Wednesday, November 24, 2010

In Excelsis d'oh! Why the Vatican is turning to Homer for help

You know the Catholic Church is pretty desperate for recruits when it holds Homer Simpson up as a poster boy. 

But that's exactly what Papa Razzi's official newspaper did when it bizarrely declared the cuddly pea-brained baldie a 'true Catholic'.

Even though he's shown being dragged weekly to the Presbylutheran First Church of Springfield, Vatican City's daily broadsheet L'Osservatore Romano hailed in a headline: 'Homer and Bart are Catholic'.

"Few people know it, and he does everything he can to hide it, but it is true: Homer J Simpson is a Catholic," insists the Papal paper. "[The family] recites prayers before meals and, in their own peculiar way, believes in the life thereafter."

The article cited a 2005 episode of the cult show The Father, The Son and The Holy Guest Star, in which Bart is expelled from Springfield Elementary School and enrolled in a Catholic school where he's lured into the faith by a kindly priest, voiced by Liam Neeson.

His doughnut-loving dad also decides to convert in the season 16 finale, which touches on topics like contraception, homosexuality and stem-cell research and aired just weeks after the death of Pope John Paul II.

Whether poking fun at Reverend Lovejoy's soporific sermons or Krusty the Clown's blingtastic Bar Mitzvah, the long-running cartoon series certainly takes regular swipes at organised religion.

But Homer Simpson -- a Catholic icon?

In Excelsis D'oh! says Simpsons producer Al Jean.

"My first reaction is shock and awe," he says, "and I guess it makes up for me not going to church for 20 years.

"We've pretty clearly shown that Homer is not Catholic. I really don't think he could go without eating meat on Fridays -- for even an hour."

Ned Flanders must be pretty miffed too.

After all, we're talking about a profane, pot-bellied buffoon who once prayed for God to find his TV remote, inflicts never-ending humiliation on his evangelical neighbour and describes Jesus as a "dude who lived a million years ago, who most of us think was magic".

Still, you can't blame the Vatican for trying.

Rocked by charges of everything from sex abuse to cover-ups, misogyny to homophobia, Irish Catholics are quitting the Church in droves.

The number of people declaring themselves of 'No Religion' on the 2006 census was 186,318 -- compared to just 1,107 in the Catholic-run Ireland of 1961.

On the same poll, 86% professed to be Roman Catholic -- but it's guesstimated that only about half of those actually practice the faith by attending mass.

From church to echo chamber, if the trend continues priests across the country could find themselves preaching to row upon row of empty pews on Sunday mornings.

Ireland's young Catholics -- on paper, anyhow -- may find it easier to identify with Homer Simpson than Pope Benedict, reckons Paul Dunbar of CountMeOut.ie, a website set up to help people defect from the Church.

"The majority of people using the site are aged 20-35 and are either lapsed Catholics or want to renounce their membership in protest over the various scandals that have come out," says co-founder Paul (30) from Sligo. 

"But we've also had lots of parents wanting to take their children out of the Church and even elderly people."

'Growing up, my parents revered the local priest and bishop and viewed them as pillars of the community. Young people now don't see it that way and are at a loss for Catholic role models.

"Some celebrities like Wayne Rooney and Mel Gibson have been vocal about Catholicism -- but in light of recent stories about them, Homer Simpson is a probably a better role model!"

Since being set up, 12,007 card-carrying Catholics have made a 'Declaration of Defection' through the website.

But recently it was forced to suspend its service because of changes to Canon Law which make it impossible to formally quit the Roman Catholic Church -- swiftly dubbed 'The Hotel California clause' since you can check out, but you can never leave.

"You can never be 'unbaptised'," explains Paul, "but in the past, people would declare their defection which was then noted on the baptismal register. Now, the Church is refusing to formally acknowledge defection at all, so Catholics who want to leave are stuck in a sort of limbo."

Today's youngsters may rather a lie-in to early-morning mass, but that doesn't mean they're losing their religion says Michael Kelly of the Irish Catholic newspaper.

"There's no doubt that a lot of young people don't go to mass any more," says the deputy editor of the weekly religious title, "but I don't think that's any different to 10 years ago.
 "Just because they're not practising, doesn't mean they're not still living by the tenets of the faith. Teenagers here are volunteering in record numbers; they're still very altruistic and charitable.

"If you go to the Gardiner Street Gospel Choir mass on Sundays, it's packed with young people -- so they haven't given up on Catholicism completely."

One Limerick youth group keeping the faith even discovered that the 'Hail Mary' is the go-to prayer of Irish people last week.

In a €6 fundraising book for the Youth Ministry in the Diocese of Limerick, school children from across the county canvassed 2,000 disciples to discover the country's all-time favourite prayer. 

And the mother of God managed to bump the 'Angel of God' and 'Our Father' into second and third place, respectively.

So he may snooze his way through Reverend Lovejoy's homilies, but perhaps straight-talking Homer Simpson isn't such a bad example after all, argues Michael Kelly.

"Young people may be more comfortable with an á la carte approach to Catholicism," he says. 

"They're much more questioning of certain tenets of the faith and will take on the ones that are relevant to them."

But he admits: "The Church hasn't really learned the language of modern society. Some university chaplains across the country are doing great work by getting students together once a week in a pub to talk about their faith -- it's not as threatening as the confession box."

Provided there's Duff Beer on tap, that's a Church even Homer himself would happily attend.

SIC: II/IE