Stallone Has Faith in Show About a Priest

Father Lefty

My brain hurts.

How ironic! Stallone's father was a priest, or so his wacky mother proclaimed on dozens of talk shows.

You know this might turn out to be pretty good. I am so tired of all the law, cop, and
hospital shows. The last priest show, "Father Dowling Mysteries" didn't do too bad.

Father Lefty. Has ABC seen this?

I recall some dumb lefty show within the last 5 years where the priest gave out bad advice about abortion and sexual morality and even doubted the existence of God. It was a terrible show and was cancelled. Can't remember the name....

I'm thinking it was "Becket"(sp?).

The American Catholic Church on TV

Terry Mattingly's religion column for 09/24/1997

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No doubt about it, the creators of ABC's "Nothing Sacred" knew which scenes would get the most ink.

Like the premiere's scene in which a girl confesses that she's tempted to get an abortion and Father Ray tells her to follow her conscience. Or that night at the Valhalla Inn when he is tempted to sleep with the woman who was his lover during seminary.

But the real headline grabber is Father Ray's hip sermon bemoaning the church's obsession with sex.

"I am declaring a moratorium on sins of the flesh in St. Thomas Parish," he says, and then holds up a Bible. "You see this little book? This is the gospel. If it was written today, it wouldn't get published. Not enough sex. And all of the stuff that we've reduced religion to -- contraception, homosexuality, promiscuity, abortion -- they aren't in here. Oh, maybe a mention. But they're not what the book is about. And I was not ordained to be a sexual traffic cop, which is what I'm turning into most of the time. So, until further notice, I will not hear any more sexual sins in the confessional."

Cue the congregation, which applauds.

Father Ray isn't obsessed with sex, of course, and neither are the writers of this fall's most controversial new offering in prime time. And executive producer David Manson is shocked -- repeat shocked -- that many have been offended by events in this fictional parish.

"Hopefully, it'll be clear after a period of time that we're trying to give voice to many different points of view, that we believe there is an active pluralism inside the church," he wrote, defending the series on its Internet site. "We're trying to make sure that different points of view get articulated intelligently and with passion. ... We would like to get people thinking and talking about not only issues of the spirit but about the notion of inclusion."

Millions of American Catholics would say "amen" and will find "Nothing Sacred" beautiful, well acted, accurate and spiritually sensitive. These Catholics feel at home in the pluralistic body that many commentators call the American Catholic Church. But millions of others will disagree and see the series as another Hollywood attack on the Roman Catholic Church. One person's "dialogue" is another's "dissent." Meanwhile, the gospel according to "Nothing Sacred" is crystal clear: discipline, doctrines and creeds are the enemies of freedom, faith and spirituality.

In addition to sex, the premiere punched other buttons. Entertainment Weekly reports that it was written by Father Bill Kane, a Jesuit, using the pseudonym Paul Leland.

One reason Father Ray is so exhausted and angry is that he is hounded by critics who tape his unorthodox whispers in the confession booth and leak them to the ecclesiastical police. "It's just politics," says another priest. The problem, another priest adds, is a traditionalist hit squad called "Vinculum Caritatis" - Latin for "chains of love." This fictionalized group is probably a cross between advocates of the Latin Mass and another conservative group called Catholics United for the Faith.

And then there are the sacraments. During Mass, Father Ray offers a prayer over the bread and wine that is straight out of the Shirley Maclaine school of liturgy, saying: "Transform us, as you will transform these gifts, into life - deep and true." Later, he baptizes an infant without making the sign of the cross or referring to the Trinity of "Father, Son and Holy Spirit." In the most dramatic scene, the priest dabs holy oil on the forehead of a troubled teen who has rejected Christianity, while invoking the Eastern martial arts traditions of Sholin monks.

"The show's central premise is that the only good Catholic is a bad Catholic," said Father Gregory Coiro, media relations director for the Archdiocese of Los Angeles, who has been critiquing rough scripts for ABC. "It's like they are saying that traditional Roman Catholicism is now a false substitute for the `real thing,' which is some kind of new faith that is completely built on experience and feelings. Well, that isn't the Catholic faith."

Terry Mattingly (www.tmatt.net) teaches at Palm Beach Atlantic College and is senior fellow for journalism at the Council for Christian Colleges & Universities. He writes this weekly column for the Scripps Howard News Service.

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Bozell Columns -- 04/01/1998 -- 'Nothing Sacred': The End

'Nothing Sacred': The End
By L. Brent Bozell III
April 1, 1998
In mid-March, after incurring the wrath of millions of Christians, ABC finally canceled the Catholic-bashing drama "Nothing Sacred," thereby granting blessed relief to opponents of blatantly, calculatedly offensive television.
Those who pointed out, even before this series premiered last September, that it was a fiasco in the making have been proven absolutely right. Although liberal TV critics (predictably) heaped praise on "Nothing Sacred," its premiere finished only in the middle of the Nielsen pack. Be patient, ABC told the world; sophisticated shows take time to build an audience. But week after week of anti-Catholic programming made matters worse; ratings for the series fell off considerably. Then, adding injury to insult, advertisers started pulling out, publicly acknowledging that they wanted nothing to do with anti-religious bigotry. (In the end, more than three dozen sponsors withdrew.)
But a determined ABC poured huge amounts of money into advertising to turn the tide. Programs that rated higher than "Nothing Sacred" were taken off the schedule, but to the public's amazement, "Nothing Sacred" was renewed for another thirteen episodes. The network told the world it had figured out the problem: Wrong time slot! So they moved the show to Saturday night. There, in its final two airings, it registered dead last in the ratings. ABC was forced to concede defeat.
But have supporters of "Nothing Sacred" learned anything from all this? The easy answer is No. Common sense indicated that there was no market whatsoever for a drama trashing Catholicism. Take away disgruntled left-wing Catholics, militant homosexuals, and a handful of other perpetually angry opponents of tradition, any tradition -- and you've got the other 99% of the public to deal with. That made no difference to ABC, nor did the huge amount of money the network lost on this doomed-from-the-start project. ABC had an agenda, pure and simple, and they were going to see it through.
Now that the show is gone, the same sense of denial is back. The TV critics that pushed the show refuse to admit the failure of the series was attributable to its sheer obnoxiousness. Rather, they blame both ABC, for moving it around the schedule, and the viewing public, for being too dumb to appreciate it. Their enthusiastic praise for "Nothing Sacred," juxtaposed with its anemic ratings, demonstrate not only that the concept of a "media elite" is valid, but also that the mantra "television only reflects reality" is sheer nonsense since those involved in the business of television have no idea what reality is. To wit:
--Ken Parish Perkins, Fort Worth Star-Telegram: "You can only push so far in television before sweaty accountants start showing up... I suppose 'Nothing Sacred' could have had a better shot at success had it been... not so challenging... In 'Touched By an Angel' and ''7th Heaven,' or even 'Promised Land'... spiritual growth never appears to be all that messy, and problems are always resolved." (Imagine the nerve of those programs' producers, putting life-affirming messages on the air!)
--Joanne Ostrow, Denver Post: "High-minded... Too smart for TV." (Translation: Too enlightened for the poor, uneducated, and easy-to-command types.)
--Allan Johnson, Chicago Tribune: "A sensitive, quietly powerful series examining faith in God in the face of today's harsh realities."
--Tim Cuprisin, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: "It was the only prime time... show to deal with religion... Not religion as angels and fantasy, but religion as an integral part of the lives of realistic characters." ("Angels and fantasy"! I think we just found the long-absent Madalyn Murray O'Hair, and she's working under an assumed name.)
Floundering ABC, which finished last among the full-time webs in the February sweeps, simply couldn't carry "Nothing Sacred" any longer. But how the network probably feels, deep down, about the show is suggested by its publicist, who sighed that one of the hearts broken by its demise was "mine... I [won't] get to read those fabulous scripts anymore."
"Nothing Sacred" executive producer David Manson declared that his series "tried to... deal not just simply with... religion but with paradox and ambiguity in terms of human behavior... I'm hoping there's a cable channel out there that's not as convulsed with the need to prop up their overnight ratings and might be interested in this kind of a show." ( I suspect that Ted Turner, who owns not a few cable networks and who once referred to Christianity as "a religion for losers," may be getting a call from Manson any day now.)
Ultimately, "Nothing Sacred" is defunct because almost everyone in America had the good sense not to watch. But credit for leading the charge against it is due William Donohue, the indefatigable president of the Catholic League. I'm sure Mr. Donohue would agree that this is only one battle victory in an ongoing cultural war. But it's a big one. "Nothing Sacred" is gone. Thank God.
Reprinted by permission of L. Brent Bozell and Creators Syndicate.
To reprint this article, or future editions of Brent Bozell's weekly syndicated column,
simply contact Creators Syndicate at (310) 337-7003 ext. 110 http://www.creators.com

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Wasn't there a series about a priest about 15 years ago starring...

Robert Blake?

You mean

This one?

Then there's this disturbing image from David Lynch's "Lost Highway" (1997):

I recall some dumb lefty show within the last 5 years where the priest gave out bad advice about abortion and sexual morality and even doubted the existence of God. It was a terrible show and was cancelled. Can't remember the name....

I remember that show but not the name of it. It crashed and burned quite quickly. Hollywood musta thought we wanted to experience "hip" priests. They were sure wrong about that.

If it's good, I'll watch.

Most of the priests I know are Lefties so it's appropriate.

To paraphrase one of my favorite lines from the movie, "Network", I hope Stallone dies soon.