The Vatican daily L’Osservatore Romano has published an article praising Matt Groening’s irreverent comedy The Simpsons and citing a magazine article by a Jesuit priest who maintains that Homer and Bart are Catholics.
”The Simpsons are one of the few TV programmes for children left in which Christian faith, religion and questions about God are recurring themese,” said Occhetta.
”The family say a prayer before their meals and, in their way, believe in the afterlife”.
In his paper, Occhetta focuses on a 2005 episode in which Bart enrols at a Catholic school after being expelled from Springfield Elementary, which leads to Homer converting to Catholicism.
H/T: Comics Riff
Well don’t tell Ned Flanders or Reverend Lovejoy.
While it is true that the Simpsons, including Lisa, are depicted as mildly religious (Christian and Buddhist respectively), what would be the need to claim them for any specific denomination? Overall their irreverent reverence (or reverent irreverence) is used to comment on not taking any aspect of life too seriously, so I can’t see why it would ultimately matter which faith they belonged to.
Also, d’oh, they are cartoon characters!
This is bizarre.
Wouldn’t it make more sense for them to come out and praise “Veggie Tales” or ” Davey and Goliath”?
Also, I’ve seen some episodes of the Simpsons that don’t exactly portray a reverance for Christianity, or religion at all for that matter, so I’m not sure why a Vatican fishwrap would say that. Not sure if it was true why they would care.
I doubt the Southern Baptist Convention newsletter is going to ‘out’ Peter Griffin as a fundamentalist evangelical any time soon…
It was in one episode and was never rescinded, despite showing Homer and Bart attending Reverend Lovejoy’s church several times since then.
Pope just wants to be in an episode of the Simpsons and is trying to bait them.
Catholic eh?…..is there a Church in the town?..I know there was a Temple…..