Hindus have blamed Vatican for mere greed in claiming animated television family "The Simpsons" as Catholics.
Why would Vatican need to enroll a dysfunctional cartoon family into
its flock when Roman Catholic numbers were already about 1.17 billion
(or about 17.4 percent of world population), eminent Hindu statesman
Rajan Zed wondered in a statement in Nevada (USA) today.
A recent edition of "L'Osservatore Romano", 149 years old daily
Italian newspaper of the Holy See, declared Homer J. Simpson and his
son Bart of the animated cartoon family of American sitcom series
"The Simpsons" as Catholics.
But Simpsons' executive producer Al
Jean later contradicted in the media that Simpsons were not Catholic
and instead attended Presbylutheran church.
Zed, who is President of Universal Society of Hinduism, further said
that claiming fictional cartoon characters from the world of television
as your flock was exaggeration, wishful thinking and plain old greed.
So, was this the follow-up to the call of His Holiness Pope
Benedict XVI on World Youth Day in Sydney (Australia) in 2008 of
building a greed-free world, Rajan Zed asked?
Zed quoted ancient Hindu scripture, Bhagavad-Gita, which says: there
are three gates to self-destructive hell-greed, anger, and desire.
Abandon these three. A person freed from these three gates of
darkness, seeks what is best and attains life's highest goal.
Created for Fox by Matt Groening, "The Simpsons", longest-running
American animated television series comedy in history, debuted in 1989,
has reportedly won 27 Emmy Awards and Time magazine named it as the
best television series of 20th century.
"The Simpson" family
reportedly has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.
SIC: Sify/INT'L