New FFRF Ad Urging People to Quit the Catholic Church Features Actress Julia Sweeney

The Freedom From Religion Foundation has created an offshoot from their full-page newspaper ads encouraging people to quit the Catholic Church: This time, it’s a commercial featuring former religious Catholic (and former Saturday Night Live star) Julia Sweeney.

Sweeney is the actress who performed the fantastic one-woman show “Letting Go of God” and — I mention this only because it’s an entertaining tidbit — she once played a nun on Sex in the City.

Hi, I’m Julia Sweeney, and I’m a cultural Catholic. I am no longer a believer and I even wrote a play about it called “Letting Go of God.” But I wanted to let you know that right now Catholic Bishops are framing their opposition to contraceptive coverage as a religious freedom issue. But the real threat to freedom is the Bishops, who want to be free to force their dogma on people who don’t want it. Please join the Freedom From Religion Foundation and help keep church and state separate.

The ad will run as a radio commercial on The Randi Rhodes Show from June 11^th-24^th. FFRF is hoping they can raise enough funds to get the commercial to air on The Daily Show or The Colbert Report.

The commercial counters the anti-contraceptive campaign by Roman Catholic Bishops. The wealthy U.S. Catholic Church has pledged to spend multimillions in a PR blitz leading up to July 4th to overturn the Obama Administration’s contraceptive health insurance mandate.

“This is why FFRF exists — to ensure that religious dogma is not enshrined into our secular laws, to ensure that humanity is placed above dogma and that dogma is not allowed to trump personal conscience and civil liberties,” noted Dan Barker, FFRF co-president.

There’s a longer version of the ad below:

If you’d like to donate to help put the commercial on national television, you can do that here.

northierthanthou

I really hate the short one; it will be too easy to spin as an unwarranted attack on religious freedom. The long one has everything it takes to pre-empt that.
Thomas Lawson

Please, please, please, let someone counter with an ad from Victoria Jackson. Please, Jesus.
Gaby A.

To continue Thomas’ sentiment, how did two actors diverge so differently, one to benign atheism, and the other to militant christianity?
MegaZeusThor

The long one is excellent. Has a real message.

(Maybe they could get it down to 60 seconds? (As two 30 second placements?)

I love that the FFRF keeps on doing what they do. I hate that there are good reasons for them to exist. He’s hoping that they’re unnecessary and irrelevant in the next century (or sooner).
David Philip Norris

‘Cause she [Victoria Jackson] talks about it ALL DAY LONG!
David Philip Norris

Julia Sweeney was instrumental in helping me get out of fundamentalist Christianity, and it’s wonderful to see that she’s still active in promoting secularism and freethought. The short spot leaves a bit to be desired (I know how it goes having to carve down a message to fit a 30-second time slot), but the longer one is fantastic!

It really is interesting that instead of feeding the poor, helping widows and the sick, or, like Julia says, keeping children safe from sexual predators, the Church is using its considerable resources and power to oppress women. And pretty much everyone.
AxeGrrl

I wish we’d see even more of Sweeney……I think she’s one of the best ‘atheist representatives’ we have 🙂
Justin Miyundees

She does bring the crazy like no one else can.
Kaydenpat

When I have time, I need to look up “cultural Catholic”. Wonder what she means by that. Glad to see someone standing up to the Catholic Bishops and their specious anti-contraception arguments.
Mary Beth

How does this ad “urge people to quit the Catholic Church”? That headline is ridiculous, IMHO.