Vatican likes 'The Simpsons'

Wednesday, December 23, 2009

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L'Osservatore Romano praised 'The Simpsons' on the 20th anniversary of the animated show, saying that despite crude language and occasions of violence, "serious analysts praise the realism and intelligence of its scripts".

The Vatican paper The Simpsons as a "tender and irreverent, scandalous and ironic, boisterous and profound, philosophical and sometimes even theological, nutty synthesis of pop culture and of the lukewarm and nihilistic American middle class".

Among themes featured in the show's almost 450 episodes, "one of the most important, and most serious" is that of God. The relationship between each person and God is done in a way that mirrors "the religious and spiritual confusion of our times," it said.

Religion, from sermons of the Reverend Lovejoy to Homer's talks with God, appears so frequently on the show that it could be possible to come up with a "Simpsonian theology," according to the Associated Press.

Homer's religious confusion and ignorance are "a mirror of the indifference and the need that modern man feels toward faith," said L'Osservatore Romano.

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