They’ll get letters for this one.
That was the best ending ever.
As someone who aspires to Protestant Heaven, that was indeed the best ending ever. 
And it even seemed surprisingly sympathetic to Christianity, in some respects. I wasn’t the least bit offended…
Does anyone know if this was the last season?
[Professor Farsworth]"Oh my, no.[/pf]
The cast has signed up for seasons 17-19 with an option for 20.
Exxxxcccelent.
I read somewhere that this episode was supposed to air about a month ago, but was postponed because of the papal succession.
I looked away briefly at the end. In what year did the show set the final confrontation between the two battling Bart armies?
The futuristic religious war was set “1,000 years in the future”.
Best Simpsons episode I have seen in a long time.
I hope it’ll replay. It seemed like a poor production decision to broadcast it opposite the Survivor Finale.
I think the first one was better. The second seemed too much like they were trying to do a “South Park”-style irreverence thing with topical humor, but it was just baffling to me.
^I agree. Also, the masturbation joke seemed completely out of place. It was just one of those things that made me realize how far the Simpsons has fallen since the earlier seasons. I mean, there is certainly a place for jokes like that: that’s what Family Guy and South Park are for.
Also, I can’t remember if it was this episode or the earlier one, but Homer’s comment about the “next military quagmire” and “commander coocoo bananas” just seemed very heavy-handed to the point of being retarded (and I don’t even agree with Bush, so it’s not partisanship making it unfunny: it’s terrible humor making it unfunny).
Bart was betrayed by Millhouse. Who would have guessed Millhouse had the cajones to do so? I bet you a girl was involved.
This episode confirmed what I’d suspected all along: Catholic Heaven rocks! I realize they didn’t have enough time to show all the different sections of Catholic Heaven, but the different tables and their respective celebrations pretty much are what I imagine. A complete version would include a table full of Poles smoking cigars and drinking Pabst Blue Ribbon and eating platters of kielbasa and pierogies, with nonstop polka bands jamming away at their celestial mazurkas. It’s a personal memory, I acknowledge, but having grown up attending St. Adalbert’s Church in Farrell, Pennsylvania, which had a congregation that was about 90% Polish or Polish-descended. Beer, sausage and polkas are, to me, more a part of holy canon than rosary beads, guilt from masturbation and scary nuns. It only felt natural to me that the pope should be Polish, and any church where they aren’t prone to sing “Gdy pokój niebieski” or some such hymn just doesn’t feel Catholic to me.
I haven’t been to church since Midnight Mass, 2003, so I guess I’m going to Catholic Hell. I know what to expect; I’ve read the Divine Comedy. Maybe I should drop a coin and light a candle now and again, so’s I can maybe land a shot in Purgatory (and none of you other sects get a crack at that! Ha!
But, but, but that contradicts the Futurama continuity. I’m so disillusioned.
The part that made me laugh the hardest was the bit where Santa’s Little Helper and Bart (both chained to ground in the yard) fought over the water bowl. When Bart started losing, he rolled over shouting “I submit, I submit”. The roll-eyes S.L.H. did at that point was hilarious.
[nerd] They don’t exist in the same continuity. Originally, Futurama was meant to be the actual future, which is why when the Planet Express crew lands on the big ball of garbage they find a pile of Simpsons merchandise. [/nerd]
–Cliffy
No, see, that merchandise is from when Bart was the “I didn’t do it” Boy. Same as Bobby Hill’s Bart Simpson doll.
Regarding Futurama and The Simpsons: Matt Groening once said “The Simpsons is fake. Futurama is real.” Maybe that’s why Homer has yellow skin and Fry has white skin.
More thoughts from me on this episode (and the earlier one involving Flanders moving away) later.
You can say it, but it don’t make it true. 
–Cliffy
Sorry - my snarky reply is to Otto.
–Cliffy, again