A reader sent me this link, to a fascinating interview with Matthew Weiner, the genius behind my latest obsession, “Mad Men”. (After last night’s pitch-perfect season finale, I can’t believe I now to have to wait nine months for the next season to start. Argh. The episode was set during the Cuban Missile Crisis, and included a scene with the Jesuit Fr. Gill, above, urging people to go to confession before it’s too late.)

Among other things, Weiner talks about the show’s Catholicism:

Just from the Catholic point of view, I’ve had wonderful consultation from amazing clergy, most notably Jim Van Dyke in New York City. Part of his job is shepherding older priests who are retired, and he would ask them for all the details, he’s the one who gave me the great detail of Father Gill doing the modern Grace, and Peggy’s mom going “Now, are you gonna say Grace?” Everyone Catholic has said that was right on the money.

If you’re a Mad Men fanatic, check out the rest of the interview.

UPDATE: Fr. Jim Martin takes a typically Jesuitical view of the show — and offers some wonderful insight and analysis on its spiritual/religious iconography and atmosphere right here. Speaking for myself, I also wondered about the priest’s garb when he was in the pulpit — until I thought that maybe, just maybe, it was a special prayer service, not a mass, hastily put together for the faithful who were terrified of what the looming nuclear war might bring. Things like that were not uncommon in the days after 9/11 — which the Cuban missile crisis eerily echoed (or, perhaps, foreshadowed?) in the episode.