The Vatican’s newspaper recently said that they consider Homer Simpson to be a Catholic:

But in an article headlined “Homer and Bart are Catholics”, the newspaper said: “The Simpsons are among the few TV programmes for children in which Christian faith, religion, and questions about God are recurrent themes.”

The family “recites prayers before meals and, in their own peculiar way, believes in the life thereafter”…

“Few people know it, and he does everything he can to hide it, but it is true: Homer J Simpson is a Catholic,” insists L’Osservatore Romano.

This must be a very loose definition of what a Catholic is or how one should act. In fact, it strikes me as a very American sort of idea: Homer’s Catholicism is a grab-bag of practices and beliefs of his own choosing. Is Homer’s approach to religion really much different than many Americans?

But one point the newspaper makes seems accurate: the Simpson’s portray “old-fashioned family values” in a way that few other shows do today.