Pope Fiction*
From a promotion for ABC's Primetime.
"Diane Sawyer takes you on the trail of a passionate mystery. Just as intriguing as The Da Vinci Code. Chasing down centuries-old clues hidden even inside the Vatican. Could a woman disguised as a man have been Pope? Thursday night. One astonishing Primetime." [Via NewsBusters]
And next week Primetime brings you in depth reporting on The Protocols of the Elders of Zion. Of course there is something comforting in the media's constant attack on the Catholic Church and Christianity in general. You don't see blistering reports on the Raileans since they are not credible in the first place. The credibility of Christianity must be made to appear incredulous. When Cardinal O'Connor rhetorically asked Fr. Groechel why Act Up had targeted St. Patrick's Cathedral he replied "They have come to the right place." The attacks on the Church are a left-handed compliment.
Of course NBC now has the new series "The Book of Daniel" written by a homosexual who describes himself as a as being "in Catholic recovery." Wow I would never have guess that. The Waffling Anglican makes a similar point to mine when he says.
One of the reasons I came to believe that Christianity is true is the astonishing level of hatred, animosity, and mockery it generates. No one would go this far out of his way to diss Hindus or Buddhists – only Christians are considered both fair game and worth the effort.
Hey to fit in with the Da Vinci Code craze and all the biased shows how about USA network do a new series called "Maria Monk" about a 19th century nun with OCD (Obsessive-Compulsive disorder not Order Carmelite Discalced) who investigates the strange goings on in her convent. Each week the nun detective could investigate murders such as infants born to nuns and then strangled, disloyal nuns kept in dungeons, and all kinds of sexual perversion.
People always talk about Hollywood doing more Christian friendly shows, but maybe it would just be better for them to ignore us. Too often their attempts are like an Amish person writing for Slashdot.
In a post on some very nasty comments on the Pope's Christmas message in the HuffPost Amy Welborn ask's "Why should this bigotry be allowed to stand?" Simply because it is approved bigotry. Prejudices that match your own prejudices are simply not seen. Religious bigotry against Christianity is the color blindness of the MSM - they simply can't see it.
* Title taken from Patrick Madrid's book. He also has an article on the subject here.
Update: Inevitably the Catholic League weighs in. Jimmy Akin also blogs on the historical silliness of pope Joan.
Known as 
In Sir Charles Coloumbe's wonderful book on the Popes, after easily dismissing the myth of Pope Joan, he mentions that it is a common insult to say that a Cardinal would take the name of "Joan II" if elected Pope.
I agree with Waffling Anglican and you: they can only criticize something people take seriously, and claim to be true. I, too, consider it a back-handed compliment. You really don't have tv shows or movies taking apart the Lutherans, or the Baptists, and you'd have an uproar if you saw someone do it to the Jews or the Muslims. We're still an acceptable prejudice, and even more so than mere Christianity.
GK Chesterton: "And there shone on [the martyrs] in that dark hour a light that has never been darkened; a white fire clinging to that group like an unearthly phosporescence, blazing its track through the twilights of history and confounding every effort to confound it with the mists of mythology and theory; that shaft of light or lightning by which the world itself has struck and isolated and crowned it; by which its own enemies have made it more illustrious and its own critics have made it more inexplicable; the halo of hatred around the Church of God."
That's nothing compared to Comedy Central’s South Park episode entitled “Bloody Mary”. Go here to see the ugly details
http://www.catholicleague.org/05press_releases/quarter%204/051208_south_park.htm
Even specials on the Science channel and the History channel wanted to disect Christianity (and especially Catholicism) by making Mary into a woman/girl who was empregnated by a man and who had many other children after Jesus. I popped out of my seat and told my husband that I just wasn't in the mood for heresy on December 23 - not that I'll be in the mood any other day...
I just wonder what kind of bonus at the end of the year news media broadcasters, and anchors get for developing stories that lambast the Catholic Church or Christianity as a whole. There are reporters out there, Ann Currie for one, that seem to feed off of anything that is anti Catholic. The juicier the better, and the nastier she seems to get.
Better yet, who's feeding the finances to promote this in the media? I'm sure there are all sorts of ideas out there...
Is this TV special a compendium of Sr. Joan Chittester's delusions?
Great post. The only thing I disagree with is the standard charge of "bigotry" at the end. I don't think for the most part it IS bigotry and I think the thrust of the article goes to show that.
Christianity is not some sweet, harmless thing that we should expect people to tolerate. If we think that it is, our enemies have seen more deeply than we. What would happen if a Just Man, a truly Exemplary Man, were to come to Earth and do what we should do? We would welcome Him with open arms, would we not?
No, we stoned the Prophets and we would torture Him to death shouting, "Crucify Him, Crucify Him; We have no King but Caesar!" That's the kind of folks we are; Christianity provokes the hatred that Christ provokes and not because of bigotry or misunderstanding. It provokes that reaction because people see it for what it is and they hate it and want to destroy it. It penetrates to the Heart's Core and burns and scours and people must reject it, reject it! It mustn't be allowed to be so, it simply mustn't.
Don't fool yourself. They will never tolerate us and we shouldn't be asking for it. If we do, they will sweep us away. We must be asking them for much, much more. We must be asking them for Everything.