By Catholic News Service • Posted April 17, 2018

PAISLEY, Scotland (CNS) — A Scottish bishop has criticized the BBC for making a film that describes the Eucharist as smelling “like hate.”

The video, produced by BBC Scotland, a publicly funded “public service broadcaster,” seeks to show how people who experience same-sex attraction continue to be made to feel outcast and ostracized in 2018.

Bishop John Keenan of Paisley suggested on his Facebook page that the film, called “This is How Homophobia Feels in 2018,” in effect fomented hatred of the Catholic Church.

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“The priest holds up a Mini-Cheddar (cracker) in parody of the Host for a Catholic parishioner to receive,” the bishop explained in an April 13 post. “The presenter goes on to suggest Jesus ‘wasted his time teaching small minds that love is no sin.'”

“All this in a week when a Sunday Times poll found 20 percent of Catholics reported personally experiencing abuse or prejudice toward their faith and recent government figures on religiously aggravated crime showed 57 percent of it is now directed at Catholics, an increase of 14 percent … and we all wonder why!!!” he said.

The BBC film was aimed at young people and was posted April 9 on the Facebook page of BBC The Social, a project of BBC Scotland.

The film is sharply critical of people whom the narrator, Sean Lionadh, a gay poet, perceives as opposing public displays of affection between people of the same sex in a public park.

Targets include mothers who object to gay men kissing in front of her children, schoolboys who ridicule homosexuals holding hands and “Bible bashers” who hold religious objections to homosexuality.

The film includes scenes replicating a Mass; scenes are interspersed with those of a street preacher.

Lionadh says: “See him, he thinks it’s faith, but under all that din, it tastes like cardboard, and it smells like hate.”

BBC Scotland was approached by Catholic News Service April 17 but has so far declined to comment.