Catholic group calls Showtime’s mockery of Mother Teresa, vicious, monstrous

May 25, 2005 / 22:00 pm

Shareholders in the media giant, Viacom, will be greeted by many unhappy faces as they enter a meeting at New York’s Marriot Marquis Hotel this afternoon.

William Donohue, president of the Catholic League, an organization for religious and civil rights, is leading a charge, railing against the company, and their subsidiary, Showtime, for airing a program which they call “a full frontal assault” on the late Mother Teresa and the Catholic Church.

The program, “Holier than thou”, starring magician entertainers Penn and Teller, paints Mother Theresa and her Sisters of Charity as “cruel, exploitative, self-serving nun[s] who ripped off the poor,” according to Donohue.

“In the 12 years that I have been president of the Catholic League,” he wrote yesterday, “I have never witnessed a more vicious attack on Catholicism than what appeared this week on the Showtime program, ‘Penn and Teller.’  The episode, ‘Holier Than Thou,’ was a frontal assault on Mother Teresa and her order of nuns, Missionaries of Charity (as well as Gandhi and the Dali Lama).”

In the episode, says Donohue, “We are told that Mother Teresa intentionally let the poor suffer, providing neither beds nor bathroom facilities.  ‘She had the f—king coin and pissed it away on nunneries,’ says Penn.  As for the nuns who worked with Mother Teresa, they are referred to as ‘f—king c—ts.’”

The Catholic League announced yesterday that it would hold a press conference outside of the Manhattan hotel at 1:30 today and that copies of Donohue’s statement regarding the show would be handed out to shareholders as they enter.

Likewise, they said that additional copies would be mailed to bishops and other interested parties throughout the nation.

Donohue continued: “It does not bother me when they call me ‘Catholic Boy’ on the show (though the term ‘Jew Boy’ would never cross their lips), nor does it concern me when they talk about ‘f—kers like Bill Donohue [who] only see good in her.’  But when they mock the Catholic Church’s teaching on the meaning of suffering, and when they say of the poor that ‘They had to suffer so that Mother F—king Teresa could be enlightened,’ then they are behaving like monsters.”