The Father, the Son, and the Holy Guest Star

The Simpson Archive summarizes this second of last night's episodes,

Bart makes friends with a young priest (voiced by Liam Neeson) he meets in a Catholic school after he is expelled from Springfield Elementary, despite the fact that he's correct when he says, "I didn't do it"

This episode was scheduled to air on 10 April 2005, but after Pope John Paul II died on 2 April, Fox moved this episode to May 15

Despite the show's dependence on cultural references, the Catholic Church has been almost invisible during its run. Maybe it's because the writers have only a vague knowledge of Catholicism. Not that the episode wasn't funny, but it was a send-up of the Church about as it was in "Going My Way," except with the clerical sexual abuse scandal in the distant background. For example, Bart's new teacher is a nun who raps his knuckles with a yardstick. It's not only been a long time since many Catholic school students have seen someone rapped on the knuckles by a nun, it's been a long time since they've seen a nun.

Marge doesn't join Homer and Bart in exploring Catholicism. In an emergency coffee shop prayer meeting with Reverend Lovejoy and Ned Flanders, she has a vision of being separated from Homer and Bart for all eternity. She is playing croquet in Protestant Heaven, while Homer and Bart break pinatas, drink chianti and eat pasta, and Riverdance in Catholic heaven. Funny, and flattering in way to see Jesus being blanket-tossed in Catholic Heaven, but still more a time warp than a vision. Even Rev. Lovejoy's church, to which every Christian character in the series belongs, is generic evangelical, not croquet-playing Episcopalian. (Lisa, being Buddhist, wasn't in a Heaven.)

In a classroom scene, Bart had correctly expained transubstantiation. Despite that, in the end, he mouths the opinion that the differences between Christians are insignificant. If only Comic Book Guy had been there to point out this inconsistency.