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Cardinal Collins on G.K. Chesterton

Fun post by Brandon Vogt over at the Word on Fire blog. Brandon is, along with Dale Ahlquist, a driving force behind the 38th Annual Chesterton Conference, and…

(C)onference organizers were surprised to see a new registration come through for one “Thomas Collins” living in Toronto, Canada. The name sounded familiar. But, wait, it couldn’t be, right? It couldn’t be Cardinal Thomas Collins, the Archbishop of Toronto, could it?

Well, organizers reached out through the email provided and sure enough, it was the Cardinal himself! He said he had long wanted to attend one of the annual Chesterton conferences, but until now had been blocked by other commitments. Yet with a free weekend in early August, he decided to sign up! So he went to the website and registered.

Brandon asked Cardinal Collins for an interview about Chesterton’s influence on his life and ministry. Some good stuff here:

VOGT: Among Chesterton’s many ideas, which have most shaped your life?

CARDINAL COLLINS: Chesterton is just so sensible, and I have been really influenced by his perceptive revelation of the shallowness of the modern world, so full of illusion.

What he wrote about government and big business destroying the family is as relevant today as when he wrote it.

I have valued greatly his sense of wonder at the world around us, and the beauty of things, simple tangible things.

I appreciate his idea that we need to be attentive to what is local.

In terms of how to communicate, I love the way in which he is both clear and charitable, and how he communicates serious ideas in a humorous way. But clarity and charity are fundamental.

And:

VOGT: Has Chesterton shaped your priesthood or episcopacy in specific ways?

CARDINAL COLLINS: The Father Brown stories certainly have influenced my vision of the priesthood—and Chesterton wasn’t a Catholic when he wrote some of the best of those stories. It’s interesting (and I think Chesterton would have appreciated the irony, if not paradox) that some of the best literature on the Catholic priesthood is by non-Catholics, such as Willa Cather and Taylor Caldwell.

As a priest and especially a bishop, I have marveled at how he communicated the faith boldly and effectively to the secular world, and always with charity and wit. In some ways he is like an episcopal hero of mine, St. Francis de Sales.

Chesterton is also very plain and direct, and that is how bishops must be: no bafflegab, no obscure subtleties. He is profound, but he doesn’t have a lot of layers, and that is good. What you see is what you get.

Readers of these pages are well aware of our fondness for Cardinal Collins, who has been a huge supporter of The Faith Explained Institute, and speaks at our conferences whenever possible. I just love the fact he was going to take in a Chesterton conference (and probably looking forward to going simply as an attendee). Knowing how generous he is with his time and talents, I’m not at all surprised that once word got out, he agreed to speak and celebrate Mass while there.

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Debunking the Debunkers

Here’s my latest article from the June issue of Catholic Insight magazine. Hope you like it!

Debunking the Debunkers

by Cale Clarke

Just as surely as the lillies bloom every spring, each Easter season brings with it some new theories about what really happened at the first Easter. Martin Luther’s dictum describing early Protestantism comes to mind: “There are as many interpretations as there are heads”. Here are a couple of this year’s takes:

First, on Holy Saturday, the National Post ran a piece about a new book by art historian (and amateur theologian) Thomas de Wesselow, The Sign: The Shroud of Turin and the Secret of the Resurrection. And what, pray tell, is that secret? According to de Wesselow, the shroud really is the burial cloth of Jesus Christ – but get this: he thinks it was the shroud that the Apostles encountered after the death of Christ, not his resurrected body. Huh? So, when “doubting” Thomas stuck his hand in Jesus’ side, was he only wiggling his fingers through a hole in the sheet? Not sure this is the sort of stuff that inspires martyrdom.

And then there’s the perennial publicity hound Simcha Jacobovici (TV’s The Naked Archaeologist), who, along with James Cameron (whenever the latter is not tied up making bad movies about blue people or sinking boats), spends a lot of his time looking for the lost tomb of Jesus. It’s a project that has as much potential as the maiden Titanic voyage.

As real biblical scholar Craig Evans pointed out recently in The Huffington Post, the archaeological community scoffs at the idea that the tomb in the Jerusalem area that Jacobovici shows off in The Jesus Discovery belongs to Jesus of Nazareth. And, if Jesus’ bones are still in a tomb, then how does Jacobovici explain the fact that even the enemies of the early Christian movement say it’s empty? It seems as if The Naked Archaeologist has no clothes.

The fact is that the disciples claimed to have encountered the resurrected Jesus. People who days earlier had denied even knowing Jesus (like Peter) are, post-Easter, quite willing to lay down their lives for their conviction that Jesus lives. Skeptics, even persecutors like Saul the Pharisee (better known now as Paul the Apostle) claim to have had the same experience. After his death and burial, Jesus is said to have appeared to numerous individuals and groups of people over a 40-day period, including 500 people at one time (1 Corinthians 15:6). Forget about mass hallucinations – you can’t catch a hallucination like a common cold. And what these folks claimed was not even that they had seen a “vision” of Jesus – a category well accepted in Jewish circles.

No, what they claimed was not that they had seen a ghost, or even – sorry, Thomas de Wesselow – a shroud. They claimed to have experienced Jesus’ physical body, back from the dead. Transformed, yes, but still him, still sporting the crucifixion wounds as a type of I.D. Able to be touched, able to scarf down some food to make a point of his being corporeal (cf. Luke 24:36-43; Acts 10:41). A resurrection is a lot harder to prove than a vision. A “vision” of Jesus, encouraging the disciples to continue the mission, wouldn’t require an empty tomb. And preaching the resurrection in the very city where Jesus was crucified would have been impossible if the tomb were occupied. This is even more evident when one considers that the location of the tomb was no secret, not waiting thousands of years to be discovered by Cameron and Jacobovici – it belonged to Joseph of Arimathea, a member of the Sanhedrin, the very council which condemned Jesus to death, and a known public figure.

Could the disciples have stolen the body? That was, after all, the explanation proffered by the enemies of the nascent Church as to how the tomb came to be empty. But this view overlooks an important fact: the disciples died for their belief in the resurrection. True, many have died (and continue to do so) for what they believe to be true – suicide bombers, for instance. But no one in their right mind willingly would give their life for what they knew to be false. If the disciples really had Jesus’ body locked in the trunk of a car somewhere, I doubt they’d be in a hurry to get themselves crucified upside-down, or sawed in two.

Whatever one’s theory is about what happened that first Easter, one ought to at least take into account all the known facts of the case. But, unfortunately for a gullible public, the Jacobovicis and de Wesselows of the world have never let the facts get in the way of a good story.

Cale Clarke is the Director of The Faith Explained Seminars (TheFaithExplained.com), and the creator of The New Mass app.

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Tim Tebow and The New Mass Translation

I have written elsewhere in these pages about Tim Tebow, and let me say on record that I’m a fan. To say that Tebow is the most polarizing athlete of our time is no understatement, and much of this is due to the way he articulates his faith. Robert Mixa, over at the fantastic Word on Fire blog, makes some very thought-provoking comparisons between the way Tebow speaks about his beliefs, and the new English Mass translation – both of which are making some people very, very uncomfortable. You can check it out here. Be sure to leave your thoughts in the combox below. Big HT to Jasmin Lemieux-Lefebvre (@jasminll) for alerting me to this story.

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The Gospel According to Superman

In light of my interview with Salt and Light TV tomorrow on superheroes and the faith (I’ll let you know when it airs), I thought I’d post my 2006 Superman article, published in Catholic Insight magazine, dealing with the release of the film, “Superman Returns”. You can also find my two-part article on the Batman film “The Dark Knight” in the archives here and here !

The Gospel According to Superman

by Cale Clarke

As a lifelong fan of comic book superheroes, I couldn’t wait for the latest installment of the long-dormant Superman movie franchise, Superman Returns, to swoop into theatres. And as a Catholic, watching the movie gave me more than I bargained for. I was looking for a little escapist fantasy. Instead, I found my thoughts soaring “up, up, and away”–as Superman would say-into the very heart of reality, heaven itself.

Why heaven? Because Jesus Christ is there. And Superman Returns draws some very interesting parallels between the Messiah and the Man of Steel. Just as St. Paul in Acts 17 used the works of Greek “pop culture” artists – namely, pagan poets Epimenides, Aratus, and Cleanthes – to draw first-century Athenians to Christ, there may be aspects of this movie that can connect modern spiritual seekers to the Saviour. To communicate the Gospel effectively today, we must, as St. Paul did, exegete the culture as well as the Scriptures.

Superman was created 70 years ago by Jewish teens Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster (a Canadian!). No doubt they were thinking more of the original Moses than the new Moses (Jesus) when they dreamed up their iconic character, but the allusion to Moses is unmistakable in the Superman story. As their home planet, Krypton, is destroyed, Jor-El and his wife Lara set their infant son Kal-El adrift, not on the river Nile, but into outer space, in the hopes that a good family on Earth will raise their son as one of their own, even though he is truly a king. Of course, Jonathan and Martha Kent did just that in Smallville, Kansas, naming the boy Clark, Superman’s alter-ego.

Although the Superman legend springs from Jewish roots, just as Christianity itself does, the creators of Superman Returns have made their own mark on the character–a mark that looks an awful lot like the cross. Superman film directors like Richard Donner (1978’s Superman: the Movie) and Superman Returns’ director Bryan Singer chose to portray Superman as a Christ figure. The “S” on Superman’s chest might just as well stand for “Savior.” Singer acknowledged as much in a recent interview with Wizard magazine: “Superman is the Jesus Christ of superheroes.”

Obviously, Superman is a myth; Christ is a historical person, “born of the Virgin Mary …(Who) suffered under Pontius Pilate.” Superman is not Christ. But he is a Christlike figure, as we all should be. What we are dealing with is more of an allusion to Christ (a la Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings), rather than a straight Christian allegory like C.S. Lewis’ Narnia series, where Aslan = Christ. But Superman Returns’ Christian allusions are no illusion.

Consider: Superman is sent to earth as a baby in a rocket ship shaped like a star, which lands in a rural cornfield. Christ’s arrival was also heralded by a star seen by shepherds in a field. Superman is raised on earth in a “backwater” town reminiscent of Nazareth: Smallville. Like Christ, Superman grows up where people have no idea of the powers he possesses, or what his true
identity – hiss true nature, a Catholic might say – really is.

Jesus was raised by an earthly stepfather named Joseph, a carpenter. Clark (which, incidentally, means “cleric”) was also raised by a manual labourer, farmer Jonathan Kent. Ironically, Clark’s parents were originally named Mary and Joseph in the comics, but later were changed to Martha and Jonathan. Superman’s Kryptonian father, Jor-El, sends Kal-El to earth with these words in Superman Returns: “They can be a great people, Kal-El; they wish to be. They only lack the light to show them the way. That is why I have sent them you, my only son.”

If this does not evoke echoes of John’s gospel, I don’t know what does! Jesus is “the light of the world” (John 1:4,5,9; 8:12) and God’s one and only Son (John 3:16,18). The early Church’s members were first called members of “the Way” (Acts 9:2). Jesus Himself said, “I am the way, the truth, and the life” (John 14:6).

Interestingly, “El” is Hebrew for God, which may or may not have had some significance in the creation of the Kryptonian names of Superman and his father. El the father and El the son evoke the Trinity, as does the line repeated by Jor-El and Superman in Superman Returns, “The son becomes the father, and the father, the son.” Jesus said to Philip: “Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father” (John 14:9).

Superman hovers above earth and listens, via his super-hearing, to myriad cries for help from below. This scene echoes what he will later tell Lois: “You said the world doesn’t need a saviour. But every day, I hear people crying for one.” Superman answers those cries, flying to the rescue, faster than a speeding bullet, breaking the sound barrier with a boom. This recalls Christ’s hearing our prayers on earth. His response is even faster than Superman’s. God “is an ever-present help in trouble” (Psalm 46:1).

Superman’s mortal enemy is Lex Luthor: a name that phonetically evokes that of Lucifer. Luthor is insanely jealous of Superman’s powers, just as Lucifer was of God. There is a scene where Superman, weakened by Kryptonite, is savagely beaten by Luthor and his thugs. The violence is raw and very reminiscent of The Passion of the Christ. Seeing Superman stripped of his powers and thrashed reminds one of Jesus, holding back His great power, brutalized by the people he came to save. Superman is then stabbed in the side by Luthor with a shard of Kryptonite, an unmistakable allusion to the lance which pierced the heart of Christ on the cross.

Luthor’s gal pal Kitty Kowalski calls to mind Pontius Pilate’s wife Claudia, who tells Pilate not to harm Jesus, having been warned in a dream. Kitty is visibly disturbed during Superman’s beating, and later throws away Kryptonian Crystals possessed by Lex, which had given him the edge in his battle against Superman.

Just as Christ did away with sin through His death, burial, and resurrection, Superman, after saving earth, falls (in a cruciform
pose) from space to earth, where his impact “buries” him in a crater, seemingly dead. Is this the end for Superman? Not if Warner Brothers wants another sequel!

Much more can be said, more than we have space for here. Of course, the comparisons between Superman and Christ end when it comes down to the main surprise of the film (caution: spoiler ahead!): Superman has fathered a child out of wedlock with Lois Lane. No allusion to Christ here; Jesus was celibate and fathered no children, no matter what Dan Brown says.

Superman’s son, Jason, was conceived by Superman and Lois’ illicit union in Superman II. As a lifelong Superman fan, this is one development of his onscreen mythology that I have a huge problem with. Superman was always known for his moral purity; filmmakers Donner and Singer have taken far too much licence here, in a misguided attempt to make Superman “relatable” to modern viewers.

But they forget that what attracts us to the character of Superman is, well, his character, as well as his saving powers. He is to, as Jor-El intones in the film, “inspire others to moral good.” And what people are attracted to in Superman–the qualities and powers of a saviour–can only be found in the reality of Christ, the true Super Man.

In the movie, Superman returns after a long disappearance. We, too, are waiting for our hero, Jesus, to return in glory. However, as Catholics, we are not asking Our Lord, as Lois does of Superman after his long absence, “How could you leave us like that?” We always have Christ’s Real Presence in the Eucharist, where He never leaves us or forsakes us. “I am with you always” (Matt. 28: 20).

Really, we can all identify a lot with Superman, because we are all aliens of a sort. This world is not our home, but “our citizenship is in heaven. And we eagerly await a saviour from there”–no, not Superman–“the Lord Jesus Christ, who … will transform our lowly bodies so that they will be like his glorious body” (Phil 3:20-21). When He returns, we will all be Super.

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