Depiction of The Virgin Mary
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Several Catholics took offense to the season nine (2005) finale "Bloody Mary". In the episode, a statue of the Virgin Mary is portrayed as releasing copious amounts of actual blood while undergoing overt menstruation, while characters had declared the phenomenon as a miracle when they had initially thought the blood was flowing from her rectum. Another scene also features Pope Benedict XVI closely inspecting the anal and vaginal regions of the statue before being sprayed with blood. The Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights demanded an apology from Comedy Central and unsuccessfully campaigned to have the episode both removed permanently from the network's rotation and never be made available on DVD. Viacom board member Joseph A. Califano, Jr. and the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops issued formal complaints with then-Viacom CEO Tom Freston.
In February 2006, leaders from the New Zealand Catholic Bishops' Conference, the Council of Christians and Muslims, and other religious groups together lobbied media conglomerate CanWest to stop the episode's debut airing and potential rebroadcasts in New Zealand on the music channel C4, while protesters condemned the lobby for attempting to take advantage of the New Zealand people's lack of a guaranteed right to the freedom of speech. The network rejected the plea, and was allowed to air the episode, doing so ahead of schedule to take advantage of the media attention surrounding the campaign.
Read more about this topic: South Park Controversies
Famous quotes containing the words virgin and/or mary:
“If it were worth while to argue a paradox, one might maintain that nature regards the female as the essential, the male as the superfluity of her world. Perhaps the best starting-point for study of the Virgin would be a practical acquaintance with bees, and especially with queen bees.”
—Henry Brooks Adams (1838–1918)
“A fine-looking mill, but no machinery inside.”
—Hawaiian saying no. 1702, ‘lelo No’Eau, collected, translated, and annotated by Mary Kawena Pukui, Bishop Museum Press, Hawaii (1983)