MTV Pokes Fun at Jesus' Crucifixion

What else could we expect from this network. At least it probably will not air here in the U.S.
I wonder where all the riots and bloodshed are over the desecration of images of Jesus?

(CNSNews.com) - As Christians around the world prepare for Easter, magazine readers in Germany were confronted this week by full-page advertisements depicting Jesus, wearing a crown of thorns but descended from the cross, enjoying a television program.
"Laughing rather than hanging around," (Lachen statt rumhaengen) reads the tagline of the ad, which has drawn strong protests in Germany, where two-thirds of the population identifies as Christian.
The ad promotes MTV's plan to broadcast a cartoon lampooning the pope and Vatican hierarchy. The series, Popetown, was considered too controversial to be aired in Britain, and it caused an uproar in the one country where it has appeared, New Zealand.
Coming at a time when the dust has yet to settle from the furor over newspaper cartoons caricaturing Mohammed, the row has prompted some Germans to ask why their faith should be an easy target.
The Deutsche Welle broadcaster quoted Joachim Herrmann of the Christian Social Union party as saying that MTV would have thought twice before poking fun in a similar way at Muslims.
"It is not acceptable that the Christian faith in particular is dragged into the dirt just because it is easier and less dangerous," he said, calling for MTV to pull both the series and the "tasteless" ads.
Christians believe Jesus is God incarnate and that he died on a cross to redeem mankind and then rose from the dead three days later. Those events are marked this weekend, the highlight of the Christian calendar.
Germany is the home country of the present pontiff, Pope Benedict XVI.
The German Bishop's Conference said it had not given up hope that dialogue with MTV management would result in the screening being canceled.
The bishops said the magazine ad was "a provocation for Germany's Christians just a few days before Good Friday and Easter."
Munich Archbishop Cardinal Friedrich Wetter said in a separate statement the ad was deeply hurtful to believing Christians.
A German Christian magazine, Verse One, has instituted an online protest and boycott campaign.
"After the events surrounding the Mohammed cartoons we had thought there was agreement that media should show consideration for the religious feelings of believers, whether Muslims, Jews, Buddhists or Christians," said Verse One publisher Birgit Kelle.
"Obviously we were mistaken."
Kelle, a Protestant, said the issue did not concern "our Catholic brothers and sisters" alone. If Christians did not defend themselves - with arguments, not force - "this will never stop."
MTV said the series was satire and should be treated as a work of art. It planned to go ahead with showing it in Germany, Austria and Switzerland as scheduled early next month.
'Spoiled brat'
"Banned from TV, damned by the church, and brought to you in devilishly uncensored form," runs the tagline on the Popetown website, promoting the program on DVD.
The series portrays the pope as an uncontrollable, infantile character who pogo-sticks around a Vatican populated by corrupt, money-grabbing cardinals.
The 10-episode series originally was commissioned by BBC television, but after strong protests the BBC decided against going ahead with the scheduled broadcast in 2004.
The one country where the series has been shown is New Zealand, where a youth-oriented channel, C4, shrugged off protests by Catholic bishops and aired it last year.
In an unusual move, the Catholic Bishops Conference (NZCBC) urged the country's half a million Catholics to boycott C4 and other stations owned by the Canadian broadcaster CanWest, and also to target companies advertising on the channels.
In a letter read out in parishes across the country, the bishops said the pope was depicted "as a cretinous, dirty, spoiled brat, and the curial cardinals as venal and dishonest," according to a statement made available by Catholic spokeswoman Lyndsay Freer Thursday.
The letter also said the program implied that one Vatican-based priest had "a predilection ... for exotic animals in a way that suggests moral degeneration of an appalling kind."
C4 said it did not believe the series was offensive to a significant proportion of the population, and continued to air it.
Freer said Thursday that various organizations and individuals had lodged complaints with New Zealand's statutory Broadcasting Standards Authority (BSA), claiming that Popetown breached "decency, good taste and fairness." All had failed.
The NZCBC's own complaint was still awaiting a decision, although the BSA did, late last month, reject a request by the bishops to have their complaint aired in full and formal hearings.
The bishops had argued that increased public interest as a result debates about the Mohammed cartoons justified such hearings.
"The possible political and economic consequences of the Danish cartoons incident clearly demonstrate what is at stake is not the outcome of an academic debate on the rights and freedoms of the media," the NZCBC said in a statement.
"The matter has now become far too serious to be dealt [with] without fair consideration and debate."
The BSA said the Mohammed cartoons were not relevant to the case under consideration. And although it accepted that the wider issue had become a matter of intense debate, it turned down the request for formal hearings.
C4 was in the firing line again earlier this year over yet another program that many New Zealand Christians found offensive - an episode of the South Park cartoon series that featured a menstruating statue of the Virgin Mary.
Again, Catholic bishops called for a boycott, and again C4 went ahead despite protests not just from Catholics but also Protestants and adherents of other faiths.
Freer said the NSCBC was preparing a further complaint to the BSA about the South Park episode.
The offending South Park program earlier aired on the Comedy Central in the U.S., prompting one Catholic organization to describe it as "one of the most vile TV shows ever to appear."
Comedy Central and MTV are both owned by the media conglomerate Viacom.