Ed Brayton is a journalist, commentator and speaker. He is the co-founder and president of 
The New York Times reports on a controversy in Italy over recent satirical sketches aimed at the Vatican by Italian comedians. In one instance:
In one radio skit, Rosario Fiorello, a comedian, portrayed Monsignor Gänswein dining at a brand-new restaurant called "the Last Supper," where "one portion of fish was shared by 20." He used a cellphone with Handel's "Hallelujah" chorus as its ring tone.The pope himself is also subject to ribbing. On Tuesday night, in a television skit, the comedian Maurizio Crozza impersonated Pope Benedict being a mite touchy about comparisons to his media-darling predecessor, Pope John Paul II, who was frail for years before his death. "Could Pope Wojtyla do this?" he barked to two attendants, bursting into song and tap dancing. "Or this?" he added, juggling three oranges.
This prompted a reply from the Vatican and the Pope's personal secretary:
The popularity of the satire appears to have unnerved Monsignor Gänswein, who reportedly told the Italian news agency Adnkronos that he hoped the impersonations "would stop soon." He did not object to satire, he said, but the spoofs "offended men of the church."They also struck a nerve with L'Avvenire, a newspaper owned by the Italian Bishops' Conference, which accused the comedians of "satirical fundamentalism."
In a front-page editorial on Friday, the paper complained that the jokes had been unwarranted. "Perhaps there is the secret intention to see if the church will respond like some Muslims responded to the satirical cartoons or to articles that criticize Islam, to then scream scandal," wrote Carlo Cardia, an author who writes about the Catholic Church and a professor of ecclesiastical law at the University of Rome. The Catholic newspaper has said that it does not want to engage in polemics about whether it is acceptable to poke fun at the pope.
But remember, the Vatican has already boldly proclaimed that free speech stops as soon as any religious person is offended:
"The Holy See has reiterated on many occasions that the right to freedom of expression... is subject to just limits, in particular when the exercise of this right would offend the religious sentiments of believers," the Vatican said.
The religious sentiments of unbelievers, of course, matter not a bit. For some reason, the Vatican thinks that religious beliefs, unlike all other beliefs, should be granted government protection from all criticism and ridicule and that people who dare to offend a religious person should be thrown in jail.
The second example from the article was actually much funnier:
But some Italians have taken offense at jokes like one that Luca Borgomeo, the president of an association that serves as a watchdog of television entertainment, recalls the comedian Paolo Rossi telling on national television: The Holy Trinity won a free trip and had to decide where to go. God the Father said he would like to go to Africa, Jesus to Palestine, and the Holy Spirit to the Vatican. Asked why, the Holy Spirit responded: "Because I've never been there."
That's pretty funny.
Comments
Love the joke about the Holy Trinity's vacation. It reminds me of what William Donohue of the Catholic League said during last year's "war on Christmas": Donohue was upset that the White House sent out a holiday card that did not specifically say "Merry Christmas" on it. While he was ranting and raving about it, a CNN reporter asked him if Jesus Christ would have been offended by receiving such a card. Without thinking (probably normal for him), Donohue replied, "Well, maybe he would, but I've never met him."
Ha!
Posted by: Zeno | November 19, 2006 11:30 AM
Let me get this straight. An organization that has tortured and murdered millions of people can state, "if you do not profess and demonstrate agreement with our interpretation of a chosen body of scripture, you will be subject to (infinite) pain and suffering," and they're simply exercising their religious freedom, to be protected without exception. But for a single individual who has harmed nobody to state, "a leader of the CC behaves foolishly" or "a leader of the CC is subject to normal human fallibility," is portrayed as an attack on religious freedom, to be supressed by the government.
When we hear these sentiments from political leaders, we call them dictators, totalitarians, fascists, and call for their destruction. Why should we look at these despots any differently?
Posted by: ben | November 19, 2006 12:32 PM
Apparently the outing of Ted Haggard, who had that collection of cherub-faced assistants, has clued people in to the fact that the Prada Pope surrounds himself with a similar posse (google a picture of Monsignor Gänswein, for instance). At least Ted could cover things up by getting married.
Posted by: kehrsam | November 19, 2006 12:52 PM
It's not universally true, but I've found it to be a good rule of thumb that whenever any religionist says "I don't object to X, but..." -- what they really mean is "yes, we strenuously object, and had we the power, we would burn Xers at the stake!"
Posted by: Greg Byshenk | November 19, 2006 1:29 PM
Posted by: Mustafa Mond, FCD | November 19, 2006 1:41 PM
What was the deal with that "satirical fundamnetalism" comment anyway? I figured something was lost in the translation. Maybe there was some clever connotation that just didn't carry over into English...
Although I should probably take it as a good sign that it is now considered extra insulting to tack "fundamantalist" onto any um... pronoun. Or noun even. And that there exists a Catholic in the Vatican who apparently seen so irony in this. (!)
I suppose there are all manner of insidious ffundamentalists out there. Food fundamentaists menacing the free-form chefs of today's fusion obsessed restaraunts... Insulting the Chipotle frequenters of the world. Demanding that red wine never, ever be served with dill cream sauce.
Shame, really. The word was more fun when it actually meant something.
Posted by: Leni | November 19, 2006 3:42 PM
Ed's blog has been a hotbed of civil liberties fundamentalism for as long as I've been reading it. We're all a bunch of anti-dogmatism dogmatists. We should be ashamed of ourselves.
Posted by: Sastra | November 19, 2006 5:02 PM
Hey, go easy on the Pope. If you're the heir to St. Peter himself, and charged by God with authority to bind and loose on Earth, having people openly disagreeing with you must come as a bit of a shock. ;-)
Posted by: Nebogipfel | November 20, 2006 4:30 AM
So don't.
Posted by: Ginger Yellow | November 20, 2006 6:26 AM
Maybe that's why the Pope went to Turkey; to discuss the how's and why's of their insult laws! lol
Posted by: twincats | November 20, 2006 10:19 PM