LINK TV’s publicly funded anti-Catholic bigotry

I am pretty steamed about something I saw via Link TV.

This is partly supported by tax-payer money. Read below.

The video is stupid, produced badly and by people ignorant of details. But the real point is that it is pure anti-Catholicism, mocking that which is most sacred: the Eucharist.

The Catholic League picked this up.

LINK TV MOCKS CATHOLICISM; VIDEO PRODUCED WITH FEDERAL FUNDS

February 5, 2009

On February 3, Link TV featured a three and a half minute video that mocks Catholicism. The media outlet is available as a basic service in more than 31 million homes that receive direct broadcast satellite TV.

The video, “Divine Food,” opens with a priest waking up to a rumbling noise that shakes the religious symbols and statues in his room. He proceeds to a Catholic church where he discovers several wafers near a cup (the implication is that they are consecrated Hosts). In a disrespectful manner, he chews them vigorously and then admonishes the statues that are “looking at him.” He falls asleep in the church and when awakened he is asked to say Mass, which he refuses to do. The priest then makes large wafers out of dough and gives the pancake-like substance (which he calls the “Body of Christ”) to confused parishioners at Communion. The video ends when he drops the remaining “Hosts” into a dirty aquarium.

Here is what Catholic League president Bill Donohue said about it:

“This video first aired last summer, right after a professor from the University of Minnesota intentionally desecrated the Eucharist. Now it’s being shown again. At first we thought this was just another loony attack, but then we found out that Link TV is funded by foundations that support anti-Catholicism. To wit: the Ford Foundation, the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, the Wallace Global Fund and George Soros’ Open Society Institute all fund Link TV, and all are generous contributors to Catholics for Choice, a notoriously anti-Catholic front group. Worse, of the three co-producers of the video, one of them—ITVS—is funded by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, a public entity.

“So here we have the urbane bigots in the foundation world, and a taxpayer-funded organization, underwriting anti-Catholicism. We will ask Link TV to pull the video. We hope we don’t have to do more.”

Contact Link TV media head, Julia Pacetti: jpacetti@linktv.org. We’ll contact the others involved. To see the video, click here.

LINK TV may have removed the video from their site. YouTube has it, but for how long?

But I got it.

Remember that the University of Minnesota/Morris is a publicly funded instituted and it supported the anti-Catholic bigot professor who openly mocks religion, Catholic in particular, and desecrated the Eucharist.