I’m Catholic and a devoted consumer of ice cream. In fact, my fondness for ice cream veers dangerously into seven deadly sins territory.

But I won’t be purchasing Antonio Federici ice cream, that’s for sure.

I don’t know why they’d want to alienate any potential customers for the sake of “lighthearted social commentary.”

I don’t get it, although you may be right in that far more people in the UK may be inspired to try the product as a result of the ad than those who are offended by it (obviously Catholics are a distinct minority over there).

I’m actually of two minds about the whole banning thing. On the one hand, the ad campaign is bad manners, which is sort of par for the course for most of the public commentary surrounding the Pope’s visit. Compared with what people are saying, particularly online, particularly in comments on articles and blog posts dealing with this visit, a pregnant nun eating ice cream is very mild. Still: not very host-city-like, to paper the route to Westminster Cathedral with images like this.

On the other hand, though I find this kind of thing offensive, I don’t think that “people will be offended” is a reason for limiting expression in an official, governmental capacity. That the government wants to clap the lid on this ad campaign is in its own way as disturbing as the fact that the ice-cream company is determined to be offensive in the face of a ban.

I am not an entrepreneur in the least, but it seems to me that being more in love with what you view as a controversial (if gently humourous) social-commentary-ish (but really, we just love our ice cream that much) ad campaign than with whether or not people who view your ad, some of whom may be Catholic, wlll buy your ice cream, does not seem like a very big stride down the road to success.

(though again, it’s quite possible that more people in England would applaud the ice-cream company than would applaud the Pope, so maybe it’s a smarter move than I’m giving them credit for).

Even after reading this explanation, I remain perplexed regarding what “social commentary” an image of a pregnant nun eating ice cream is supposed to represent. Is the company suggesting that their devotion to ice cream is analogous to a nun’s devotion to God? Exactly which “social issues” are being addressed here?