{"id":3383,"date":"2007-11-08T12:20:00","date_gmt":"2007-11-08T12:20:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/deaconsbench\/2007\/11\/give-this-man-an-extra-ration-of-rum.html"},"modified":"2007-11-08T12:20:00","modified_gmt":"2007-11-08T12:20:00","slug":"give-this-man-an-extra-ration-of-rum","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/2007\/11\/give-this-man-an-extra-ration-of-rum.html","title":{"rendered":"Give this man an extra ration of rum"},"content":{"rendered":"

I was delighted to notice this exceptional and insightful and brilliant piece of Colbertiana<\/a> in First Things. <\/p>\n

The author, Nathaniel Peters, clearly grasps the profound social and cultural significance of My Close Personal Friend, Stephen Colbert<\/a>, and places him in a truly Catholic context. <\/p>\n

He also includes, bless him, a link to one of my favorite bits of Colbert Catholicity, his now-legendary recitation of the Nicene Creed. <\/p>\n

Read on:<\/p>\n

The man who mocks conservatives by claiming that \u201creality has a well-known liberal bias\u201d is not a stump speaker for the political left. On questions of life and religion, Colbert\u2019s Catholicism shows its colors. One night, it was in the form of a few good Unitarian jokes and the recitation of the entire Nicene Creed<\/a>.<\/p>\n

On another night, bioethicist Lee Silver from Princeton visited the show. Colbert told him he believed that science and spirituality could go hand in hand and that all people, embryos included, have souls. Silver begged to differ. He told Colbert that, in the shower, we scrub off thousands of skin cells every day, and that the cells on his arm are human life in the same way that embryos are. To which Colbert responded: \u201cIf I let my arm go for a while and didn\u2019t wash it, you\u2019re saying I\u2019d have babies on my arm.\u201d Thank goodness we have comedians to take such arguments to their natural conclusions.<\/p>\n

Or take the publicity surrounding Mother Teresa\u2019s dark night of the soul, when Fr. James Martin appeared on The Colbert Report to discuss the publication of the book Mother Teresa: Come Be My Light. In the media, many opponents of religion had declared that the book showed Mother Teresa\u2019s refusal to recognize that her doubts were, in effect, a denial of the existence of God. That night, Colbert was completely in character, the loud-mouthed bulldog at full volume. He asked Fr. Martin: \u201cDid it shock you to find out that Mother Teresa is probably in hell? . . . She doubted the existence of God.\u201d Fr. Martin replied that feeling God\u2019s absence is not the same as doubting his existence. Colbert only pressed the point, accusing Martin of splitting hairs, and Martin insisted all the more on the distinction between feeling and believing.<\/p>\n

It was funny at times, but more important, it was an exposition of Catholicism couched in Colbert\u2019s comic outrage. Such comedy serves a valuable purpose in the public life. Not only does Colbert keep us entertained, but his mock bunkum cuts through the real bunkum we hear so much these days\u2014just as his mock truthiness reveals the real truthiness that infects nearly all of public life.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Big hat tip to New Advent<\/a> for providing this link, and making my day.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I was delighted to notice this exceptional and insightful and brilliant piece of Colbertiana in First Things. The author, Nathaniel Peters, clearly grasps the profound social and cultural significance of My Close Personal Friend, Stephen Colbert, and places him in a truly Catholic context. He also includes, bless him, a link to one of my…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":204,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[33],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3383","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-stephen-colbert"],"yoast_head":"\nGive this man an extra ration of rum - The Deacon's Bench<\/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\/deaconsbench\/2007\/11\/give-this-man-an-extra-ration-of-rum.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Give this man an extra ration of rum - The Deacon's Bench\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"I was delighted to notice this exceptional and insightful and brilliant piece of Colbertiana in First Things. 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Prior to that, Deacon Greg worked for 26 years as a writer and producer for CBS News, where he contributed to \"The CBS Evening News with Katie Couric,\" \"60 Minutes II,\" \"48 Hours,\" (Emmy Award, Writers Guild of America Award) and \"Sunday Morning.\" He was co-writer for the acclaimed documentary \"9\/11,\" hosted by Robert DeNiro. (Emmy Award, Christopher Award, Peabody Award, Writers Guild of America Award.) His radio essays were featured in the bestselling book \"Deadlines and Datelines\" by Dan Rather. He's also a two-time winner of the Catholic Press Association Award. Other places you may find him: AMERICA, U.S. CATHOLIC, CATHOLIC DIGEST, REALITY (Redemptorist Communications) and THE BROOKLYN TABLET. He also contributes homiletic reflections to the parish resource CONNECT!, published by Liturgical Publications. In November 2009, he began serving a three-year term as a consultant to the Communications Committee of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB). Deacon Greg grew up in Maryland (Go Terps!) but he and his wife today live in the beautiful borough of Queens, New York. You can contact Deacon Greg at dcngreg@gmail.com.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/author\/gkandra"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3383","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/204"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3383"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3383\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3383"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3383"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3383"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}