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 favorite bits of Colbert Catholicity, his now-legendary recitation of the Nicene Creed.

Read on:

The man who mocks conservatives by claiming that “reality has a well-known liberal bias” is not a stump speaker for the political left. On questions of life and religion, Colbert’s 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.

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: “If I let my arm go for a while and didn’t wash it, you’re saying I’d have babies on my arm.” Thank goodness we have comedians to take such arguments to their natural conclusions.

Or take the publicity surrounding Mother Teresa’s 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’s 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: “Did it shock you to find out that Mother Teresa is probably in hell? . . . She doubted the existence of God.” Fr. Martin replied that feeling God’s 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.

It was funny at times, but more important, it was an exposition of Catholicism couched in Colbert’s 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—just as his mock truthiness reveals the real truthiness that infects nearly all of public life.

Big hat tip to New Advent for providing this link, and making my day.