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America's Catholic bishops denounce popular British TV drama 'Wolf Hall'

LOS ANGELES, CA (Catholic Online) - Calling it a "prejudice-laden presentation of the past," criticism flew heavy after the acclaimed BBC drama was broadcast in the U.S. for the first time.

U.S. bishops called the series "a work of fiction that adopts a narrow, revisionist and anti-Catholic point of view toward the religious turmoil of the Tudor period in which it's set."
The clergy in the United Kingdom, in the meantime, has torn into the series for its "perverse" depictions of the historical characters when it first aired.

The drama reportedly encourages the audience to "root for the self-made commoner Thomas Cromwell," a review for Catholic News Service, an agency of the U.S. Bishops' Conference says. Cromwell was in fact a "monster" who engineered a reign of terror and murdered anyone who stood in his way.

The drama's depiction of Sir Thomas More, a Catholic martyr, is "not a pretty sight," author Joseph McAleer.

"The future saint is barely recognizable: sleazy, mean-spirited, and just plain rude," he writes. "This evidence-flouting caricature is light-years away from the man of principle."

Mark Davies and Mark O'Toole, the Catholic Bishops of Shrewsbury and Plymouth respectively, say "Wolf Hall" was guilty of "anti-Catholic" depictions of More, played by Anton Lesser, and for its whitewashing of Cromwell, the hero of the drama, played by Mark Rylance.

The U.S. media has been welcoming the series, as a great British import co-starring Damien Lewis, the anti-hero Brody in the U.S. series "Homeland," playing King Henry VIII.

Critical reviews of the adaptation of Hilary Mantel's historical novel as in the highly influential Washington Post, however, which warned viewers that the distortion of the facts pointed to a "clear ideological bias.

"What makes for great drama may not make for good history," said the review by Gregory Wolfe.

"Mantel's version could obscure important lessons from that dark period that have continuing relevance for the present moment," Wolfe added.

www.catholic.org/news/ae/tv/story.php
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✍️ Should we care that Hilary Mantel is anti-Catholic?
www.catholicherald.co.uk/…/should-we-care-…