Catholic Church

At this point, there’s little that HBO’s The New Pope can do to shock audiences anymore. It’s already ridiculed the Church, propped up needless sex, and "upgraded" the Bible. Comparing “whores” to saints or revealing pedophilia in the high ranks is almost no big deal. And that’s what makes the series worse.

HBO is currently running a dark little miniseries called The New Pope, which is basically a reboot of 2017's The Young Pope. Both sprang from the mind of Italian creator Paolo Sorrentino, and both are scabrously anti-Catholic, which never hurts you with the elites in Manhattan and Hollywood. In between these, HBO trashed televangelists in The Righteous Gemstones. They're never going to make a…

This was bound to happen eventually. The latest episode of HBO’s The New Pope now has the audacity to suggest “upgrading” the Bible and the Church to include gay marriage. Somehow, I don’t think the series that’s bashed the Church and called prostitution a “miracle” has any right to lecture Christians.

Not satisfied with simply overtaking its predecessor season, HBO’s The New Pope now seems determined to stuff as many offensive materials in a single hour. Within the latest hour alone, we have Marilyn Manson advising the Pope, rebellious nuns asking for equal rights, homosexual priests sleeping around, and even more breasts. Never before has a show about the Church so desperately needed Jesus.

HBO’s The New Pope is still attempting to prove itself just as bad if not worse than its predecessor series The Young Pope. To do that, the show proceeds to show us how the cardinals and priests ruin lives and are generally terrible people. This time around, they push a woman into prostitution and cause a nun protest. There’s apparently nothing terrible that isn’t caused by someone religious.

After everything we’ve seen from The Young Pope, the only way HBO’s follow-up The New Pope would stand out is if it tried to be reverent. Unfortunately, even after two episodes, it’s clear that we’re just going back to the same pattern of being obscene and insulting the Church. The “Second Episode” proves that with more nudity and a jab on how the Church “loves.”

Not wanting to be outdone by Netflix, HBO presents its own anti-religious series in The New Pope. This companion series to HBO’s previous blasphemous, slanderous, and all-around unpleasant series The Young Pope is set to make up for the nearly three-year absence of terribleness. If the "First Episode" is any indication, we’re only getting started.

Seth MacFarlane loves mocking Christians. Family Guy has called them “stupid people” and “idiots” and mocked Jesus. MacFarlane often makes a point to mock Catholics and Catholic priests, in particular. He has used the stale “pedophile priest joke” in the past. MacFarlane must be running out of material because he reached for the pedophile priest “gag” again this week on Family Guy.

Hollywood loves taking apart conservatives. So when presented with the idea of men in the highest reaches of the conservative media sexually harassing women at the office, it was manna from heaven. You’ll not find a ripped-from-the-headlines TV dramatization of Harvey Weinstein's predations. There's no hellish-office movie on the sexual abuses of Matt Lauer at NBC, or Charlie Rose at CBS. There…

It was bound to happen: a show about the LGBT community and an episode about bathrooms. In the December 29 episode of Work in Progress, “161, 153, 137, 122, 106, 104, 102 (We're Still Counting Almonds),” main character Abby (Abby McEnany), who is a lesbian, laments how she’s confused for a man when she uses the bathroom.

Showtime’s The L Word: Generation Q is a weekly left-wing propaganda lecture with nudity thrown-in. It is the sort of show Shonda Rhimes would create if she did not have the restrictions of network television. This week, just in time for Christmas, the show threw in dialogue comparing a lesbian minister’s relationship with Jesus to an open sexual one.

Christian radio host Eric Metaxas took on a big job when he agreed to try to explain to CNN's Chris Cuomo on Friday night why an evangelical Christian or a Catholic would vote for Donald Trump and not somehow be a terrible Christian. It was fun when Metaxas pointed out Cuomo's "Catholic" brother Andrew legalized third-trimester abortions in New York. 

The Christmas season is in full swing which means it’s time for shows to insult and denigrate Christianity as a gimmick. CBS’s Evil does its part by introducing the classic scenario of a priest having sex against his studies. Heaven forbid a priest can be a main character without turning to sex.