When it comes to religion, Ned Flanders generally steals all the thunder for references to faith and The Simpsons. L’Osservatore Romano, the Vatican’s daily newspaper, shook things up for a day, offering some quality fodder for religion blogs by declaring Homer Simpson as Catholic. We could probably create a context out of this, but check out some of the headlines:
Vatican Claims Homer Is Catholic; Saints Go Begging (NPR)
D’oh! Vatican declares Bart and Homer Simpson Catholic (CNN)
IS THE DOPE CATHOLIC? The Vatican blesses Homer Simpson (despite what the show says) (Washington Post)
But never fear. There were some publications that actually took the news seriously. Here’s the basic report from Reuters.
“Few people know it, and he does everything to hide it. But it’s true: Homer J. Simpson is Catholic”, the Osservatore Romano newspaper said in an article on Sunday headlined “Homer and Bart are Catholics.”
The newspaper cited a study by a Jesuit priest of a 2005 episode of the show called “The Father, the Son and the Holy Guest Star”. That study concludes that “The Simpsons” is “among the few TV programs for kids in which Christian faith, religion and questions about God are recurrent themes.”
Entertainment Weekly went so far as to get reaction from a Simpsons producer.
Simpsons HQ is flattered and amused by the attention from the Vatican. “My first reaction is shock and awe,” exec producer Al Jean tells EW.com, “and I guess it makes up for me not going to church for 20 years.” That said, Jean is quick to throw not-so-holy water on the Homer-is-Catholic assertion, pointing out that the family attends the First Church of Springfield, which is decidedly Presbylutheran. “We’ve pretty clearly shown that Homer is not Catholic,” he says. “I really don’t think he could go without eating meat on Fridays—for even an hour.”
The Telegraph’s piece actually offers some context from the past.
It is not the first time that the Vatican newspaper has praised The Simpsons. Last December, as the television series celebrated its 20th anniversary, the paper said that “the relationship between man and God” is one of its most important themes and that it often mirrored the “religious and spiritual confusion of our times”.
Once a staid and sober paper of record, L’Osservatore Romano has ventured into popular culture in the last three years under a new editor, commenting on everything from The Beatles and The Blues Brothers to the blockbuster film Avatar and the Harry Potter books and films.
It’s a fun, light-hearted story that offers the chance to highlight something larger going on at the newspaper and perhaps in the culture there. Besides, it appears that the editors at the Vatican newspaper has something in common with Rowan Williams.
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Comments (18) |
October 19, 2010, at 6:14 pm
Of course Homer Simpson isn’t Catholic!
He’d rather stay in bed for a lie-in on Sunday morning and has to be dragged to church by his wife!
Oh, wait…
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October 19, 2010, at 6:21 pm
Apparently producer Al Jean is almost a half century out of step with Catholic customs. It has been about that long since meatless Fridays have been a Catholic thing.
Some say it is too bad that it was stopped. The “experts” of Vatican II never realized how much such a custom like that becomes a community bonding agent even for those who don’t follow it, even for those who don’t go to Mass. And considering important issues today, continuing meatless Fridays would have placed the Church in the vanguard of health and environmental holiness.
Too bad those who rushed to get rid of a very ancient Christian tradition weren’t able to read the future.
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October 19, 2010, at 6:33 pm
Yeah, his 20-year absence from church shows, huh?
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October 19, 2010, at 7:53 pm
I tried to think of a witty post to this story, but sadly only a D’oh came out. I guess that is not enough to get a rise and is, in fact, quite half baked, if you’ll forgive the pun or even if you won’t.
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October 19, 2010, at 10:13 pm
well, after all, Homer would enjoy Catholic heaven.
LINK
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October 19, 2010, at 10:30 pm
These ventures into pop culture by the current editor of L’OR are very odd to me for so many reasons. What’s going on with this guy? He’s stretching things so much.
Further, why is this well-regarded important Catholic paper located in Italy so obsessed with English and American pop culture? I don’t recall whether L’OR is in Latin or Italian, but this obsession with Anglo-American pop culture seems really a personal issue with this guy. Doesn’t he have anything to say about Italian/Roman pop culture, or French, Spanish, German,etc.? I hope he is given his walking papers soon. He does not speak for the pope or the Church officially. That is one of the things that I recall was part of the evolution of L’OR under new leadership—to separate it somewhat from the Vatican. I think it’s gone too far.
It reminds me of The Economist’s obsession with the US as well. Surely, Europe has its own culture to speak of. Or is it now dead and all rely on the US?
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October 19, 2010, at 11:26 pm
Peggy, that’s an interesting point, and an angle reporters could pursue for a news story. Is someone in particular pushing boundaries or does it reflect a larger shift there?
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October 19, 2010, at 11:53 pm
As I understand it, there is an English edition only once a week or so. There are also German and other language editions other than Italian.
Supposedly the Pope wanted the L’Osservatore to be more like a regular newspaper. The light-hearted pieces should be taken in that spirit.
I don’t think the writer was necessarily claiming that the Simpsons were actually & formally Catholics. It’s more like identifying bits that fit with the Catholic world view.
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October 20, 2010, at 12:00 am
Sarah:
It’s certainly discussed on Catholic blogs each time the editor comes out with his latest pop culture pronouncements. The secular media note these pop culture blips and find them amusing, I guess, and they presume the paper is pronouncing an official Church position, which the paper is not, from what I understand. No one outside Catholic bloggers, I guess, is asking what’s behind this foray into pop culture by the staid paper of the Vatican. Do the pope & others in Vatican leadership mind these occasional pop culture observations? Is the editor wanting to increase readership? Is he really trying to make the Faith “relevant” by invoking pop culture? I don’t get it myself.
Cheers.
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October 20, 2010, at 12:03 am
As Peggy said—that newspaper should be more divorced from being virtually the voice of the pope or somehow the official voice of the Vatican or the Church.
However, I can understand an obsession with American culture. That is because American culture is becoming (in many ways already is) the world’s culture. Unfortunately, a good deal of the culture we are spreading through our entertainment and other mass media is pure moral swill. And many people hate us for this.
The American mass media won’t admit it, but a good deal of the Islamic world’s hatred of us is the product
of this cultural invasion permeated with so much moral anarchy. In fact, part of Eastern Europe and Russia’s difficulty in clearing away communism has been the fear by many there that they will become too much like us in ways they find repulsive.
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October 20, 2010, at 5:27 am
Well, yes and no. I live in eastern Europe, and I can assure you that American popular culture is indeed an extraordinarily powerful force. It is at least as well represented on television stations and newsstands as all European media products combined. Never mind the internet.
In other words, any news organ that didn’t pay attention to American media would be demonstrably out of touch with what interests its readers. That may be a bit less true for L’OR than, say, Murdoch’s Times of London, but only a bit.
And John is right that there is an element of concern, specifically over the possibility that American pop culture will bring with it more sexual libertinism and, specifically, pornography.
But, at least here, the American media presence has been quite welcome, and has done a good deal to help the movement toward a modern, democratic, capitalist society. People recognize this and seem to embrace it. This movement has been held back not by a fear of America, but by the usual European traditions of corruption, cronyism and statism. (And, I suspect, connected to that, Erastianism).
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October 20, 2010, at 6:57 am
As a Catholic, I cringe every time I read anything taken from L’OR makes headlines because the world media has got this idea that the newspaper’s articles are some kind of official Vatican pronouncement.
I mean look at those three headlines! Not “Vatican newspaper says so-and-so”… “THE VATICAN says so-and-so.”
I know that the people behind L’OR want to be “just a regular newspaper” but they need to face facts that they will never be so and that the kind of ridiculous articles that would get a pass in other newspapers will be seen as reflecting directly upon the Holy Father. I have given up on expecting newspapers to actually accurately portray what L’OR is, and so should everyone else, because that’s the way the newsmedia is. The only answer is for L’OR to actually act like what everybody thinks it is.
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October 20, 2010, at 8:31 am
I find puzzling that reporters for secular news outlets continually misrepresent L’Osservatore Romano. Its not a mouthpiece for the Vatican. The policy of current editor, who has been in place for 2.5 years, is to make the newspaper “more present in cultural debates.”
I think John Allen may have a good overview of the situation:
http://ncronline.org/news/vatican/simpsons-and-vatican-press
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October 20, 2010, at 9:36 am
I think it’s hysterical how the mass media “covers” L’OR and I suspect it’s pretty deliberate on the part of the editors. Nothing like a bit of coverage now and then to raise your profile …
BTW This cradle Vatican II Catholic does abstain from meat on Ash Wednesday and Fridays in Lent. I understand abstainness from meat has been neither a universal nor uninterrupted practice—see http://www.americancatholic.org/messenger/feb2001/wiseman.asp#F4
Abstainence from meat is meaningless to those for whom meat is rarely available. This would, of course, not include most Americans.
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October 20, 2010, at 10:35 am
In the episode “The Father, the Son and the Holy Guest Star” Bart goes to a Catholic school, and both Homer and Bart convert to Catholicism, with Homer famously saying “Once you go Vatican, you don’t go back again.”
Of course, Homer did go back again, apparently convinced by the venerable (but viciously anti-Catholic) Rev. Lovejoy to return to “the Western-American Branch of Reform Presbylutheranism”, of which the First Church of Springfield is a congregation. To my knowledge, he has not been seen in a Catholic church since that episode.
If anything, Homer is a lapsed Catholic.
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October 20, 2010, at 12:18 pm
I agree that journalists should know that the paper isn’t just a mouthpiece for the Vatican, but it’s fairly easy to see how that mistake would be made. After all, here’s the paper’s website:
http://www.vatican.va/news_services/or/home_eng.html
1) It’s hosted under the Vatican’s official domain (vatican.va).
2) It looks exactly like the rest of the Vatican’s website (same background, fonts, layout, etc.).
3) It’s listed under “News Services,” which (to me) sounds something like a PR department or the “News” section of a typical corporate or government website (which would contain press releases and other PR materials, not journalistic content).
If I’m an American journalist who doesn’t know anything about how the Vatican works or what, exactly, L’Osservatore Romano is, I would probably assume that it’s the PR mouthpiece for the Pope, just based on the website.
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October 20, 2010, at 1:01 pm
The problem is a misunderstanding of
THE VATICAN
Somehow Anglophone reporters have the idea (or promote the idea) that everything that comes out of Vatican City or its environs is reviewed and approved by the Pope and that makes it infallible.
Folks in Europe understand that isn’t so. The UK gets a kick out of reporting with that attitude and the US press picks it up.
So we get big stories on how some 85 yr old minor functionary in Rome somewhere - who happens to be a priest- thinks Catholics shouldn’t go see Harry Potter movies!
“The Vatican condemns Hogwarts” would be the headline.
It’s a joke. And some of the L’OR’s culture pieces are trying to combat the image of the humor-less “VATICAN” denouncing everything that is fun in life.
At last the Times of London’s Rome reporter Richard Own has retired. Halleluja. He’s been the source of many, many of these ridiculous stories that so tickled his readers in the UK.
Here’s a typical article of his about The VATICAN buries the hatchet with Darwin. http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/faith/article5705331.ece
He also did a very funny one on what THE VATICAN declares about Jesus and aliens, but I couldn’t find the link.
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October 20, 2010, at 1:19 pm
A little bit of clarification:
L’OR posts speeches by the Pope and covers his activities. Every once in a while it has an article that has official Curial or Papal approval and I think that is signaled by particular initials after the article. Otherwise the articles are just reporting or opinion pieces by the editorial staff or guest writers.
Weekly English edition:
http://www.vatican.va/news_services/or/or_eng/index.html
Official announcements come from the Press Office.
It’s the Daily Bulletin that is the official purveyor of announcements and the like - such as the Cardinals named today.
http://www.vatican.va/news_services/press/index.htm
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