In fact he's an urban priest, and there are Roman Catholics who think that Nothing Sacred is a useful program because it shows what local leaders in their churches face, surrounded from day to day by mean streets as well as their distraught real-world parishioners seeking spiritual solace and comfort.

"It isn't all Bing Crosby and The Bells of St. Mary, Blanche" explains a gay Catholic, attempting to express his satisfaction with ABC's new show.

Other Catholics see Nothing Sacred as an insult to their church. New York's Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights has accused the Saturday night program of using propaganda "to convince viewers that those Catholics who challenge the church's teachings on women and sexuality are more compassionate…than those who uphold church teachings."

"But the insider Catholics who challenge the Church about sex and women are more compassionate, Blanche, they are!"

"David Manson, Nothing Sacred's executive producer, says that ABC believes in the controversial new show, and that in spite of its poor ratings (it's been up against Friends on another network) ABC "prefers to give it an opportunity to grow."

This reviewer, for one, applauds the network for standing up to orthodox officials engaged in a pitiful attempt to sanitize their goody-goody images. Not all Roman Catholic officials, fortunately, are censors and some have shown themselves more flexible.

Among these clergymen is Msr. Gerald Wilkerson who is scheduled to be installed January 21 as auxiliary bishop for the San Fernando Valley area. Wilkerson says he doesn't see anything too terribly wrong with the show. "I guess nobody really wants to believe that a priest is human, that he never has doubts or questions."

Nothing Sacred also seems to have the backing of Cardinal Roger M. Mahony.

The show, in fact, is, according to the Los Angeles Times, written by a priest, Father Bill Cain of New York City who uses a pseudonym, "Paul Leland." Father Cain explains that he does not want the show marketed as one written by a priest.

"Its difficult to represent the goodness of what the church is trying to do," says Cain, "while representing it honestly with its darkness and light."

Richard Land, director of the Southern Baptist Convention's boycott of Walt Disney and ABC-TV calls Nothing Sacred "yet another egregious example of Disney's Christian-bashing agenda."

Father Cain—the real source for the show's material-- admits he's putting "a kind of Catholicism that people haven't seen" on television, and he is buoyed by the reactions of a hundred priests, nuns and bishops who appeared in an Advertising Age ad urging public acceptance of the show and critiquing outraged Catholic censors.

Truly, if orthodoxy's self-appointed censors want to arouse public opinion against Nothing Sacred the show has got to be doing something right.

For one thing, it deals compassionately with AIDS. That means its off to a damn good start.