Four US Catholic bishops have signed an advertisement directly challenging allegations by rightwing church groups that the television series Nothing Sacred is anti-Catholic. The series, which begins on RTE 1 on Wednesday, February 4th, at 10.10 p.m., is about a young priest in a deprived city parish who finds himself directly confronted by issues such as abortion, celibacy, divorce, and the ordination of women.
The ABC series has been the target of a campaign by members of the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights, a small but vociferous group within the US Catholic Church. They attempted to get viewers to boycott companies which advertised during the programme.
Bishop Raymond Lucker of New Ulm, Minnesota, and auxiliary Bishops Peter Rosazza of Hartford, Connecticut; Francis Murphy of Baltimore, and Thomas Gumbleton of Detroit, have signed the advertisement of support for the series. It says they "cannot stand idly by while a wonderful television show is unfairly maligned".
"There are many voices of Catholicism in America," the advertisement continues. "The Catholic League (for Religious and Civil Rights) which has orchestrated an advertiser boycott of the program does not represent them all. In fact, by their own numbers, they represent less than one per cent. They do not speak for most American Catholics. They do not speak for us..."
Mr Dermot Horan, Head of Programme Acquisitions at RTE, who bought the series after seeing a pilot episode in Los Angeles last May, said he believed an Irish audience would find it "both compulsive and absorbing".
