Following last night's episode (Thu. 8/27/09) of Penn & Teller's show
on Showtime, Bill Donahue, founder and president of the
Catholic League said, "I have never seen a more defamatory, obscene
and vicious show on TV." Folks, that is saying a lot. The man has
dedicated his career to exposing anti-Catholicism.
According to Donahue, the foul-mouthed
Penn Jillette
billed last night's episode as "payback" for 2,000 years of alleged
"crimes" by the Catholic Church.
Wrote Donahue:
Jillette said the "intolerance, greed, paranoia, hypocrisy and
callous disregard for human suffering" was the hallmark of the
Catholic Church. Others on the show branded the Church an "amoral"
and "power hungry" institution that is just worried about its "cash
flow."
For a half hour, Jillette aired a number of wild falsehoods and
vicious lies about the Catholic Church. For example, Jillette claimed
that a 1962 Vatican document was a secret cover-up for sex abuse. It
definitely was not. (This false claim was first aired by CBS in 2003 and
then repeated by the BBC in 2007. It has
been
repeatedly
debunked.)
Donahue summarized the show, "The Nazis couldn’t have done better."
Donahue reports that he plans to meet on Monday with
Les Moonves,
president of CBS, the parent company of Showtime.
Here's a question that Donahue could consider asking Moonves: Would
he ever have allowed a show to air that similarly defamed Jews, Muslims,
or Buddhists?