Editorial Nothing scandalous
Nothing scandalous Imagine: An irreverent young priest who chafes at wearing clerical garb, struggles with his vow of celibacy, occasionally resents his bishop's counsel, questions the standard...
...Indeed, the sprightly give-and-take and esprit de corps of the show's parish team could at times pass for a recruitment film for the modern priesthood...
...The age-old Catholic demand for "positive" literature or art, O'Connor complained, is too often a symptom both of weak faith and plain ignorance of how fiction or drama works...
...Yes, Father Ray is a "liberal...
...And, like most popular entertainment, "Nothing Sacred" will almost invariably side with the individual against the institution...
...Ignorance," O'Connor concluded, "is excusable when it is borne like a cross, but when it is wielded like an ax, and with moral indignation, then it becomes something else indeed...
...It's all a little too pat, and sometimes enough to make you want to box the ears of our hero's perfectly coiffed head...
...Nothing Sacred" is not Citizen Kane-or "Masterpiece Theatre," for that matter...
...It is simply not the case, for example, that "Nothing Sacred" depicts conservative or traditionalist Catholics as "cold-hearted, selfish, and tyrannical," or that the celibate priesthood is denigrated...
...Armageddon is a 2-4 University of Notre Dame football team, and what has the Catholic League been doing about that ongoing scandal...
...Donohue insists that "Nothing Sacred" fosters "the most negative stereotype of those who remain loyal to the church...
...When Father Ray is not bucking authority, feeding the homeless, or standing up to "Yuppie-scum," he is miraculously calming violent youth, lovingly administering the sacraments to same, and listening to Billy Holiday when he prays...
...Donohue's polemical excesses greatly lessen the credibility of his legitimate complaints about what he calls the program's "politicized" agenda...
...Contrary to the complaints of its pious critics, "Nothing Sacred" is genuinely sympathetic to religious aspiration...
...He even moves Father Ray to sing in Latin...
...Its fans will mourn the departure of a sophisticated drama that, whatever its shortcomings, actually took religious life and the institutional church seriously...
...Donohue also seems to have found highly offensive a venerable kind of rectory humor that has the show's protagonist, Father Ray, complaining about preparing a homily, or that "everyone else has weekends off," or lamely quipping after Mass, "I'm going upstairs now and put on some nice clean clothes and become a priest...
...Nor is it easy for anyone who has spent any time with Catholic priests to see anti-Catholicism in any of this...
...She called it a "parochial aesthetic," and warned that it reduced "the supernatural to pious cliche...
...Euthanizing "Nothing Sacred" shouldn't be too difficult...
...Its grasp of the transcendent is shaky...
...The Catholic League's campaign of vilification is as small-minded as it is likely to be counterproductive...
...The very first episode ended with an explicit, if not downright evangelical, celebration of the traditional priesthood...
...In the third episode, a widower bitter about changes in the church is held up as the most passionate of husbands and believers...
...But these widely shared failings are hardly anything to go to war over...
...For many Catholics the most implausible thing about this broad description of the dramatic terrain covered in ABC's new series "Nothing Sacred" is the modifier "young" preceding priest...
...We reflect the church in everything we do, and those who can see clearly that our judgment is false in matters of art cannot be blamed for suspecting our judgment in matters of religion...
...Pretty shocking, isn't it...
...its notion of sin essentially psychological...
...There is something sadly ironic in how the Catholic League and its supporters have reacted to the show's alleged subversion of Catholic values...
...But for others "Nothing Sacred" has become a veritable Rosetta stone of contemporary anti-Catholicism...
...To NBC's enormously popular, and gleefully hedonistic, "Friends" perhaps...
...But that is a bias endemic to a highly individualistic culture, not necessarily a symptom of anti-Catholicism...
...Nothing scandalous Imagine: An irreverent young priest who chafes at wearing clerical garb, struggles with his vow of celibacy, occasionally resents his bishop's counsel, questions the standard "proofs" for God's existence, is bored by an overemphasis on sexual sin, and often finds himself at odds with parishioners...
...On the other hand, the religious life of Father Ray and his colleagues very much revolves around the church's sacramental life, and the communal nature of Catholicism is everywhere apparent...
...This is hardly the stuff of Armageddon...
...Yet in responding to this putative scandal with an economic boycott and little more than demagogic commentary, the Catholic League itself is perpetuating the most negative stereotypes of Catholics as prigs and censors eager to impose their values on society as a whole...
...Offering only the most obtuse readings of the program's conflict-driven dramatic structure, Donohue has characterized "Nothing Sacred" as "exploitative," an "assault on Catholicism," a "patently unfair portrayal of Catholic priests," and "nothing more than a political statement against the Catholic church...
...But as far as we know, that is not an offense for which one can be excommunicated-not yet, anyway...
...The show was created by a pseudonymous Jesuit...
...For it is true that Father Ray, though a recognizable and believable enough character, also embodies a very self-satisfied liberal idea of the priesthood...
...Flannery O'Connor was very familiar with this self-defeating Catholic attitude toward the arts...
...The Catholic League has launched a petition drive and even organized a boycott of the show's sponsors to put "Nothing Sacred" off the air...
...But such one-dimensional delineation of character hardly warrants Donohue's scorched-earth response, let alone the sledgehammer of an economic boycott-unless, of course, "Nothing Sacred" is just an incidental casualty in a much broader ideological campaign that condemns first and asks questions later...
...A word to the wise," the Catholic League warns potential advertisers, "take this campaign seriously and move your ad money to some other show...
...William Donohue, the combative president of the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights, has seized upon the show as a rallying point for every Catholic offended by the way the church is depicted in the larger culture...
...Donohue's misguided criticism may have had some impact, but it is more likely that the program's competitors, including the aforementioned "Friends," make its demise a foregone conclusion...
...Though widely acclaimed by TV critics (including Commonweal's Frank McConnell and America's James Martin), it is one of network TV's lowest-rated shows...
Vol. 124 • October 1997 • No. 18
