{"id":242,"date":"2006-04-03T12:00:00","date_gmt":"2006-04-03T12:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/idolchatter\/2006\/04\/tony-soprano-does-god-love-via.html"},"modified":"2006-04-03T12:00:00","modified_gmt":"2006-04-03T12:00:00","slug":"tony-soprano-does-god-love-via","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/2006\/04\/tony-soprano-does-god-love-via.html","title":{"rendered":"Tony Soprano: Does God Love Viagra?"},"content":{"rendered":"<div style=\"clear:both\"><\/div>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/media.beliefnet.com\/imgs\/tout\/story\/SopranosNun.jpg\" style=\"margin-right: 8px\" align=\"left\" border=\"0\" \/>Last night&#8217;s &#8220;<a href=\"http:\/\/www.hbo.com\/sopranos\" target=\"_New\">Sopranos<\/a>&#8221; episode, &#8220;The Fleshy Part of the Thigh&#8221; was filled with religiously themed moments, including the mysterious appearance of a quotation from Native American spirituality posted at Tony&#8217;s hospital bedside.<\/p>\n<p>Paulie also finds out that his mother is actually a nun whom he&#8217;s always thought was his &#8220;aunt.&#8221; When she was young, the nun urgently confesses to Paulie on her deathbed, there was &#8220;this sailor,&#8221; along came Paulie, and no one wanted a scandal, which is why she is telling him this now, so late in her life, when it no longer matters&#8211;at least to her. Paulie handles this news with all the grace we&#8217;ve come to expect of his character: He becomes incensed and violent.<\/p>\n<p>But my favorite religious moment from last night&#8217;s episode was when an old evangelical buddy of Janice (Tony&#8217;s sister) comes to the hospital to protest on behalf of a doctor who was fired for refusing to prescribe birth control pills. He visits Tony, bringing along another evangelical friend. They show up to witness for Christ by Tony&#8217;s bedside, trying to convince Tony to accept Jesus as his personal savior. Tony&#8217;s response, of course, is that he&#8217;s Catholic, so he&#8217;s already good, but they explain that God doesn&#8217;t want anybody in the way of Tony&#8217;s relationship to Christ&#8211;namely priests&#8211;so as a Catholic he&#8217;s not in that great a shape with God (insert Tony&#8217;s eyes rolling here).<\/p>\n<p>The best part of all, though, is when Tony finds out why these two are at the hospital in the first place. They show him a sign that says, &#8220;Womb is God&#8221; (what does that mean anyway?). Tony&#8217;s immediate response&#8211;much to Carmela&#8217;s embarrassment&#8211;is whether they&#8217;re going to be saying next that &#8220;God doesn&#8217;t like Viagra.&#8221; Following Tony&#8217;s accidental shooting, he&#8217;s a little concerned about having potential &#8220;issues&#8221; in the bedroom. Well, no, the evangelists answer, Tony has nothing to worry about, because God loves anything that promotes procreation, which includes Viagra!<\/p>\n<p>How high of an endorsement can a product get? Maybe soon we will start seeing commercials that say: &#8220;Take Viagra! It&#8217;s what God wants you to do.&#8221;<\/p>\n<div style=\"clear:both;padding-bottom:0.25em\"><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Last night&#8217;s &#8220;Sopranos&#8221; episode, &#8220;The Fleshy Part of the Thigh&#8221; was filled with religiously themed moments, including the mysterious appearance of a quotation from Native American spirituality posted at Tony&#8217;s hospital bedside. Paulie also finds out that his mother is actually a nun whom he&#8217;s always thought was his &#8220;aunt.&#8221; When she was young, the&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":280,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fbia_status":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-242","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Tony Soprano: Does God Love Viagra?<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/2006\/04\/tony-soprano-does-god-love-via.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Tony Soprano: Does God Love Viagra?\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Last night&#8217;s &#8220;Sopranos&#8221; episode, &#8220;The Fleshy Part of the Thigh&#8221; was filled with religiously themed moments, including the mysterious appearance of a quotation from Native American spirituality posted at Tony&#8217;s hospital bedside. Paulie also finds out that his mother is actually a nun whom he&#8217;s always thought was his &#8220;aunt.&#8221; When she was young, the&hellip;\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/2006\/04\/tony-soprano-does-god-love-via.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Idol Chatter\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2006-04-03T12:00:00+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"http:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/imgs\/tout\/story\/SopranosNun.jpg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"donna freitas\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Tony Soprano: Does God Love Viagra?","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/2006\/04\/tony-soprano-does-god-love-via.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"Tony Soprano: Does God Love Viagra?","og_description":"Last night&#8217;s &#8220;Sopranos&#8221; episode, &#8220;The Fleshy Part of the Thigh&#8221; was filled with religiously themed moments, including the mysterious appearance of a quotation from Native American spirituality posted at Tony&#8217;s hospital bedside. Paulie also finds out that his mother is actually a nun whom he&#8217;s always thought was his &#8220;aunt.&#8221; When she was young, the&hellip;","og_url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/2006\/04\/tony-soprano-does-god-love-via.html","og_site_name":"Idol Chatter","article_published_time":"2006-04-03T12:00:00+00:00","og_image":[{"url":"http:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/imgs\/tout\/story\/SopranosNun.jpg"}],"author":"donna freitas","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/2006\/04\/tony-soprano-does-god-love-via.html","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/2006\/04\/tony-soprano-does-god-love-via.html","name":"Tony Soprano: Does God Love Viagra?","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/#website"},"primaryImageOfPage":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/2006\/04\/tony-soprano-does-god-love-via.html#primaryimage"},"image":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/2006\/04\/tony-soprano-does-god-love-via.html#primaryimage"},"thumbnailUrl":"http:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/imgs\/tout\/story\/SopranosNun.jpg","datePublished":"2006-04-03T12:00:00+00:00","dateModified":"2006-04-03T12:00:00+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/#\/schema\/person\/e688c4b50748e4bb0a29a384fc68aa64"},"breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/2006\/04\/tony-soprano-does-god-love-via.html#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/2006\/04\/tony-soprano-does-god-love-via.html"]}]},{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/2006\/04\/tony-soprano-does-god-love-via.html#primaryimage","url":"http:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/imgs\/tout\/story\/SopranosNun.jpg","contentUrl":"http:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/imgs\/tout\/story\/SopranosNun.jpg"},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/2006\/04\/tony-soprano-does-god-love-via.html#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"Tony Soprano: Does God Love Viagra?"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/","name":"Idol Chatter","description":"Beliefnet Entertainment blog, TV blog, Movie blog, Religion in entertainment blog","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/#\/schema\/person\/e688c4b50748e4bb0a29a384fc68aa64","name":"donna freitas","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/3bb\/3bbee96f022df7191e7ff477ca6c7f09x96.jpg","contentUrl":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/3bb\/3bbee96f022df7191e7ff477ca6c7f09x96.jpg","caption":"donna freitas"},"url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/author\/donna-freitas"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/242","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/280"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=242"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/242\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=242"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=242"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=242"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}