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?
