An Ecumenical Crisis between Kool-Aid and the Honeycomb Hideout

As a child, I saw a Saturday morning morality tale that I remember being imported from Spain or Italy and dubbed into English. (Black and white, grainy, kids in shorts riding bicycles over old cobbled streets - you know the genre.) This show was an episode in a regularly scheduled series that occupied the hour between cartoons and network TV sports, 11-noon as I recall.

(In those days, before cable TV, cartoons were generally shown for a few hours on Saturday mornings. All three major networks competed for a share of children viewers. Advertising was heavily focused on sugary cereals, Kool-Aid, and toys.)

At the end of this show, two clerics talk to a boy under the stone archway of a church. One is wearing a collar, one is not. They represent different Christian denominations, but it is not clear which. They each have helped the boy somehow, and one comments that they are not so different from each other after all; both agree and the boy has learned a valuable lesson.

I distinctly recall being very conflicted by this message. I knew immediately that this was not true, that they were different, perhaps dangerously different, but the sentiment appealed to another part of me; it was genuine and comforting, and I wanted to know more about the man with the collar and what went on behind the door of that stone church.

You can tell a lot about a belief system by who its detractors are. Much of what we know if ancient peoples and beliefs comes from those who opposed them. The principle remains true today.

Honeycomb Hideout Commercial

Started: 2012-07-01