AmericanPapist Comments
I was actually in an improv troupe called Yes, And... in my undergraduate years at a Catholic university.
If I had a TV, I'd start watching Colbert today!
Oh, I definitely understand where you're coming from on this. I'm frequently surprised at how he interjects common proofs for Catholic and Christian faith, theological concepts, and direct references to scripture and the Church. He was all over the athiest who appeared on The Colbert Report a few weeks ago.
I think he's being intentionally subversive.
If Colbert is Catholic why did he lambaste Ave Maria, Florida in a recent spot and make some rather offensive jokes about contraception not being available in the drug stores?
Jimi - he's not perfect. I'm not claiming that at all. He IS a very funny man who brings his faith (for better or worse) into his comedy often.
Steven Colbert laid things out pretty neatly in an interview he did with NPR (where he talked as his genuine self, not his blustering tv persona). He's pretty clearly devout, and has a real faith in Christ and believes certain fundamentals. But he definitely presecribes to a Cafeteria Catholicism that rejects a lot of the usual things people reject these days; mostly focused around sex issues it seems. So he makes a bunch of jokes poking fun at people on various sides, cuz he ain't squarely on on side or another himself.
If I read a lot of his jokes correctly, I did the same thing when I was myself much more of a Cafeteria Catholic. For me, it was an attempt to get across to people a thought like "look, I can be devoutly religuous, without having to be a prude and without being a condemning, stuffy fascist. It can be cool to be religious. You should look into it more"
This develops pretty naturally when most of the people around you are hostile, in one way or another, to religion. It's not a great approach, but it's better than just hiding one's religion, methinks.
I think that's a good read on the situation, Adam.
I think the key to Colbert is discerning between Colbert the man and Colbert the character as has been mentioned above. (As for the jokes about Ave Maria-Fla, I found them to be very funny and spot on...many good Catholics disagree with Ave Maria and Tom Monaghan so that is not a barometer of his orthodoxy)
I found it particuarly sweet when he nailed a scientist, who was arguing against the existence of God, on his program. Colbert suddenly pulled on the principle of "the Uncaused cause" on the poor scientist, who was could nothing better then skirt the question. Priceless!
You have probably seen this before, but it bears disseminating across St. Blog's: Stephen Colbert's liturgical dance performance.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g...%20with%
20Candy
According to the wikipedia article on him, his father and two older brothers died in an Eastern Airlines plane crash in 1974, when Steven C was only 10. My gosh!
Ha ha! That liturgical dance parody is priceless!
(I can only imagine if one of Rog's minions accidentally stumbled across it on Comedy Central: "Hello? Mr. Colbert? We were wondering if you would like to participate in this year's Religious Ed Congress?")
His segments always had an . . . interesting vibe on The Daily Show. Don't have cable but have thought about buying his show thru iTunes (if I can here in Canada).
(And, hey, my husband's thinking about maybe teaching at AMU Florida but they are new kids on the block and AMU's apparently peeved off old friends (I don't know all the details and don't want to), I don't think they're a litmus test - not to pile on though . . . )
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