The Media Research Center has always considered itself a den of uber-Catholics who believe that they’re more Catholic than the pope. That comes through again in a June 6 post by Dawn Slusher:
There’s a disturbing trend happening in Hollywood right now, just as the Catholic Church elected a new pope. The entertainment industry has long hated Catholics, but we’ve noticed several shows have amplified sacrilege and bigotry to new levels.
Slusher offers no evidence that there’s any link between the new pope and any purported anti-Catholic activity in the media. She then hyped demands for censorship over one incident in the show “Your Friends and Neighbors,” in which two characters “break into a Catholic church, desecrate the Eucharist, and mock the holy Sacrament of Reconciliation before attempting to have sex in a pew”:
Communion is the true presence of Christ for Catholics, becoming His body and blood at every Mass, something that should never be mocked or used as fodder for so-called entertainment. The scene has sparked viewer outrage, with some canceling their Apple TV+ subscriptions, boycotting the show, and vowing to never buy any Apple products, while CatholicVote has created a petition demanding that Apple TV+ apologize and remove the episode.
Slusher cited only random Twitter/X users ranting about this, and she did not explain how this censorship demand comports with her employer’s calls for “free speech.” She then whined about another show she does’t like, “FBI: Most Wanted”:
Thankfully, this was the final season for this unabashedly liberal drama. But the writers made sure to go out with an anti-Catholic bang, proving just how much Hollywood desperately needs to include Catholic consultants on their shows.
Episode 21, “Souls on ICE,” portrays a secret, underground, Hispanic Catholic Church that suddenly gets raided by fake ICE agents. But the priest is female, and the rosary-praying deacon is in an openly homosexual relationship. This ignores the reality of Catholic worship and teachings, pushing a clear agenda.
[…]Out of the thousands of Spanish Catholic masses around the country every week, absolutely none of them are forced to go underground to worship in secret. But who needs facts when you’re a liberal television writer with an agenda?
As if Slusher is not a right-wing activist with an agenda. She didn’t explain how her partisan agenda is more virtuous than that of the “liberal television writer.”