Catholic group fights parody

CTV depicted priests luring boys with candy

By ART BABYCH
Canadian Catholic News
Ottawa

The league also accused the agency - the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) - of "downloading of its responsibilities to the non-governmental, non-accountable" Canadian Broadcast Standards Council (CBSC) created by private broadcasters.

A CBSC panel received 14 complaints about an episode last April of the late night talk show Open Mike with Mike Bullard. One of the complainants was the CCRL, a Canadian non-profit organization.

The episode, broadcast on the CTV Network, "exploited the seriously damaging Boston pedophile priest scandal and the recent Vatican meeting with the American Cardinals to heap further shame on Catholics and to defame Catholic priests," the league claimed.

"This stunt was obviously conceived in malice to denigrate and reinforce an abusively discriminatory and negative stereotype of Catholic priests."

"The destruction of young lives is no more a matter for levity than would-be jokes about extermination camps." - Thomas Langan

But the CBSC panel concluded there was no breach of the Code of Ethics of the Canadian Association of Broadcasters and that it considered the humour in the episode as "sufficiently gently satirical - and related to a very publicly debated controversy - to be acceptable."

The panel also stated it would be "as protective of majority communities as of minorities" but that in order for it to render such decisions there must be a breach of the Code of Ethics.

"Merely feeling offended is insufficient grounds to impinge on freedom of expression," it said.

The CCRL is disappointed by the panel's ruling but not surprised by it. The league did not ask to be protected from comments that "merely" offend, it noted. "The complaint specifically referred to the need to protect Catholics and Catholic priests from abusively discriminatory comments erroneously implying that Catholic priests are particularly prone to pedophilia."

Thomas Langan, president of the Catholic Civil Rights League, said, "Pedophilia is an extremely grave matter" and that "the destruction of young lives is no more a matter for levity than would-be jokes about extermination camps."

Langan said "The continent-wide press offensive against the Catholic clergy, based on no fact that could justify stereotyping Catholic priests in this way, is itself such a vile and offensive undertaking that the CBSC must be singularly lacking in human feelings to fail to realize the enormity of the affront."

The league said its initial complaint was "purposefully" directed to the CRTC with instructions not to delegate the matter to the CBSB. "Alarmingly, there is no appeals process with CBSC," it said. "So, efforts at addressing this concern with the CRTC, which was the clear intention at the outset nearly 10 months ago, will resume."

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