"Lewis Black’s Root of All Evil” premiered on Comedy Central on March 12. The first episode questioned which was more “evil”: Oprah, or the Catholic Church. Below are some quotes from the show.

Comedian Greg Giraldo, making the case against the Catholic Church:

Did I mention the boy fucking? A couple of years ago the Catholic Church held a two-week conference to discuss what should be done about the sexual molestation claims.  Two weeks.  What are they talking about? Lets stop diddling kids fellas, what do you say? That’s what, half hour tops?  Somebody proposed a one strike and you’re out rule.  One strike and you’re out. And it was voted down.  They debated it and it lost.  Someone actually got up and said, “Look we’re not going to kick a guy out for knob gobbling just one kid.  I mean that’s not fair to the guys with a lot of hot kids in their parish.  Maybe we will just move them to a place with uglier kids.” It’s awful.  Dioceses in Tucson, Portland and San Diego, just to name a few have gone bankrupt defending these molestation claims.  The Catholic Church is sack tickling its way into bankruptcy. 

The Catholic Church is also evil because it has such a grip over the mindless masses that they’ll wait in line, thousands of them in the rain for hours, just to get a glimpse of a pork rind in the shape of the Virgin Mary.  Then there is the Virgin Mary.  The Virgin Mary. God impregnated Mary.  We have a whole religion based on one woman who really stuck to her story.

And lets not forget the Inquisition. In the 1400s Jews and Muslims in Spain were forced to convert to Catholicism. And to test the sincerity of these conversions thousands were tortured. Lets say you were acting a little Jewy. You know, maybe you complained about your entrée. Or, you know, Paco it is a little moist could you towel it off for me.  Next thing you know they put you in one of these [shows picture of torture instrument]. , Yes that is called the head crusher. , I think it was used to crush your head. These are actually implements of torture that were used by the Catholic Church. How about this one [shows another device]? It is called the breast ripper. Yeah, I think it was used to rip you breast. Sometimes they would try and soften the blow. They would say, “Hey good news is you get to sit down.  Bad news is you have to sit on this.” [Shows a chair with a pyramid-shaped spike on it.] Yeah that was called the Judas Cradle. I guess ass shredder was already taken.

Additional quotes:

Lewis Black: Greg you have been babbling on about the Catholic Church and you haven’t mentioned the pope. Do you even know who he is?

Giraldo: Ah, yes I know who he is and the pope to me is a hypocrite in his Prada loafers and his ball gown. How can he condemn homosexuality when he dresses like he is on his way to nickel cosmo night at the Veiny Shaft Tavern? 

And this:

Black: I read in Parade magazine that the Catholic Church is letting people use condoms now. 

Giraldo: What did happen was because of the crisis on Africa, the Catholic Church considered allowing people to use condoms. If they were married and if one of the partners had AIDS. HAHAHA. A loophole. Well we can’t have any more kids, we live on two bucks a month and we are running out of mud pies to feed them. One of use is going to have to get AIDS.