Stephen Colbert's Faith in the Media

appreciate where this is coming from really but please just just shut up i'm sorry i know that was rude i just i just i'm a little hungover from lent [Music] [Applause] [Music] my name is father casey and i'm father patrick and this is upon friar review patrick do you like my little ukrainian there was that a ukrainian movie i don't know i said hello i think in what google translate said hello people from ukraine we're thinking and praying for you i love the flag being the grain on the bottom and the sky on the top what it represents oh yeah that's cool wonderful father patrick we are back here hoping to bring some joy to the world some real deep meaning in this episode i'm really excited for this one talking about stephen colbert oh steam gold there uh host of the late show used to be on the colbert report became famous in some ways for the wider audience for his uh political stuff kind of attacking trump we're not really going to go that direction we don't need to go after former presidents what we do want to talk about though is the way he uses faith in media the guy is amazing a good catholic strong catholic man but very bright and able to use all kinds of dynamics in his interviews that allow him to be that guy but not be overtly uh weirded out yeah i think that's a good way of putting it yeah and he has a great sense of humor so as we're gonna see in the first one he's sort of kind of being self-deprecating towards his faith but also using it to present catholicism in a wide range so very cool here we go he looks like one of the blues brothers [Music] look i just i appreciate where this is coming from really but please just just shut up i'm sorry i know that was rude i just i just i'm a little hungover from lent [Music] you see every year catholics are supposed to give up something they love for 40 days so this year i gave up catholicism instead i tried some other brand name religions uh i tried judaism it was nice but i hated myself islam it was great and true but not for me then i tried a couple of cults scientology raelianism apple i thought i thought i could make it all the way to easter but on friday night i was walking by st patrick's cathedral and i beautiful i caught a little whiff of incense you know and that's my trigger and i thought hey i'll go in i'll kneel down for a minute i thought i could handle it well long story short i went on a catholic bender i didn't i didn't remember a lot of the weekend i did every station of the cross i don't remember how many sacraments i did for all i know i'm celibate now i vaguely remember doing a hail mary and our father at the same time that's right the catholic speed ball people told me i was stumbling through the streets of manhattan in a charizable and a miter begging for quarters to buy votive candles oh my god and at one point i genuflected all over the back vocabulary when i came to i was in a monastery next to some abbot whose name i couldn't remember illuminating a manuscript what the back is killing me what the what the oh what it's the thigh bone of a saint i don't even know what reliquary i took this from oh my god anyway i thought i could kick but i guess i just have to accept that i am a functional roman catholic and if by some chance i blessed you this weekend without your consent i just want to say circus usuvenate you know what i'm saying do you know what you're saying i remember this game on college i looked it up and so the best of my knowledge he's saying basically crap happens [Laughter] yeah so uh give up something you love for lent give up catholicism is that what we're supposed to do hilarious that's really really crazy we've got lent starting just this week here it comes yeah so uh what should we do for lent should we follow stephen's path well um i think little traffic things would be good and uh i'm not gonna do something against eating because that makes me a grumpy ugly person and i don't want to become a grumpy ugly person for lent so sure maybe the traffic thing and maybe i'll add something like um maybe a little bit more time with the poor mmm that's a good one i think i'm gonna go for that yeah so we often phrase it as steven did here as give up something we love that's not necessarily the purpose it can be it can be sacrificial but the purpose is to make us better christians it's to grow in holiness and so sometimes sacrifices do that sometimes fasting makes us worse people and maybe that's not what we're supposed to do we're supposed to try it in a different way so i would challenge you to think about what is it that's getting in the way what's that roadblock to being a good christian how can you work on that sounds great and i i also think that there's a special gift that happens where you realize i can discipline myself you know i didn't i didn't really enter into practice of discipline until lit but now that i've done it i like that i can practice self-control self-control kind of feels good yeah i always say don't give up something for lent which has little asterisks on it give up something for life pick something that you should just obliterate get rid of and say i'm gonna do this trial period it takes about 28 to 60 days or so you know depending on how you who you listen to to create a new habit takes you four eight ten weeks take this time to practice you know i don't want to do that thing anymore and now is a concerted effort sounds like a plan then you can turn from it so we thank you stephen for the laughs got all pious faced oh that was hilarious i do remember in college i was growing in my faith and i didn't know all those words i was like what's a reliquary what's a miter oh okay got it he's an educator there you go yeah but not in your face as you say just kind of funny and oh he's self-deprecating it's awesome yeah so this next clip i think is one of my favorites of all time i think it's a fantastic way to evangelize in the bizarre bizarre situation so the name of this clip is steven tries to convert bill maher oh my gosh bill they say uh at a dinner party you should never talk about sex politics or religion have you ever been invited to a dinner party [Laughter] that man has got opinions are there things you won't talk about i probably wouldn't be invited to your dinner party because we're very opposite right really how so well like how are we opposite really you're married and religious yeah i'm married and i give i give religion a shot yeah i give it a shot oh i thought you were a practicing catholic i am doesn't mean i'm good at it he's practicing yeah i'm not honest to god i suck i suck as a cat doesn't mean i don't keep going you were you were raised catholic i was raised come on back the bill is always open golden ticket right before you all you have to do is humble yourself before the presence of the lord admit there are things greater than you in the universe that you do not understand and salvation awaits you take pascal's wager if you're wrong you're an idiot but if i'm right you're going to hell i do admit there are things in the universe i don't understand okay but my response to that is not to make up silly stories some pretty good stories some of them have pretty good stories or to believe intellectually embarrassing myths from the bronze age but you believe whatever you want yeah well yeah i mean i have a connection to our ancestors because i i yeah sure i have you know these were men who did not know what a germ or an atom was or where the sun went at night and that's where you're getting your wisdom anyway let's let's [Applause] [Laughter] you gave me a big lecture on come back to the church i did not give i gave you an invitation a lecture it's an invitation what are you talking about this guy gave me a huge lecture about going to dinner italian italian food how dare you i've had more inviting invitations [Laughter] that's a sparring right there i love it because it's uh he's being truthful and he is kind of saying like hey come back and i really believe this but he's also being self-deprecating he's being funny he's allowing bill to attack him back and forth yeah i think bill heard a couple things in there that he found difficult yeah you could tell he got his eye up a bit oh yeah yeah you know two altar boys golly yeah it just shows you where you can go from the robes to to the world golly no it's a shame because bill has some if i can call you bill you know first name basis he's got some legitimate frustrations with the church and with religion and i think he rightfully attacks anti-intellectualism and he attacks people who abuse people of course we're on board but i also think he pulls some fast ones sometimes i think he also uses some logical fallacies against us it's unfortunate he he likes to revel in snappiness yes and he also has a very simplistic understanding of his arguments of a lot of things way too simplistic yeah it's just simply more going on there more complicated that if you got into it his arguments wouldn't hold up he likes to gaslight some things to yeah make people feel stupid or to feel superior he uh i don't know if you haven't been offended by bill maher you just haven't listened to him because he's all it's hard to even put him on like a little more conservative because he's just yeah and he tries for that he a little he revels in how easy it is for you to lose your religion which is the devil yeah you know the devil will play that game yeah i think that uh there's one guy i don't know his name i'm sorry but there's one because he springs these things on me in this moment i don't know what's coming the idea just get unfiltered thoughts but he uh he met one guy who was an apologist who was extraordinary they sat down together and and bill maher got chewed up not maliciously but in his arguments the guy just poked all the holes that were there and they deflated which is why i think that while we would might like that because like ah take that bill maher he probably didn't walk away thinking oh i should consider christianity whereas i think maybe here that invitation that playful sparring i think people follow as pope vi said witnesses more than they follow teachers especially when you're being teached at and so if you look at colbert like hey he's a happy guy he's a healthy guy he has a family he feels emotionally stable maybe i should check out this thing he's a nice guy i know a man who was roman catholic did not educate himself well in roman catholicism left the church and spent his atheism and agnosticism really hammering catholics because he was so sad that every one of them could be taken down so easily and then he looked for someone and kept looking and looking for someone who could hold it up and he started finding those folks and came back to the church so i i say ask the questions right oh yeah it holds up better better ask the questions than to run away angry yeah the good thing about catholicism is intellectually liturgically historically practically it it just holds up as a better situation yeah not perfect but beautiful and good and true and we don't want to lord that over anyone but we just wanna i think i'm not giving you a lecture i'm inviting you to dinner it's an invitation take take a look at this if you had a great car wouldn't you want someone to ride in it right it's that kind of thing so i love that he does this on his show he'll often have conversations about faith uh he'll have sparring matches with some people who don't believe and it's just it it makes catholicism accessible right it doesn't have to be the people on the religious channels that are very unapproachable sometimes it's just hey i like this guy and i'll tell you though it's difficult to stay up as late as he's on i love going to bed with a belly laugh and he makes me belly laugh yeah he does that what he also does though is pierce your heart and so we're going to take a little turn here and watch one of the most important clips i think i've ever seen online i've shown it to my students it's an interview between him and anderson cooper right after anderson cooper's mother died oh i remember this and so they're talking about grief now in the interest of time it's a little long i'm going to play it at one and a half speed it's a little slower conversation but you should go watch it's a 20-minute interview we're just gonna watch a short clip here weird but um for a long time and probably still to this day wish that i had a scar i wish i had like a star harry potter yeah like more like a bomb villain like running down my eye in my face that's unavoidable for people to see because it would sort of it would just be a silent signal to everybody i meet that i'm not the person i was meant to be or i'm not the person that i started out being but you're entirely the person you're meant to be i don't know maybe not maybe this is a warped version of so there's another timeline with a happier anderson cooper yeah i mean no i mean there's not it doesn't exist in alternate universe but but yes i i guess i guess that's what i mean about like but that's my experience that's my experience and example of my mother and from what i read and experience of my particular faith extremely imperfectly admittedly is that um there isn't another timeline and this is it and the bravest thing you can do is to accept with gratitude the world as it is and then you know what gandalf says soto so do all people who who are in such times you told an interviewer uh that you have learned your words love the thing that i most wish had not happened um i remember you went on you went on say what punishments of god are not gifts do you really believe that yes it's a gift to exist it's a gift to exist and with existence comes suffering there's no escaping that and i guess i'm either catholic or a buddhist when i say those things because i've heard those from both traditions but i didn't learn it that i was grateful for the thing i most wish hadn't happened is that i realized it is that and it's a it's an odd guilty feeling it doesn't mean you i don't want it to have happened i want it to not have happened but if you are grateful for your life which i think is a positive thing to do um not everybody is and i'm not always um but it's the most positive thing to do then you have to be grateful for all of it you can't you can choose what you're grateful for and then so what do you get from loss you get awareness of other people's lives that's true which allows you to connect with that other person which allows you to love more deeply and to understand what it's like to be a human being if it's true that all humans suffer and so at a young age i suffered something so that by the time i was in serious relationships in my life with friends or with my wife or with my children is that i understand that everybody is suffering and however imperfectly acknowledge their suffering and to connect with them and to love them in a deep way that not only accepts that all of us suffer but also that makes you grateful for the fact that you have suffered so that you can know that about other people and that's that's what i mean it's it's about the fullness of your humanity what's the point of being here and being human if you can't be the most human you can be i'm not saying best because you're gonna be a bad person and a most human i wanna be the most human i can be and that involves acknowledging and ultimately being grateful for the things that i wish didn't happen because they gave me a gift grateful for the things that we wish hadn't happened it doesn't get better than that that must please the lord beyond words yeah it's difficult to wrap your head around though because like why would i want death why he lost his two brothers and dad on the same day when he was 10 years old that's horrible anderson cooper loved his mother and she was such an important part of his life you'd hate that to happen how can you love the thing that shouldn't happen that you don't want to happen it's simply life it brings perspective it's a truth i mean i think stephen's nailing it he's really nailing it and anderson strikes me as being extremely vulnerable yeah he's usually somewhat impenetrable in his very formal presentations on cnn but he's being he acknowledges steven's wisdom yeah and wants him and needs his answer i love that moment he's starting to break down a little bit he's about to get covered no i have a question here do you really believe that and you can see this doubt and this frustration like how could you believe this and seems like yeah and how can i not if god is the author and creator and redeemer of all that is well then i'm gonna accept all that is now granted there is some free will and we can do some horrible things as we're seeing in russia as we're seeing in our own country of course that's not necessarily god's hand doing it but that doesn't mean that god isn't in and through it redeeming those things and bringing things about as he says we can gain empathy from this we can gain a connection with people a connection with god who reminds you gave his own son bam god can empathize with us as we can empathize with him so i think that there's some beauty to even the grief and i love what he says there is no alternate reality there is no alternate timeline this is what you got either be thankful for it or or not how many times have we witnessed guests come into into the catholic church and see the crucifix and say why do you put up the crucified jesus he's even if you believe he's risen from the dead shouldn't you put the risen christ up there and it's this it's the essence of god knows god is in it god is with us in it there's no loss of life in suffering the the life changes it doesn't end and so this is remarkable remarkable how rich is this yeah goodness can come from evil goodness can come from death there is no i mean the reason we hold the cross isn't just because jesus died two thousand years ago is because jesus in a sense in the incarnation far more than just the person here but in the mediation of god in our world is always dying and being renewed in the way that we live as his body think i think about all the people i see crucified from day to day people are falsely accused people are beaten down fall down if you have the eyes of faith to see you'll see the crucifixion all around you but you'll also see the resurrection the worst one i see is when someone self crucifies yeah they think themselves or allow another person's opinion to cause some status of a false second-class nature in themselves and and live out of that and that's why they'll steal or lie or cheat or anything like that you just you can see the corruption and the covering of the beautiful light and soul a person has this is just so wonderful you know what this breeds this breeds hope yeah it just breeds hope i love it and what an incredible evangelical thing where he's not even explicitly mentioning what his faith is he's not talking about he does later in the the interview talking about the cross and about explicit things but right there he doesn't mention catholicism and christianity but you want to have what he has right there there's something attractive to this and say please tell me more so we've got one more clip and it's a recent clip it was just on his show a couple weeks ago and it caught the internet by storm um so i think something that she's so beautiful viewers really connect with in your comedy and your hosting skills especially in the like past few years is how open and honest and authentic you are about the role your faith plays in your life and i was wondering is there any you know does your faith and your comedy ever overlap and does one ever win out i think ultimately us all being mortal the faith will win out at the end but i certainly hope when i get to heaven jesus has a sense of humor but i will say this so say this uh someone was asking me earlier about what i this is this relates to faith because my faith is involved with i'm a christian and a catholic and that's always connected to the idea of um love and sacrifice being somehow related and giving yourself to other people and that death is not defeat if you if you can see where i'm getting at there someone's asking me earlier what movie did i really enjoy this year and i said well i really like belfast which is kind of bronze story of his childhood and one of the reasons i love it is that i'm irish and uh irish-american and it's such an irish movie um and i think this is also a catholic thing because it's it's funny and it's sad and it's funny about being sad in the same way that sadness is like a little bit of an emotional death but not a defeat if you can find a way to laugh about it because that laughter keeps you from having fear of it and fear is the thing that keeps you from turning to evil devices to save you from the sadness as robert hayden said we must not be frightened or cajoled into accepting evil as our deliverance from evil we must keep struggling to maintain our humanity though monsters of abstraction threaten and police us so if there's some relationship between my faith and my comedy it's that no matter what happens you are never defeated you must understand and see this in the light of eternity and find some way to love and laugh with each other [Applause] yeah so what i love about this so much i don't know if it was prescripted i don't know if they talked about it four hands but i suspect not and the fact that he's able to give a testament of faith like that so articulately even quoting things is incredible and we should all be able to do that hmm all of us i hope i can i yeah i mean i'm a professional professional at it i can't even say the word professional yeah but if you were put on the spot and someone said why are you a christian why do you believe that's not an accusatory question but it's an important question yeah you don't want to help them by saying um because my parents go i like the church it looks pretty it's how i grew up i just have a nice feeling no love and sacrifice death will not conquer bam right there eternal life yeah i love that little thing where it's uh we we fill up the evils with other evils to hide us from the evils right how about that to today how we do that all the time war yeah yep jealousy yeah uh consumerism think about that i mean we're we don't like our father we have a bad marriage we have whatever it might be and so oh i'll buy stuff to make me feel better i'll get the nice car and then it just snowballs yeah i struggle so much in this and and he encourages me to laugh and so i watch him every night because he makes me laugh about important things but you got this situation of i want to be a peaceable person living in peace making peace i have a situation where i'm suffering or i know others who are suffering and i cannot stand by idly and watch them suffer and then creations within our tradition like the just war theory which is very particular and very careful but it permits violence there's some just moments when violence is appropriate and this rail of train movement back and forth between these things really can exhaust the brain and make the heart just squish out but we've got to do that work yeah and i think as he's saying then even if it's a just war it's never desiring evil it's never to destroy my enemy it's never to feel good because i've hurt someone just get peace back it's to seek justice and to to use the littlest amount of violence you can for the greater good if that's the possibility you want to go with but i'll just love that you can't fill evil up with evil you can't run from it you can't be afraid um because that's ultimately what caused our downfall it's the bottom line yeah and it keeps you from despair fill yourself up with goodness violence begets violence but gosh there's a lot to consider in all of that yeah the violence we do to others the violence we do to ourselves and the self-sacrifice of a soldier you know you say but and that's where the love and sacrifice i love the passion i mean to be passionate about something comes from christ's passion which is a sacrifice love sacrifice same word yeah and ultimately that's i think the essence of our our lives what is the purpose of life i think it's to love and sacrifice ourselves yeah there's no greater love than to lay down your life for your friends yeah very classic i'm so so proud of him yeah and and so thankful for his articulate expression dua lupa not only she do a loopa not only is she extraordinarily beautiful and was a great singer but she's getting down to the meat of life in this interview just before this um she said she always wanted to be someone who was the interviewer yeah she's tired of being interviewed and he says well what would you say to me yeah go ahead and that's what she says yeah it's fantastic you can tell she's been waiting to ask deep questions yeah it makes me anxious you know what would you ask stephen colbert what would you ask the pope what would you ask the people of the world fascinating yeah keep the conversation civil and open and learn and grow what would you ask bill maher i mean how do you how do you engage people colbert i think if we take a step back just as an interviewer as someone who's a host what makes him successful isn't that he comes up and says here's my catholicism do you fit into this world no but he's going to bring a bit of his faith to be engaging to be charming and then to get the best out of them i've watched interviews with people i despise people i can't stand and just thought that was a great interview yeah there's a side of that person that i now see that i like yeah that's that's an art and that's a gift dismissing a human being is way too simplistic we're very complicated beings if you think about it what one of us could share the mystery of who we are completely in a conversation or a series of conversations you're not going to get to the bottom of it no but as people we should try oh yeah we continue to ask and not just wall people off put them in boxes exactly so i i wish we all had a little bit of this spirit where we didn't just ask the hard questions or try to catch people and make them look dumb try to bring the best out of them i wonder how you might even do that to your enemies could dad jokes fit into that probably not no it's never an appropriate time praying to the father is though so we're going to turn it over father patrick who's going to close us in prayer here in the name of the father and of the son and of the holy spirit amen heavenly father i thank you for artists mostly the artists of life and i thank you for those who help us dance with realities in a joyful spirit and i thank you for mirth i thank you for uh the talents that draw us more deeply into love of you and recognition of your gifting us and love of each other where we might humble ourselves and bring ourselves into conversation without fear but inquiry and invitation thank you lord so much for this time together and may we exercise these wonderful things to make your kingdom on earth as it is in heaven we ask this in your holy name amen the father the son and the holy spirit amen we thank you for watching we've got a couple coming up right away we're sorry we've been away we've been off but we have got a good lineup for you we'll catch you next week we're back peace [Music] [Applause] [Music]

Channel: Upon Friar Review

Views: 25,570

Keywords: React, Catholic, Christian, priests, Franciscans, trending, popular, Church

Id: KrHNo4hVs34

Length: 28min 28sec (1708 seconds)

Published: Fri Mar 04 2022