I’m a little confused about the uproar over Alanis Morissette’s role as God in the film Dogma. It’s hard to imagine what the singer could do to discredit the Supreme Being that hasn’t already been done by George Burns.

After all, Burns may have had the wizened, cute curmudgeon thing working for him, but, ultimately, he was a lecherous, one-note comic. Morisette, on the other hand, has the Raphaelite hair and the inward, painfully self-reflective personality of a true deity. And if it’s true that God is in all things and in all places at all times, why couldn’t she be a former bubble-gum pop singer turned international angsty-girl, award-winning rock star? Talk about a resurrection.

Still, if the stories about Kevin Smith’s latest, yet to be released film are true, then the protests come as no surprise. Look what happened when it was suggested in a dream sequence of 1988’s Last Temptation of Christ that Jesus’ alternate destiny might have been marrying Mary Magdalene. How crazy was that? Everyone knows that Mary Magdalene is the kind of girl you sleep with, not marry.

According to playwright Terrance McNally, the son of God wasn’t even the marrying kind. In his 1998 off-Broadway play, Corpus Christi, Jesus is a gay activist who begins an affair with Judas on senior prom night at Pontius Pilate Senior High School and later performs a same-sex wedding under a chuppah for chino-sporting apostles James and Bartholomew. Rumour has it that Gap tried desperately for a tie-in advertising campaign (Khakis swing. Khaki country. Khakis dance the hora), but to no avail. Even heretics have their limits.

In Dogma, Smith has two angels, played by Matt Damon and Ben Affleck, trying to find their way back to Heaven, while Chris Rock portrays a vulgar 13th disciple. And adding another gajillion Hail Marys to his penance, Smith also has a recovering Catholic descendant of Joseph and Mary working at an abortion clinic.

Compared to that, a nice Catholic girl like Morissette playing the Creator seems awfully tame. But what’s gotten the U.S.-based Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights outraged is that Morissette sings about oral sex in the song “You Oughta Know” (sure, it’s no Ave Maria, but what do you call the biblical tale of Lot having sex with his two daughters? Wholesome?) and that she appears nude in the video Thank-you. (Though created in His/Her image, God apparently is grossed out by the human body, particularly the freaky, PG-rated pixilation of Morissettes’ pubic hair.

Smith, director of indie hits Clerks and Chasing Amy is, apparently, a practising Catholic and said that Dogma is “from first to last always intended as a love letter to both faith and God almighty… Dogma is in no way blasphemous or worthy of the mild controversy that seems to be brewing around it.”

That wasn’t enough to stop the Walt Disney Co. from labelling the film “inappropriate.” Under pressure from the Catholic League, Miramax, which is owned by Disney, decided not to release the film. Instead, Miramax co-chairmen, Bob and Harvey Weinstein, will acquire all the rights and sell it to another distributor.

A piece of advice for the Catholic League: As far as blasphemy goes, there are far better targets, like the creepy and insincere piety that’s suddenly in vogue – Roseanne telling Larry King, who was on her show shilling his book about the prayer habits of the rich and famous, that she prays every day; an audience full of avaricious record execs at the Grammys applauding and whup-whupping Lauryn Hill’s reading from the Psalms when she accepted an award; anyone, ever, asking the question, What would Jesus do?

And at the risk of sounding holier than thou, I imagine that the Almighty has bigger sinners to punish – like, maybe, war criminals, child molesters, or CEOs of companies using sweatshop labour – than a filmmaker and a few entertainers.

Who knows? The Lord might even like the star turn. Any Creator who makes it flood for 40 days, drops manna from Heaven, and helps their son turn water into wine, has got to be a drama queen.

-Rachel Giese