"A Nazi-Like Assault on Catholicism"

Golly gee whiz, why do Penn & Teller keep beating around the bush? Why don't they tell us what they really think?

When shareholders of media conglomerate Viacom showed up for their annual meeting last Thursday, they faced the wrath of Catholic League President Dr. William Donahue over a shocking Showtime episode that slandered the late Mother Teresa and her order of nuns in the vilest of terms.

According to Donahue, who plans a press conference in front of the hotel in New York City where the Viacom meeting is being held, an episode of Showtime's Penn and Teller show "Holier Than Thou" was a "Nazi-like assault on Catholicism, and on the person the show calls "Mother Fucking Teresa." Showtime is owned by Viacom.

Stormed Donahue: "In the 12 years that I have been president of the Catholic League, I have never witnessed a more vicious attack on Catholicism than what appeared this week on the Showtime program Penn and Teller. The episode, 'Holier Than Thou,' was a frontal assault on Mother Teresa and her order of nuns, Missionaries of Charity (as well as Gandhi and the Dali Lama).

"Like most Americans, I like parodies and have no problem, per se, with irreverent humor. But when humor becomes insult, that is a different story. And that is what happens here: comedy quickly morphs to vitriol. Indeed, as the show progresses, the level of anger becomes palpable and the degree of distortion becomes mindboggling. This is no comedy – it is Nazi propaganda right out of the Leni Riefenstahl school of filmmaking.

"The Mother Teresa that the world has come to love and revere is made to look like a cruel, exploitative, self-serving nun who ripped off the poor. We are told that Mother Teresa intentionally let the poor suffer, providing neither beds nor bathroom facilities. 'She had the fucking coin and pissed it away on nunneries,' says Penn. As for the nuns who worked with Mother Teresa, they are referred to as 'fucking cunts.'

"It does not bother me when they call me 'Catholic Boy' on the show (though the term 'Jew Boy' would never cross their lips), nor does it concern me when they talk about 'fuckers like Bill Donohue [who] only see good in her.' But when they mock the Catholic Church's teaching on the meaning of suffering, and when they say of the poor that 'They had to suffer so that Mother Fucking Teresa could be enlightened,' then they are behaving like monsters.

"We will mail a tape of select portions of this broadcast to many interested parties, including the bishops. And we will hold a press conference tomorrow outside the hotel where Viacom is holding its annual stockholders meeting. They haven’t heard the end of this yet."

I wasn't overtly aware that Penn & Teller were so virulently anti-Catholic. And if Showtime had been exercising even the barest, most minimalist level of editorial judgment, I would still be unaware of it. One can certainly blast Penn & Teller themselves for a profanely bigoted rant that would have made George Carlin blush (if blood was capable of rising above his neck level), but how on Earth did Showtime let that garbage make air, pay cable or no pay cable? And even if Showtime execs share P&T's sentiments, how utterly devoid of PR awareness does one have to be to fail to grasp that if you're going to broadcast Catholic-bashing programming, desecrating the memory of Mother Teresa - a name even more famous for a lifetime of selfless charity than it is her religious affiliation - is about the most dunderheaded way imaginable of approaching it?

No, I'm not going to make any "F'ing Penn and F'ing Teller" references. Frankly, there's a reason why those two "entertainers" are relegated to the sparsely watched reservation of pay cable. I'll just content myself with highlighting that in naming that episode "Holier Than Thou," P&T were displaying an unwitting talent for irony on more levels than they could keep plates spinning at the same time.

And that, even though the Catholic League ain't what it used to be a couple of generations ago, P&T, and Showtime, might just wished they had left this particular stain of "irreverent humor" on the cutting room floor.