I Love this article:
Please feel free to share it with others in your sphere of influence.
Years ago, I was surprised by my joy in watching The Simpsons....and later met one of the key writers of the show. He is a committed Christian who has been aboard their production company for years - helping craft the often-positive messages of God, family, frustration and laughter. I simply like him.
Since Homer Simpson "graduated" from High School around the same year as my bride and I did (plus-or minus, 1974), the show has given me many moments of joy and humorous self-reflection...
Apparently, it did the same thing for some Vatican officials!
Den
Vatican paper says ‘Simpsons’ are okely dokely
L'Osservatore Romano says Homer’s religious confusion mirrors man’s
 Fox via AP To put it as the devout Ned Flanders would, the Vatican's newspaper thinks "The Simpsons" are an okely dokely bunch. |
updated 5:21 p.m. MT, Tues., Dec . 22, 2009
VATICAN CITY - To put it as the devout Ned Flanders would, the Vatican's newspaper thinks "The Simpsons" are an okely dokely bunch.
L'Osservatore Romano on Tuesday congratulated the show on its 20th anniversary, praising its philosophical leanings as well as its stinging and often irreverent take on religion.
Without Homer Simpson and the other yellow-skinned characters "many today wouldn't know how to laugh," said the article titled "Aristotle's Virtues and Homer's Doughnut."
The paper credited "The Simpsons" — the longest-running American animated program — with opening up cartoons to an adult audience.
The show is based on "realistic and intelligent writing," it said, though it added there was some reason to criticize its "excessively crude language, the violence of certain episodes or some extreme choices by the scriptwriters."
Religion, from the snore-evoking sermons of the Rev. Lovejoy to Homer's face-to-face talks with God, appears so frequently on the show that it could be possible to come up with a "Simpsonian theology," it said.
Homer's religious confusion and ignorance are "a mirror of the indifference and the need that modern man feels toward faith," the paper said.
It commented on several religion-themed episodes, including one in which Homer calls for divine intervention by crying: "I'm not normally a religious man, but if you're up there, save me,
"Homer finds in God his last refuge, even though he sometimes gets His name sensationally wrong," L'Osservatore said. "But these are just minor mistakes, after all, the two know each other well."
Copyright 2009 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
Thank you, my friends. Good work on keeping the story "honest".
Den
Posted by: Dennis Mansfield | December 23, 2009 at 11:18 PM
The story is not a hoax. Here is the link to the story, in Italian.
http://www.vatican.va/news_services/or/or_quo/cultura/296q05a1.html
Posted by: ADR | December 23, 2009 at 06:41 PM
As much as I love this story - It smells like a HOAX. I have searched all over and I can't find the Vatican paper that it refers to.
Posted by: Alan | December 23, 2009 at 01:22 PM
I heard a preacher say once that there was more truth in ten minutes of the Simpsons than could be found in any typical hour of TBN.
Posted by: Justin Boggs | December 23, 2009 at 12:37 PM