Brendan O’ReganOnce again the Church was the target of lame jokes
Last week I drew attention to just some of the unsavoury aspects of The Savage Eye (RTÉ 2 Monday nights), especially in relation to anti-Catholic prejudice and the inclusion of children in questionable scenes. It got worse.
The latest episode hit a new low – in one sketch a mother is tending to her very young child in a park when a priest grabs it and runs. If that kind of blatant and unjust stereotyping were applied to certain other sectors in the community there would be uproar.
Later a priest visits a primary school classroom and encourages the children to show respect for followers of other faiths, with one exception – at the end he says “F*** Protestants”. Bad enough, but then the teacher has the children chant “F*** Protestants”. Asterisks were not used.
Looking through RTÉ’s own guidelines it says that with child actors care must be taken with their welfare, and specifically that bad language shouldn’t be used with them. And yet here we have scriptwriters putting these words in their mouths! I’m wondering why the children’s rights lobbyists are not worked up about this, as I’m wondering why the gay lobbyists aren’t creating a fuss about the abuse they get in the show from the foul-mouthed barman character.
Obviously this is a send-up of grossly homophobic people, but I wonder if the same foulness was applied to other minority groups would we say ‘Oh he’s only sending up racism, or bigotry towards special needs children’ or whatever.
Thankful
In a similar vein we should all be thankful that The Republic of Telly (RTÉ 2, also Monday nights) has just finished its run. I don’t know if it was because it was the last episode but the offensiveness went over the top on so many fronts. Worst of all was a skit with the Eucharist that I couldn’t even bring myself to repeat here.
Another scene featured a young lad mooning in front of a church. That show doesn’t do subtlety so we weren’t spared the full moon. The anti-Catholic prejudice was pervasive here also, with mockery the order of the day. The show became funny just once, when the presenter described the Church as being afraid of education! There’s bound to be people who are crude and anti-Catholic, but I don’t get the public broadcaster using taxpayers’ money to fund it.
I could relate more easily to the humanity of the characters in Lewis (ITV Friday nights), a spin-off series from Inspector Morse. The series often touches on religious matters, and the current two-parter, Intelligent Design, features a female vicar whose husband is murdered.
The husband is a professor who has long argued in academic circles that belief in God and science are compatible. Jailed for causing a fatal accident while drunk driving he says his faith has been strengthened in prison and we see him bringing his crucifix home from the cell when he’s released.
The reunion with his wife is touching, but all is not well. She is very conflicted and we see her in troubled prayer as well as calmly conducting the church choir. I’m looking forward to part two this Friday night
Bishop
Last week Fr Kevin Doran got the news that he was to become the Bishop of Elphin, and the first interview I heard was on Drivetime (RTÉ Radio 1) on the Wednesday evening. Fr Doran was humbled by the appointment but was confident about facing the challenges, building communion and community.
Questioned by Mary Wilson on why he had resigned from the board of the Mater Hospital, he said their statement on the Abortion Bill was ambivalent on the right to life.
He appeared also on The Pat Kenny Show (Newstalk, Thursday). It was a brief enough but friendly and personal interview. Fr Doran said he didn’t want the Church just to be saying no to things, but to offer alternatives.
Thus, on the euthanasia issue, he was all in favour of proper palliative care for the very ill, rather than, as Pat Kenny put it, having the ill person feeling a ‘sense of duress’. He appreciated the difficulties of the very ill and of carers – he had personal experience of all that when his own parents had passed away.
I think we’ll be hearing lots more from the bishop elect in his new role.