Posted on 04/27/2011 8:10:30 AM PDT by Alex Murphy
(RNS) In its new Sunday night series, The Borgias, Showtime has found the magic combination for ultimate crowd appeal in a scintillating soap opera about a bad-boy pope.
The Borgias follows the quasi-historic story of the Spanish noble family who, with the ascent of Rodrigo Borgia as Pope Alexander VI in 1492, brought a nighttime-television-style era of debauchery to the papacy.
The Borgias were infamous for simony — buying and selling church offices and sacraments. In their case, they bought the papacy through bribery and coercion.
But don’t forget the sexual promiscuity, bribery, double-crossing, incest, blackmail, murder, poisoning and all manner of unabashedly sinful behavior.
The debut episodes of The Borgias on Sunday (April 3) opened with scenes of intrigue and titillation. Called to the death bed of Pope Innocent VII, Cardinal Rodrigo Borgia (Jeremy Irons) plots to become the next pope by any means necessary.
Meanwhile, his eldest son Cesare (Francois Arnaud) — an 18-year-old bishop of the church — and his fetching paramour engage in an athletic sexual encounter while his adolescent sister Lucretia (Holliday Grainger) watches through an open window.
Some viewers likely went scrambling to Wikipedia to look up the Borgias during those opening scenes, curious about these cardinals (and popes) who had lovers and children. According to the series, Borgia had numerous children by several mistresses; Pope Innocent VIII fathered a dozen offspring as well. In the 15th century, at least according to The Borgias, it was commonplace for Catholic clerics to have mistresses and large families despite their vows of celibacy.
At a time when stories of clergy sex abuse still regularly make international news, naughty popes and Catholic leaders behaving badly might strike a certain resonance with viewers, if fueled by nothing more than a sense of schadenfreude.
As the debut episodes unfold, Rodrigo buys his way to the throne of St. Peter; a cardinal is poisoned at a lavish dinner with other princes of the church; another cardinal is framed for murdering a chambermaid in his bed; and a traitorous assassin is paid to do the Borgia family’s dirty work.
But wait, there’s more: the new pope uses a tunnel from the Vatican to the villa of the murdered cardinal for regular rolls in the hay with his new mistress; his old mistress, meanwhile, promises to remain chaste now that the father of her children occupies the papal throne.
In short, the papacy has rarely looked worse than it does in The Borgias. And maybe that’s part of its appeal.
Not surprisingly, the arrival of the tawdry papal soap opera in the middle of Lent did not go unnoticed by the New York-based Catholic League, the perennial defenders of any and all perceived pop culture assaults directed at the Catholic Church.
In recent statements, Catholic League president Bill Donohue questioned why Vatican officials hadn’t formally protested The Borgias.
“For one thing, Catholics are used to being slammed by Hollywood, so The Borgias hardly shakes them,” Donohue said. “Catholics don’t expect perfection from (their) clergy. This, however, is beside the point. The most immediate issue is why Showtime decided to gift Catholics with this series during the Lenten season.”
An obvious answer is that this is the high season for all things spiritual. During Lent — with its fasting, abstaining, ashes, rituals and holy days — religion is a hot topic.
The Catholic Church is an evergreen for pop culture clashes. There’s something about Catholicism that seems to lend itself so well to film and television and capture the popular imagination with a kind of passion that, say, Presbyterianism or Lutheranism don’t.
“Well, for one thing it’s colorful — literally. All those cassocks and albs and miters and vestments makes for visually arresting television,” said the Rev. James Martin, a Catholic priest and prolific author of titles such as A Jesuit Guide to (Almost) Everything.
“It’s the combination of power, money, religion, sex and sin. That’s almost unbeatable television, even if it’s not altogether historically accurate.”
Catholicism has that certain something that makes it well suited to vivid (and sometimes controversial) media depictions, said Tom Beaudoin, associate professor of theology at Fordham University.
“Catholicism offers an unusually compelling mix of qualities that is well-suited for media culture: its taste for the ritually spectacular, its evident culture of secrecy, its elicitation and denial of erotic and homoerotic experience, its historic enmeshment with secular power,” Beaudoin said.
“As everyone now knows, this is a tradition both beautiful and dangerous and that makes for compelling media today.”
Beyond all the high church hedonism, there seems to be something else that keeps viewers tuning in to a can’t-look-away car crash like The Borgias. Maybe it’s really all about us, and not them.
“There’s a fascination with the sins of the powerful, whether it’s Henry VIII or the Borgias,” Martin said. “It may make viewers feel that our sins aren’t so bad: we sin from time to time, but at least we’re not poisoning our relatives.”
I'm surprised you have this attitude. Is typing anti-Catholic posts one of the better ways to spend your time and effort?
Here's a clue: Finally: Catholic Church suspends rogue Chicago Rev. Michael Pfleger
I think our culture's problems are... our unprecedented prosperity that weakens the will to resist evil.
Maybe we're not as close in agreement as I first thought.
but a Calvinist may think that saving the unborn is just not in God's plan for them.
God gives different people different callings. Not everybody is called to work at a Pregnancy Resource Center. There's more than one way to skin a cat.
I saw that. It shows that a bishop can suspend one of his priests. I still don't know all the ins and outs of Church discipline, though.
Maybe we're not as close in agreement as I first thought.
We may not be in total agreement, but I don't think we're miles apart either.
I'm not sure those are the only choices. The purpose for which our republic exists is to secure and protect the rights given directly to us from God. It is in no way to be considered a secular state because a denial of God relegates our God give rights to privileges given us by government and subject to their modification or withholding.
When our government or any government no longer serves God it forfeits its authority to act and to exist. This was made very clear in the Declaration of Independence.
You are right that we cannot expect to change things overnight, but that is no justification for inaction or indifference. However, if all Christians voted their faith, including the millions of Catholics who have forgotten the hierarchy of Truths, things would change overnight.
The purpose of my rant on abortion in this thread was a call to action for Christians of all denominations to recognize those beliefs we share and act in a united manner to confront the evils in our society. We are all sinners when we allow fights over the doctrinal differences between us to divert our attention away from the really important issues and our obligations as Christians.
I doubt you’ll find to many people on this forum, of any denomination, that supports abortion.
But if a particular churches doctrines are impeding the reform of these laws then those doctrines are fair game for examination.
I don’t get what you’re trying to say.
The question is not whether you can find any sins or sinners in any human institution, it is whether you are willing to concede that there is and has been good done by the Church. An honest person could create a T-Chart and enumerate the good and bad done by any individual, collection of individuals, or organization.
Are you honest enough to concede that in some areas (the Trinity, the Divinity of Jesus, Atonement of Sins, abortion, charity, same sex marriage, civil rights) the Catholic Church has been on the right side and been an instrument of God or do you hold to the Dr. Eckleburg policy that the Catholic Church and all things Catholic are pure evil?
What part are you having trouble with? Please be as specific as possible, thanks.
In 126 you said “That must be what’s surprising.” What must be surprising?
It was you that introduced the idea of surprise in your earlier reply saying, “I'm surprised you have this attitude. Is typing anti-Catholic posts one of the better ways to spend your time and effort?”
So my statement was in contradiction of your charge of “typing anti-Catholic posts” when in fact my posts deal with only that which goes to what I understand to be unscriptural practices and not the personal.
It's called being civil to all and respectful of none.
If more explanation of a simple comment is needed feel free to ask. Thanks.
So what is surprising then?
Is it that I labeled you anti-Catholic?
Or is it that you don’t “don’t genuflect and avert [your] eyes from the Catholic church’s history.”
It’s not very clear from what you said.
“So what is surprising then?”
Since you proclaimed yourself so it would be you who should answer that question, yes?
Neither of the two is surprising to me.
No, you also said something is surprising. I'm still trying to find out what that is. This is what you said in 126:
“anti-Catholic”? Because I don't genuflect and avert my eyes from the Catholic church's history. That must be what's surprising.
So what is the thing that must be surprising that you referred to in the second sentence?
I do enjoy these little bouts of verbal jousting!
My comment: “That must be what’s surprising.” was in response to your #121, so again “that” would refer to what you had said earlier, your charge that I was making “anti-Catholic” posts and the fact of your surprise.
So my comment in my #126 was a suggestion of what must be surprising to you since you proclaimed yourself so. Yes.
Thus it seems you’re asking me to explain what was going on in your mind even though I’ve offered a couple of possibilities of what “that must be..”
You’ve been very diligent about NOT explaining why you charged me with being “anti-Catholic”, so do you care to do so now or do my suggestions fit well enough?
This isn't verbal jousting. I'm just trying to figure out what you meant.
You’ve been very diligent about NOT explaining why you charged me with being “anti-Catholic”
I was never asked to explain.
I still don't know what you're talking about, and I'm done trying to figure out now.
See ya.
“I was never asked to explain”
No, but you kept asking me to explain what you meant.
Anyway, it’s been a great good joust and hate to see you leave just when you were on the cusp of grasping the salient.
Yes, we must do this again!
“I’m not Catholic but this notion of holding medieval church behavior under a microscopic from today’s falsely felt sense of moral superiority is just wrong and feeds the enemies of Christendom.
Besides, however corrupted I bet the average monk or parishioner had more faith then than we do now in our decadent opulence and age of bloated self import.”
You “get it”. Thanks. But it’s even more than that...they want to totally take down the CC and what better way (after the pedophilia - Dan Brown etc) to do it. Ireland is currently on it’s way back to Paganism - all the country needs is a few more nudges and it’s malleable for anything the socialists want to impose.
That Jesus Christ, our Lord, God and Savior was not created, not a creature, not the Archangel Michael, He is God with the Father and the Holy Spirit (who coincidently is also God).
He died for our sins and was resurrected from the dead.
Those who do not believe go to Hell for punishment on their immortal souls.
I try to be “noble minded” so perhaps you will offer some Scriptural support for what you say that I can examine for myself.
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