Misc.

Scroll down to read my recent interview with Rev. James Martin SJ. His words are worth considering.

Father Martin has also begun a new series at The Huffington Post: How to Find God.

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Our next interview--going live later this week--is with Joe Bonomo. Joe's one of the best at representing the elements and peculiarities of childhood Catholicism.

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I'm also pleased to announce that we'll soon be running an interview with Luke Timothy Johnson. Dr. Johnson is an incredibly dynamic scholar of both Scripture and theology. His perspectives are fresh, and his voice is a necessary one.

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I also want to share the identity of a future interview...but won't just yet. I'll keep it a secret for now.

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Vox Nova always has wonderful content, and a recent post--actually, a guest post by Professor Tim Muldoon of Boston College--really got me thinking.

Muldoon's post is light-hearted but wide-reaching, and he posits a necessary question: what is so intriguing about demons/the devil? Much of Hollywood's preoccupation with Catholicism is its mystery, its willingness to accept the "supernatural," as well as its priest-warriors who fell demons that have inhabited innocent people. It all makes for wonderful theater, of course, and I must admit The Exorcist is one of my favorite films. But is it healthy, in the sense of perspective, for non-Catholics to conceive of Catholicism as that-grand-devil-fighting religion?

I'm not sure. Certainly Father Martin, Mark Massa SJ (who has also been added to the forthcoming interview list!), Philip Jenkins, and others have loosely (and not so loosely) yoked mainstream anti-Catholic sentiment to the religion's "other" status, which makes it, like so many "foreign" representations, ripe for Hollywood.

Muldoon's essay makes me wonder, though, if I've become a bit too anthropological where I should be theological. The element of "demons" that turns off many Catholics is likely the oft-parodied, red-horned, Baltimore Catechism edition, and not the conception of demons offered by Ignatius:

"To be clear: Hollywood demons are pretty much nothing like the ones that exorcists and spiritual directors deal with. Ignatius, for example, living in the 16th century–really the tail end of the Medieval world–did not describe demons in a Dante-like way. In Ignatius’ mind, demons weren’t hopping around with pitchforks or melting people’s faces. They were real, but their work was not one of terror but of constant temptation, and they could be overcome through lives of virtue and prayer. Indeed, the spiritual life as a whole, he wrote, was an ongoing practice of discernment so that one could learn which desires were rooted in God and which were rooted in the demonic."

Check-out Muldoon's entire post for more curious commentary.