Point Proven

Without even trying, "The Daily Show's" Samantha Bee completely cements my belief in proper Catholic education.


By taking her foot out of her mouth, she has removed any doubt how completely clueless, ignorant, shallow and vapid she is.

Daily Show joke-correspondent Samantha Bee was interviewed on NPR's Fresh Air with Terry Gross on June 2, as she and Gross giggled over The Daily Show's pro-abortion joke at the last GOP convention, what Gross said was "interviewing people, trying to get them to say the word 'choice,' which you thought had basically been eradicated from their vocabulary." Then, after discussing Bee's teenage habit of stealing cars and selling them and having wild parties, they turned to how it is "pure pleasure" to mock the Catholic Church:

GROSS: You've done a sketch or two satirizing the Catholic church and the pope. And you went to Catholic school...

BEE: I did.

GROSS: ...which you write about in your memoir. So is it hard to satirize the church and the pope having gone to Catholic school?

BEE: Oh heavens no. I'm a lapsed Catholic, Terry, a terribly lapsed Catholic. So it is joyful for me to do that. (Laughter) That is pure pleasure for me, I will say. In fact, I'm working on a piece right now that is related to the Catholic Church and it's fascinating to me. I don't have any of that Catholic guilt. I've worked my way through that. There's none of that left.

Where do we start?

It's probably not a good idea to point out other's failings, real or imagined, when one stole cars and sold them. Just saying.


Lapsed Catholic? This little bit of identity crisis gets more laughable as the article draws on. As is discussed later on in the article, Samantha Bee is as Catholic as... well... nothing, really. She claims to have gone to a "progressive" Catholic school but makes no mention of anything resembling a Catholic upbringing (indeed, her father was an atheist and her mother was wiccan). I think many parents expect faith to somehow be magically imparted on their kids, just like manners and reading skills. Wrong.


Miss Bee (in the emphasized quotes) laughs at the "pure joy" of mocking the Catholic Church. As a stooge for Comedy Central, one can see the absurdity. This is the same Comedy Central that caved to Muslim pressure during the "South Park" fiasco. Comedy Central's credibility, at this point, is gone. We know they'll bend with the right pressure so any attempt to be "edgy" by mocking Christians or Christianity in a country with assured freedom of expression is no great sacrifice on their part. Perhaps Comedy Central would like to send Miss Bee to Pakistan for "Mohammad's Laugh Riot Show"? Come on, Comedy Central and Samantha Bee. Where is your courage? Stand in the middle of Islamabad and tell jokes about how whacky Islam is. There is your edge!


We know that is never going to happen. Miss Bee's "joy" is easy because she knows for a fact she is allowed and able to do what she does without reprisal. She is as fearless as the little brat in a department store screaming for a toy knowing full well her mum can never punish her in front of annoyed and puzzled onlookers.


Catholic guilt? This is a misunderstood concept bandied about by lapsed Catholics and others who have zero idea of what the word actually means or entails. If you feel guilt (let's say from stealing cars and selling them), it is because you have done something wrong. Shame, on the other hand, is neurotic.

GROSS: Now you write in your memoir that your Catholic school was considered a progressive Catholic school. What did that mean?

Ms. BEE: It was a progressive Catholic school. We did not, you know, we had Seder meals and those, those adorable traditions from other religions and we just learned about other religions and other cultures and that was just an important part of our -- when we took, we had to take a religion course, of course. But it wasn't just our religion. It was quite inclusive and we didn't have to do -- we didn't wear uniforms and we had to go to church occasionally but it wasn't a huge part of our curriculum. And we didn't have big gory Jesuses everywhere. They were monochromatic so you couldn't see the blood dripping from the wounds of Jesus. (Laughter)

And here is the crux of what is wrong with contemporary upbringing in Catholic circles. First of all, despite one' s fervent wish for "progressive" to mean "open-minded" or "free", there is nothing progressive about political or social progression. The support for Islamofascist causes or "climate change" without reviewing pertinent scientific data isn't progressive but knee-jerk blindness. As the case may be here, the idea of "progressive" education extends to a kind of cultural dilettantism, a tremendous faux-pas committed by those with little understanding of the entirety or complexity of an issue, person or thing. Is the Seder- an important Jewish custom- "adorable"? Is that how other cultures and religions are seen in "progressive" circles- as quaint, cuddly customs that "those people" take part in? That kind of thinking sounds rather stunted to me. Perhaps it has not occurred to "progressives" that people live a certain way and there is nothing "adorable" about it. If Miss Bee did fully participate in the Seder, then should she have not had a better understanding of the Passover, of Christ's Last Supper (now seen in the sacrament of the Holy Eucharist) or His bloody sacrifice? She gleefully describes the absence of "gory Jesuses" in her school. That's gratitude for you.


The whole ideas of duty and faith are as foreign to Miss Bee as they are in a good deal of Catholic circles. Church is just a building, not an institution established by Christ. For what, then, do the nominal Catholics live for? Is it the lovely Gothic surroundings fit for wedding pictures or the candy handed out to children on Easter Sunday or the convenience of employment? What? If they veer more towards secular humanism, then shouldn't the alleged altruism of humanism tell them that using an institution for photos, candy or a job is wrong?


As I said before, it is easy. Dabbling in something one doesn't understand is as easy as mocking it. This comment attached to the article said it best:

This version of the Catholic basher is so shallow. They mock something they are to busy sneering at to even understand. It is sad that even though introduced to the faith they have failed to dig much deeper than the funny hats. Forgive them , they don't know what they are missing. Like St. Paul's proverbial confrontation with the Lord , if they knew the mystery of the Presence , they would be startled into blindness or hopefully just silent awe.

Amen.