On Committed's Eucharist "Faux-Pas"
I commented yesterday on the recent episode of Committed which featured heavily on the Eucharist. I had a generally positive view of the affair, but it seems to have sparked a flap. The "Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights" issued a press release about it, and Amy Welborn down at open book is outraged. And, I have to say, I'm not understanding the offense.
This is what I had to say over at there.
People really need to stop looking to be offended and recognize that this was about an areligious man trying to respect his girlfriend's beliefs, and do what he understands as needing to be done.
I think I may have been the first blogger to comment on this today, over on lovethelife.blogspot.com. I must say, I saw the episode - I, a Catholic, with my Catholic friends - and none of us were much offended. We discussed the episode in some depth afterwards, and were amazed at just how respectful it was. Basically, you had two non-Catholics trying their best to do the right thing, and everything goes wrong.
This is hardly offensive. It doesn't insult the Eucharist. Their utter horror when they drop what they think is the Host in the toilet shows how much respect they had. If they hadn't cared, they would have flushed and been done with it.
But they didn't. They knew - knew, absolutely knew - that they needed to treat this with as much respect as they could muster, because, though it wasn't the Body of Christ to them, it was to us, to Catholics.
Come on. These characters aren't Catholic. They dont know what to do. All they know is it needs to be eaten, so they try to get it eaten.
Imagine how much worse it would have been if they had tossed it into the trash!
posted by Seatbelt Blue @ 10:44 PM
3 Comments:
Hi Brian. I commented afterwards at Amy's blog that there's a bit of talking past each other regarding the issue. Your comments reflect a consideration of the actual storyline, but the other side (includes me, no foaming in the mouth, fear not) is about how the writers and producers had crossed ethical boundaries in using the Holy Eucharist as a comic prop. I personally don't advocate closing down the show myself, but I would like more sensitivity in the future from the writers and producers.
If you have occasion, please read Professor Philip Jenkin's "The New Anti-Catholicism: the Last Acceptable Prejudice" or some of his articles about the topic. I left a link to one such article over at Amy's blog.
I think it's best that our arguments focus on the product rather than on the intent. Which holds more weight - intent or action?
See, to me, the artist or writer's motivation is the least of my concerns; I find music by some bands very prayerful, but the musicians themselves did not intend them to be such.
These things are always pretty subjective.
I wonder if Dante should have had popes going through a baptistry upside down in a mockery of baptism. Of course, Dante wasn't mocking baptism, but his characters were.
I truly respected "Committed"s handling of the humor because it was integral to the story line of interfaith dating -- something NEVER addressed on TV. Committed has stepped on many taboos and this is the first Catholic one. I wonder that none of these Catholics are complaining about these other stories . . .
Post a Comment
<< Home