Respecting the Authoritaah: South Park vs The Catholic Church

TheFridayProject ^ | 01/13/2006

[Panerai]

There is something manifestly, monolithically humourless about Roman Catholicism, even among other awesomely po-faced organised religions. Something stern and fearsome and unbending. You don't trifle with Roman Catholics. They've been around longer than you have, chum, and they've got the Pope on their side. South Park on the other hand, has been around for nearly eight years, so roughly 1992 years less than Roman Catholicism. It is an adult animated series which from its first episode gleefully set about upsetting people in the name of satire. And in the name of just being incredibly offensive. But the intelligent, philanthropic, sober point remains like a slender epee of truth thrust through each vile outburst - *we believe in freedom of speech*. And in really nasty poo jokes. But mostly freedom of speech. As any show involving extreme violence, scatology, profanity and jokes at the expense of the disabled will, it's incurred many and vociferous complaints. However, it's always taken them in its stride, and gone on showing scenes of children feeding each other chilli made of their parents.

You can imagine what sort of unpleasant substance meets which rudimentary air-conditioning appliance when two such disparate elements collide. This happened in December, when the South Park season finale 'Bloody Mary' aired on Comedy Central in the US. There's no way to put this delicately - the episode features a statue of the Virgin Mary bleeding from the ass. This miracle brings people flocking to South Park to be healed, until it transpires that in fact she's just having a period. Then the Pope declares that 'a chick bleeding out her vagina is no miracle', and everyone goes home disgruntled.

[Allegra]

"Pearl Harbor" sucked.

[SuziQ]

Oh please! What a silly argument. There are some Catholics who like South Park and some don't. I don't particularly care for the show; it's a little too silly for me, but I'm not interested in banning the thing!

[Dog Gone]

LOL!