On May 18, 2007, the HBO Cable Channel ran an episode of the program, Real Time with Bill Maher, which included a blasphemous equating of the Catholic Mass with homosexual acts. Beginning with an attack on the late Jerry Falwell, host Bill Maher launched into an anti-Catholic tirade, saying:

And it's easy to start a religion! Watch, I'll do it for you: I had a vision last night! A vision! The Blessed Virgin Mary came to me—I  don't know how she got past the guards—and she told me it's high time to take the high ground from the Seventh Day Adventists and give it to the 24-hour party people. And what happens in the confessional stays in the confessional. Gay men, don't say you're life partners, say you're a nunnery of two. 'We weren't having sex, officer; I was performing a very private Mass, here in my car....’

From there, Maher used the very words of Jesus Christ, those repeated in the consecration, to suggest homosexual sexual activity.

In a May 24, 2007 press release, L. Brent Bozell III, president of the Media Research Center (MRC), and Robert Knight, director of the MRC’s Culture and Media Institute, called on Time-Warner’s management to take responsibility for Maher’s on-air explicit sexual mockery of Scripture and Catholic theology:

Time-Warner needs to hold Maher accountable for his despicable remarks,” Bozell said. “We’re asking,  ‘Are you okay with what he said? If not, what are you going to do about it?’ .... Maher is entitled to his vile views, but he’s not entitled to an endless ride on the airwaves courtesy of Time-Warner,” CMI Director Knight said. “If Don Imus’s offensive racial joke was too much for the public to bear, certainly Maher’s sickening description of the Mass and Communion as graphic homosexual sex acts is beyond the pale.”

In February of 2005, Bill Maher appeared as a guest on the MSNBC program, Scarborough Country, where he stated:

We are a nation that is unenlightened because of religion. I do believe that. I think that religion stops people from thinking. I think it justifies crazies. I think flying planes into a building was a faith-based initiative. I think religion is a neurological disorder. If you look at it logically, it's something that was drilled into your head when you were a small child. It certainly was drilled into mine at that age. And you really can't be responsible when you are a kid for what adults put into your head.

Comment: The ability to reason as an adult is predicated upon the ability to distinguish. The child who is chastised by a policeman for playing with firecrackers runs into his room, jumps on his bed, and cries, “I hate all policemen!” That’s understandable in a child. An adult who did the same thing would be pathetic.

And, speaking of pathetic, Bill Maher makes a good living in the painfully bland, non-challenging world of political satire, a world filled to busting with secular holier-than-thou types whose subject matter is as ephemeral – and ultimately as important in the grand scheme of things – as yesterday’s American Idol winner. 

Were Maher content to remain the big fish in the stagnant little pond of opinion, he would not embarrass himself as frequently as he does. But gaze with wonder at some of his puerile outbursts and try to wrap your mind around the fact that these were uttered by an adult­, an adult who may even have taken a history course or two:

I think that religion stops people from thinking. I think religion is a neurological disorder.

Sure, Bill. We understand. That is, we understand that these are the chirpings of a vicious little insect. We understand that these lame lamentations pale before the awe-inspiring, masculine pronouncements of luminaries who, in Maher’s pop-up book mentality, are just another bunch of ignorant neurotics, men such as:

Galileo Galilei (1564-1642, Italian Physicist): "I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us with sense, reason, and intellect has intended us to forgo their use."

Johannes Kepler (1571-1630, German Astronomer responsible for the 3 laws of planetary motion): "Since we astronomers are priests of the highest God in regard to the book of nature, it befits us to be thoughtful, not of the glory of our minds, but rather, above all else, of the glory of God."

Michael Faraday (1791-1869, English Chemist, Discoverer of  Benzene, electromagnetic induction, lines of force, relationship between polarized light and magnetic fields): "Since peace is alone in the gift of God; and since it is He who gives it, why should we be afraid? His unspeakable gift in His beloved Son is the ground of no doubtful hope."

William Thompson, Lord Kelvin (1824-1907, British Physicist who developed the First and Second Laws of Thermodynamics, the Absolute temperature scale and the Trans-Atlantic cable): "I believe that the more thoroughly science is studied, the further does it take us from anything comparable to atheism."

One wonders how Bill Maher would enjoy living in a world that had never been touched by the Catholic Church. The Church created the first universities and hospitals. The Church fostered the arts, and it was Catholic artists who developed polyphonic music and perspective in painting. What a grand world it would have been without “religion!”

In fact, on May 23, 2007, Bloomberg News reported that philanthropist and retired hedge-fund manager Robert W. Wilson donated $22.5 million to the Archdiocese of New York to fund a scholarship program for needy inner-city students attending Roman Catholic schools.

What motivated this generous move on the part of the 80-year-old atheist? “Let's face it, without the Roman Catholic Church, there would be no Western civilization,'' said Wilson in a telephone interview. “Shunning religious organizations would be abhorrent.''

If I were paying someone to comment on social/cultural concerns, I would want my money’s worth. I would demand that such a commentator get the big picture, and have at least a passing familiarity with Western history, its development, institutions and art. I would not spend good money so a little kid could whine because a cop caught him setting off fireworks.

Narrow-minded bigots of the Maher variety are a dime a dozen, and HBO banks on this fact. Come on, a media outlet hiring someone like  Maher as a social/cultural/political commentator is like the Julliard School hiring a music professor who thinks Mozart invented the sandwich. If HBO – the   masters of “dumbed-down” entertainment – had even the least desire to maintain even the ghost of credibility, they would demand that Bill Maher eschew his pretenses to intellectualism and stick with doing what he does best – acting as water-boy for the likes of Bill Clinton and Nancy Pelosi.