Even the BBC appears to have limits.

I was appalled this evening to read that the British publicly supported broadcast system had planned to screen ballet of a hunchbacked Pope who rapes both nuns and eunichs.

The BBC has abandoned plans to screen a ballet featuring a deformed Pope who rapes nuns that it had announced as one of the highlights of its Christmas schedule.

Last month the corporation said it would televise In The Spirit Of Diaghilev from Sadler’s Wells as part of a season of ballet programmes.

The tribute to the Russian impresario comprises four acts, each by a groundbreaking choreographer, with the entire production due to be screened on BBC Four next month.

Richard Klein, BBC Four Controller, promised viewers “a great watch”, hailing “the combination of one of the most inventive and musically exciting ballet scores being performed by one of Britain’s foremost dance groups”.

(snip)

But it wasn’t until the production premiered at Sadler’s Wells that the BBC discovered that one of the acts, Eternal Damnation To Sancho And Sanchez by Javier de Frutos, centres on a group of “horny” priests and a fictional hunchback Pope, who rapes eunuchs and pregnant nuns. The act prompted boos from the Sadler’s Wells audience and a number of walk-outs.  Link: http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/stage/dance/article6933699.ece

 

It is another example of attempts to profane the sacred. 

I am a Jew, not a Christian.  Yet my stomach turns at the derision focused at Christian denominations.  Especially at holiday time. 

Living in Ann Arbor though not associated with the university, I often thumb through the student newspaper.  This was part of a recent column at TheMichigan.com:

The Catholic Church doesn’t have to stand in accordance with every opinion of the secular world, and indeed it shouldn’t. It has a right to its own opinion. But as Pope Benedict XVI’s papacy reaches further and further into the traditionalist base, the Church becomes less and less significant to actual changes in peoples’ lives. It negates itself and becomes a meaningless institution with no power outside of itself.

A growing number of people will continue to support the morality of homosexuality and the ordination of women and gay clergy. This is an inevitable truth. The Vatican has a choice to either examine its own stance and begin an open dialogue or simply ignore the opinions of more progressive members. The choices of Pope Benedict XVI, specifically with the creation of the new Anglican Rite, reflect the latter, which ostracises non-traditionalists and continues the Catholic Church on a dangerous path toward irrelevancy.  Link: http://www.michigandaily.com/content/viewpoint-catholicism-these-days

On this day of Thanksgiving, I am appreciative of the forces working to push back this type of thinking.  Of the folks, whatever their denomination, who define what is good and right, who refuse to allow into their lives filth of the type which was very nearly directed into Britain’s parlors and sitting rooms.  I would like to think that somewhere in the UMich newsroom there is a grown-up who might have discussed this student’s piece before publication.  I ram realistic enough, however, to grasp the unlikeliness of it.