Well done NPR, well done.

[TW: Sexual Abuse]

In an ill-advised and Overtonian attempt to show it's down with the kids these days and their "pop culture", the Vatican recently declared that the Simpsons are Catholic. There's plenty of snark to be had here, but permit me to be serious for a moment. In case you haven't noticed, the Catholic Church is having a bit of a rough year (er... decades?). And even if you manage to get past the sexual abuse, it's hard to get around the fact that many young people aren't buying the Vatican's bigoted stance on any number of social issues, which is undoubtedly bad for the family business.

What's a church to do but throw on some hammer pants, crank up the Miley Cyprus and start "rapping" about the latest popular trends?

If it couldn't get any worse, the Vatican desperately wanted to pretend that it's not merely pandering to the young people with this latest pronouncement, which means that it had to whip out the faux philosophy (fauxlosophy?):

The Vatican newspaper L'Osservatore wrote:

"Skeptical realism seems to prevail in the Simpson stories... Young generations of television watchers are educated to not let themselves be fooled. The moral? None. But one knows that a world without easy illusions is a more human world and, perhaps, more Christian."

Yeah, that and "I caught you a delicious bass" gets you a cup of coffee.

And this is where NPR comes in. I don't expect an outfit as classy as National Public Radio to directly call the Vatican on its bullshit. Thus, I give you NPR's webreportage:


[IMAGE: The headline reads "Vatican Claims Homer is Catholic, Saints go Begging (this part refers to another news item.) The picture is of Homer marrying two men in his garage.]

LOLOL!! Well. Played.