everything you need to know about the catholic church in under five minutes

Late last week, an episode of Penn & Teller: Bullshit! focusing on the Catholic Church aired on Showtime. If you're familiar with their shtick, you probably know pretty much what to expect. It's neither the best nor worst example of their work, though their target is richly deserving of all of the contempt and disgust heaped upon it.

Personally, I learned two new things: In 2005, President Bush gave the current pope immunity from being prosecuted for charges that he participated in a conspiracy to cover up the sexual molestation of three boys by a seminarian and to help the seminarian escape prosecution. The second thing I learned is that Italian actress, comedian, political satirist, and performance artist Sabina Guzzanti, who I had never previously heard of, is one kick-ass woman.

If there is one good thing that came of of this episode, it's that that abhorrent fucker Bill Donohue, president of the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights (an organization founded on the belief that it's all been downhill since the Inquisition), is in serious danger of having his head explode from apoplectic outrage. This is the man whose nuanced social analysis includes such thought-provoking observations as:

"Hollywood is controlled by secular Jews who hate Christianity in general and Catholicism in particular... Hollywood likes anal sex....They like abortions."

He also was pissed about Reuters reporting that “Irish Priests Beat, Raped Children.” Because while many of them were in fact beaten, forced into essentially slave labor, and kept on the brink of starvation, since they weren't all, you know, actually raped, this was an unfair exaggeration. It's even worse than that brief description makes it sound. You can read about it in more detail at Bitch Ph.D.

So, I'd briefly considered posting the P&T episode here, but frankly, despite agreeing with pretty much everything they present, in the end I just didn't think it was quite brilliant enough (although you're welcome to watch the whole episode here).

But.

While scanning some of the comments over at PZ's place, I came upon a link to the video below. In it, Louis C.K., who was raised Catholic for his first 10 years, visits the Catholic Archdiocese of New York to get some perspective on what Catholicism is really about. It distills into 4 minutes and 40 seconds what P&T couldn't quite as effectively articulate in almost a half hour. (All it's missing is Sabina Guzzanti.)