Catholic Anger will remain

by Editor · Published December 3, 2003 · Updated October 12, 2017

The ruling by the Broadcast Complaints Commission of South Africa (BCCSA) that an episode of the adult cartoon series South Park screened here in May was not objectionable merits further inspection.

The South Park episode, entitled “Red Hot Catholic Love”, implied that the abuse of boys “is part of the Catholic priest’s way of life”, and that all clergy were complicit in the cover-up of sexual abuses. The show presents the revelations of such abuses as being received by the cardinals as troubling, because “we’ll never be able to have sex with young boys again.” And so it continued.

The incidence of sexual abuse by a certain minority of the clergy and subsequent cover-ups at episcopal level has been amply documented. Many in the Church, from this newspaper to Pope John Paul, have acknowledged and decried these deplorable infractions perpetrated by people in positions of trust.

However, to ascribe these abuses as representative of the Church, even at the level of the Vatican, is a flagrant distortion.

It is fair to say that the Church must be prepared to face robust criticism for its actions and inactions. This, however, should not extend to vitriol, and less so to mockery of the faith itself not even in supposedly satirical cartoon shows, regardless of their “high flown intellectual precepts”, as the BCCSA would have it.

One may hesitate to invoke comparisons to the treatment of other faiths in such matters. In this instance, however, this seems apt. Would the BCCSA take as tolerant a view of a satirical TV programme that presented all Muslim clerics as terrorists on account of the pivotal role Islamic clerics occupy in al Qaeda?

Or would the BCCSA endorse a programme that might claim that all members of South Africa’s government are corrupt because a number of its parliamentarians have been convicted or accused of engaging in shady deals?

And what of pay channel M-Net, which broadcast the offensive South Park programme? The Southern Cross has repeatedly offered M-Net the opportunity to explain its decision to screen the offending episode. The channel declined our offers, and with it a possibility to apologise to its Catholic viewers.

One must magnanimously presume that M-Net initially did not understand that the broadcast of the programme would scandalise Catholics, even though the episode evoked protests in the United States, where it was screened almost a year earlier.

Demonstrably, it has caused outrage in South Africa. Is it not a common courtesy to extend an apology to those one has offended, even if inadvertently so?

In light of M-Net’s cavalier attitude, one would understand if concerned Catholics were to institute a public boycott of advertisers in M-Net’s Open Time slot, as some have already threatened.

If such a boycott becomes a reality, M-Net will have itself to blame the BCCSA judgment notwithstanding.

Meanwhile the BCCSA has failed those it is supposed to serve. Catholics may well perceive the body as dealing in double standards. Should they do so, then the BCCSA will have lost credibility among a significant portion of South Africa’s population, one that cuts across ideological lines. A public body, funded by taxes, cannot afford to surrender that trust.

The question now is this: how will the BCCSA restore the Catholic public’s confidence?