some areas. So in trying to do good, we could, in the end, be killing more people.
I'm not saying I totally agree with this point of view, just that it is a legitimate facet of the argument that isn't so easily dismissed with a wave of the hand like the ignorance of the losers that Penn and Teller put on camera.
So be aware as you watch, that there are almost always more viable arguments against their points that they are not showing you
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