William Donohue, president of the Catholic League, commented as follows on the January 24 episode of the ABC show, “Nothing Sacred”:
“If anyone wants to know why ‘Nothing Sacred’ is a failure, just consider last Saturday night’s episode. It showed a parish in disarray and a nun who doesn’t know if she is coming or going. This is not unusual: week after week viewers are treated to a parish community that is totally depressed, where the dysfunctional is the ordinary and where cynicism is a staple. How this could be expected to draw a sizable audience is not known. Most people work all week and want a little entertainment on weekends; watching priests and nuns experience theological withdrawal is no fun.
“This episode featured Sister Mo, Wondernun. It was so nice to learn that before she entered the convent she was shacking up with some stud. Similarly, her comment that ‘I just want to renegotiate the pre-nuptial agreement’ was a cute, and quite revealing, statement on the way she thinks about her religious vows. Her remark, ‘I’m thinking of leaving,’ was, if anything, anticlimactic: from what we’ve been gathering, it seems that there hasn’t been a day in her life that she hasn’t thought of quitting. Again, it is a mystery to us why a script like this should be expected to succeed.
“As ABC is finally learning, there is no market for a show that depicts Catholic priests and nuns in perpetual rebellion against their Church. In this regard, take the scene in which Father Martin (Mr. Fixit) confronts Father Ray (Superpriest), Father Eric (yesterday’s orthodox priest, today’s progressive fool), Rachel (still glad she killed her kid ), Mo (Wondernun) and Sidney (the resident atheist): the sight of seeing all of them treat Father Martin with utter contempt for suggesting that they ought to obey the rules of the Church was enough to prove the Catholic League’s take on the show all along.
“Father Ray said it best when he told Father Martin, ‘Mo goes. We all go.’ And that is why we can’t wait for Mo to go.”
