Depictions of Catholics and priests in the media and the culture are absurd

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Dang_Nguyen

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Sometimes I feel like I am an old man yelling at the clouds and maybe its what I am doing now but I am frustrated. The Television and film industries absolutely love dunking on Christians, specifically priests. In the name of Gothicism and in the name of drama, priests (angel) are used as villains (devil), the reversal of the roles supposedly make things more interesting. Over the last 2 TV shows that I’ve watched, they both helped to perpetuate the “stereotype” that priests are pedophiles. Father John Hughes from peaky blinders who abducts children and work as a criminal by night | Cardinal Richards from the blacklist S3E12 - a priest who feeds false information to a group of killers to kill off money launderers to “get the Vatican off of the money laundering business” This episode implies that the entire Vatican is dirty, not just the cardinal | Tommy Wattles from the blacklist S5E12 - a priest who loves women and love watching people burn alive… oh and he burns them to “cleanse them of their lust”

All were Catholic priests.
What I don’t appreciate is the way these stories try to get the audience to root against priests and religion. I get that using authoritative characters who are pure and make them a villain is a cool trope but as Aram from the Blacklist S2E11, “People’s faith is sacred, religion should be off-limit”

Epic Rap Battle of History - Guy Fawkes vs Che Guevara, Che: “Guy, you died for the Catholics, a group with a bad touching little boy habits” Not even a bit subtle.
I have also heard Catholic being grouped with Scientology and called “bad religion” by YouTube personalities.

Dunking on Christians, especially Catholic seems like the hip new trends these days, both in the media, TV shows/movies and culture.
I’ve heard a coworker of mine asking about pedophile priests after hearing I am a Catholic. He says it like he actually believed it like he believed “Catholics, a group with a bad touching little boy habits”.

I’m frustrated that these tv shows and movies could just be about the stories but are also about partisan politics and shaming any religion at all. They play off these off-handed jokes like they are actually funny and not at all offensive and demeaning. But I guess we are like the conservatives, only know to take punches from the crazies who don’t play by no rules. I am frustrated and concerned as to the indoctrination the culture is doing on the next generations. I don’t understand why no one speaks up against these things.
 
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Dang_Nguyen said:
I am frustrated and concerned as to the indoctrination the culture is doing on the next generations
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I’m more worried about it indoctrinating weak-minded people who are my own age. Young people don’t watch TV. YouTube is what we would need to keep an eye on.
 
When I see these portrayals and feel hurt, I try to use the hurt to be more empathetic to other groups who are persecuted. We are not alone in this.

The answer is to live our lives as a counterexample to these portrayals.
 
Pop culture has always tended to attack or mock mainstream religions, and also feature whatever is in the news, which right now is a lot of priest pedophilia and Vatican conspiracy theory.

There have been plenty of movies and shows with priests who weren’t bad people, including MAS*H, Father Dowling, Father Brown, The Exorcist, Sarge, even the comic stuff like Fr. Guido on SNL, and to some extent , Father Ted.

If you don’t like a show, don’t watch it, write letters to the network, don’t buy the advertiser’s products etc. Otherwise it’s just part of the everyday persecution that Jesus said true believers would have to put up with.

Hopefully the Church’s new stronger actions against priests who commit crimes will result over time in a priesthood that commands more respect in the future.
 
I watch a lot of British television. Without fail, Catholic priests on English television are either:

A) Wealthy English aristocrats (because many British aristocrats are Catholic).

B) Irish (the vast majority).

It gets a little annoying that about 90 percent of Catholic priests on these shows are Irish, not because I have anything against the Irish, but because it seems discriminatory against Irish people to essentially make a statement that all Catholic priests in England are Irish, when it’s not true.
 
Stand up for the faith. Tell those same people, that you are not okay with child sexual abuse, but why single out Catholic priests? Not to mention most priests aren’t like that. Point out that it’s a problem in other areas too, like with Protestant clergy, like with Public Schools, like with some doctors, and point out that something should be done with those too. If someone is going to judge a group based on the actions of a few, that person should be judged as well , because you should hold them to the same standards that they hold you to (See Matthew 7:1-5, in this situation, especially verse 5). I’m not saying going yell at the person you’re working with, I’m saying , maybe he should look into those details too
 
Forgive me - I am sure you can understand the situation better than me, being in the United Kingdom yourself. But yes, I do believe it is true. You see, many ‘old English families’, many of them titled, are Catholic. The Duke of Norfolk is the highest ranking peer in England, and only royalty are ‘above’ him in their official standing. The Dukes of Norfolk have always been Catholic, as are many English aristocrats. In fact, ‘old Catholic families’ are sometimes referenced in British popular culture.

I believe that a reason for this may be as follows. During the English Reformation, the titled land owning aristocrats had great power, because they owned a lot of land and had a lot of money. Perhaps the government turned a blind eye to them practising the faith, because it was afraid that they could overthrow the Protestant king - just a thought?

IC XC NIKA
 
Being from a traditional Jewish family, I feel your pain. It’s horrible, disrespectful and most of all, untrue.

All I can suggest is to hold your head up high, know that it isn’t true and voice it when it comes up. And writing letters couldn’t hurt!
 
The pedophile priest thing has gone too far in America.

My 15 year old niece has said a couple of really mean things in this regard.

The first was she was discussing at the dinner table, in front of my kids; that Catholic universities rank highest in the number of on campus sex assault cases. To be fair, she wasn’t saying sex assault, just assault.

The problem was: She was bent over laughing saying that the priests start early.

My reaction was to to just blow it off; saying I don’t think she means any offense. While grimacing angrily.

The next instance, it was again at the dinner table and she made a statement that not all Catholic priests are “ like that “.

This time, I took a stand and I corrected her; saying that the majority of priests aren’t “ like that “ and only a small minority are.

She hasn’t made another pedophile priest statement since.
 
The thing is: She was talking in code, so my sons didn’t immediately pick up on what she was was saying.

We knew what she was talking about sex assault cases.
 
She has been the victim of predators and one of her assignments in school is writing up a piece about which community she belongs to; so she chose the sex assault community.

She has done research on this and at the dinner table; before she started talking about it, she mentioned “ S “ assault.

So, we adults knew straight up she was talking sexual assault.
 
I do, I do. The correction I did was assertive; not aggressive.

Just one of my sons, who was at the table for both instances; is discerning the Church and I don’t want him to develop a fear of priests and I felt it was my duty as a Catholic to stand up and correct a problem.
 
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Dang_Nguyen said:
In the name of Gothicism
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You’d be right in thinking that there were anti-Catholic tropes in much Gothic literature, reflecting the attitudes in society at the time. Bram Stoker was an Anglican.

If you haven’t seen it, you should watch the movie Brooklyn and/or read Colm Tóibín’s novel of the same name. It portrays the Catholic Church, especially our priests, in a very positive light.
catholic03 said:
many British aristocrats are Catholic
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I know from my time living in the UK that Debrett’s used to publish a list of Catholic peers (they may still publish it, although my guess is it would be considered a bit un-PC). From what I gather, only about 5% of hereditary peers are Catholic, compared with about 10% of the British population being Catholic. I understood that support for the Catholic Church was stronger among working-class communities and that the higher social classes were more likely to be Anglican (with the exception of the recusant families and a small number of converts).
Michael16 said:
one of her assignments in school is writing up a piece about which community she belongs to; so she chose the sex assault community.
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I have never heard the term “sex assault community”. I find it quite crass to define people who are victims of sexual assaults as forming a “community”. We talk about the “gay community” or the “black community” etc., but I’ve never heard of a community defined by having been sexually violated. I guess there could be online communities formed by survivors who provide peer support online, but that is not how “community” is normally understood. If she is self-identifying as a member of “the sex assault community” I would imagine that she is a very vulnerable child and I hope that she is receiving proper support.
 
Dang_Nguyen said:
I don’t understand why no one speaks up against these things.
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What can we say except to other Christians and the people doing these things aren’t Christians…? The neo-pagans (wicca) in whose videos I saw most of these things you mention, are convinced of their claim - that our religion is wrong. We go say to a court and say their videos offense our faith, they go to the same court and say we offend the Enemy (won’t name those names here, it’s Advent) who they worship with this or that name and thus we also offend their faith.
We can’t say the Enemy is not evil just to please their own faith and so we can be depicted nicely in their videos. We have to suffer and let it go. We can’t do apostasy just to win a peace treaty.
P.S. some of the wicca I talked to online, were actually former Catholics and probably they had a conflict with priests at some point in their life, hence the theme of the priest always being the nasty character. How about what they say about Christ and Theotokos? Isn’t that even worse? They imagine they picked a better Lord in the person of the “old gods”? What can we do about it? No spell to make someone forcedfully remain faithful to God.
 
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