Christopher Closeup

Christopher Closeup Podcast – Guest: Emilio Estevez

“None of the characters went looking for God, but God found them.” Writer/Director/Producer Emilio Estevez recalled that reaction from a viewer when I interviewed him about his Christopher Award-winning movie, “The Way” (now available on DVD and Blu-ray).

It tells the story of Tom (Martin Sheen), an American doctor whose son, Daniel (Emilio Estevez), dies while on the historical pilgrimage called the Camino de Santiago (or Way of St. James) in France and Spain. Tom had a strained relationship with Daniel, so he decides to complete the several-hundred-miles pilgrimage himself to honor his son’s memory. Along the way, he is joined by several other pilgrims who are walking the route for non-religious reasons as well. Their journey culminates in the Santiago de Compostela Cathedral where tradition maintains that the apostle James’ remains are buried. That’s where the pilgrims have more of an experience of God than they expected.

A key theme in “The Way” has to do with the sense of community that all of us need, but don’t always acknowledge. It’s made very clear in a humorous, but moving sequence in which the four pilgrims who’ve been spending virtually every waking and sleeping hour together decide to get separate rooms in a hotel so they can experience some alone time for a change. Ultimately, they discover they miss each other’s company and wind up congregating in Tom’s room.

The sense of community in that scene has a special resonance for Estevez. He explained to me on Christopher Closeup, “I’m very connected to my family, and one of the great salvations of my life is that I live very close to my parents. We talk daily. In this film, you have four pilgrims who are without family. They’re orphans in the world. Then they find each other and, in that moment, they create a refugio (a shelter) in that hotel room. They realize that instead of the things they thought they wanted – which was alone time or someone to do their laundry or room service – they need each other more than anything else. They need community more than anything else… That is ultimately the biggest theme of the film. These people get to the end of the road and they realize that is ultimately what connects them is their humanity and brokenness.”

Telling that kind of story in a way that integrates humor, joy, regret and forgiveness is a reflection of the journey Estevez has traveled. Though still associated with big Hollywood movies like “The Breakfast Club and “Young Guns,” he lives a much quieter life than most celebrities.

For instance, “The Way” is dedicated to his grandfather, Francisco, who moved to the U.S. in 1916 from a town in Spain that is 70 miles away from Santiago de Compostela. Estevez says, “He’s really been an inspiration to me in how he lived. He was a very humble man. He was a farmer and a winemaker. And I found myself being very connected to my grandfather even though I didn’t know him that well. He passed when I was 10 years old, so I didn’t get to spend a lot of time with him. Yet I find myself now living very much like my grandfather: farming the land and making my own wine. So here I am in southern California living a very Spanish lifestyle.”

That humble lifestyle grounds Estevez as an artist and determines the kinds of stories he wants to tell as a writer, director and producer. He says, “I don’t write about outer space or car chases. I write about things that I know about, and I make films about relationships and about people. In the earlier films that I attempted to make, I was delving into areas that I knew nothing about and didn’t have any real connection to. As a result, the movies were terrible. They may have been funny, but they were juvenile and they didn’t come from my heart. I think with “Bobby” and “The Way,” these films are reflections of where I’m at right now in my life and the kinds of movies that I want to see.”

Estevez’s genius as Director of “The Way” is made most clear in the sequence near the end of the film when the pilgrims finally arrive at the Cathedral. The architecture and artwork in churches like that were meant to inspire awe in people who came there, to remind us of the sheer grandeur and awesomeness of God. Estevez’s reaction was exactly the same.

He says, “It was extraordinary. We were not allowed access to the Cathedral at first. While we were along the Camino, we kept writing and calling and trying to get access. They said, ‘No, we’re not going to allow you to shoot. There’s another church you guys can access and use as a stand-in.’ And I said, ‘If we can’t get into the Cathedral, then we have no ending for the film.’ I think they believed we had this American sensibility that was going to poke fun at the Church, that it was going to be snarky, that it was not going to represent the Church or the Cathedral in a good light. And I said, ‘That couldn’t be further from the truth. Not only is this movie a representation of the Camino, but we believe it’s great PR for the Church.’ They continued to deny us. I asked the crew to light candles and to pray on it. And about 48 hours before we arrived in Santiago, they gave us permission not only to shoot in the Church, but to shoot the Mass, the tomb [of St. James], to film at the Portico de Gloria. It was a miracle that they allowed us to film there. Even though we only had a few hours to shoot, what you see on film is my awe and how I was inspired.”

To listen to my 11-minute interview with Emilio Estevez, click Christopher Closeup Podcast – Guest: Emilio Estevez

Thanks to everyone who entered our contest to win a DVD copy of the Christopher Award-winning film, “The Way.” I just got back to the office after interviewing writer/director/producer Emilio Estevez (check back tomorrow for the podcast), so I had one of my co-workers pick three winners out of a hat. They are:

1. Linda M
2. Kathleen
3. Jacqueline Puentes

I’ll be emailing each of you to get your addresses so we can send the DVD your way (no pun intended). If you didn’t win here, why not visit Joel and Lisa Schmidt at The Practicing Catholic where they’re also running a contest to win the film? It’s also available for sale today so, if you can’t wait, you can order “The Way” from any of your usual DVD-buying sources. And if you’d like to ask Emilio a question yourself, he’ll be on Twitter tonight, Feb. 21, at 8pm ET/5pm PT. Just use his Twitter handle – @EmilioTheWay – and the hash tag #TheWayChat, along with your question.

Thanks again to all of you for participating!

“Some things are not ours to tamper with; some things belong to God.”

That’s a line from the Season 4 episode of the science fiction TV series, “Fringe,” called “Novation,” but it reflects a theme that’s run throughout the show’s history.

Created by “Lost’s” J.J. Abrams, “Fringe” revolves around the FBI’s Fringe science investigation team led by Agent Olivia Dunham (Anna Torv), Dr. Walter Bishop (John Noble) and his son, Peter Bishop (Joshua Jackson). About 20 years ago, Walter was a ‘mad scientist’ type who performed experiments on children, using them as guinea pigs to push science beyond any previously-held human and moral boundaries. He felt that anything that can be accomplished should be accomplished regardless of the laws of nature or the dignity of human beings. Walter pushed that idea even further when he discovered a parallel universe made up of the same people alive in this world, but in slightly-altered circumstances.

When his young son, Peter, died of a mysterious disease in our universe before Walter could administer a cure, he crossed into the parallel one to bring that Peter back to this world to save him. Though he had planned to return the boy to his world, Walter was never able to let go of his beloved son a second time, and wound up keeping him here and raising him. The act of Walter’s crossing universes, however, tore a hole in the fabric of the other world which has since resulted in its slow but steady deterioration. Its residents have been trying to get revenge on this world ever since.

The moral and emotional repercussions of all he had done also led Walter to go insane, spending years of his life locked in a mental institution. That changed four years ago when the government started encountering cases based on Walter’s old experiments. Humbler, chastened, but still a little crazy and brilliant, Walter was released into Olivia’s and Peter’s custody to help the government solve seemingly unexplainable mysteries.

“Fringe” is not a show for the faint of heart or stomach. It veers into gory territory at times, and its plotlines can seem a little ‘out there.’ Yet it’s a series that deals with a lot of philosophical and theological themes that are relevant to our world today if we have the eyes to see them. The quote at the start of this article, for instance, is spoken by a scientist who had been working on cellular cloning experiments that would allow scientists to replicate the DNA of dead people, essentially recreating their bodies exactly as they were (biologically, at least) and bringing them back to life. While this ability to ‘raise the dead’ sounds like an impressive scientific innovation that could give us the illusion of living forever, the episode acknowledges that this is a power that human beings shouldn’t hold. It leads to us thinking of ourselves as God, as being above other human beings and even the universe as a whole. Powerful men who think of themselves as above everything and everyone tend to be responsible for lots of genocides (See Hitler, Stalin, etc.)

Fellow Patheos blogger Mark Shea describes these kinds of scientific advances as starting with the question, “What could it hurt?” After all, progress is good! All these ancient principles people subscribe to about human beings being special in the eyes of God, about respecting each others’ inherent dignity because we’re made in the image and likeness of God – those ideas are just holding us back from great advancements that can make us and our world better! And the notion of God is outdated anyway, so there’s really nothing to hold us back. But years later when the negative repercussions have been unleashed, Shea says the same people ask, “How were we supposed to know?”

In last Friday’s episode of “Fringe,” entitled “A Better Human Being,” Peter and Olivia are tracking a group of killers that a young man claims to share some some kind of mental telepathy with. He can see what they’re doing even though he plays no part in it. When it’s discovered that the young man was the result of an in vitro fertilization treatment, Peter and Olivia visit the doctor who performed the procedure. Now older and wiser, he makes his home in an assisted-living facility. The following exchange occurs:

Doctor: The work I was doing at my clinic was merely a means to an end, a vehicle for my real experiments. Genetic manipulation. The babies that I gave life to, I had altered their DNA. I was attempting to make a better…

Doctor: I promised them successful pregnancies and healthy babies. That’s what I gave them. I attempted to reintroduce abilities that we humans have long since evolved away from: the hard-wired instincts that we share with other animal species…Can you imagine that? The hubris of trying to improve upon God?

It took several dead people, but this doctor finally wound up in the “How were we supposed to know?” phase.

While issues of parallel universes may seem beyond the pale, cloning human beings and combining genetic material from different species are all very real areas of modern science. Sometimes they’re reported in the news as impressive advances or as being controversial. But no matter how controversial they are, they still go on. And just like in the case of the aforementioned doctor, they can lead to us viewing other human beings as disposable pawns, easily manipulated to achieve various ends. The inherent dignity of every human person is disregarded in the pursuit of knowledge and power.

Like any TV show, “Fringe” is meant to entertain and engage its audience – two things it does very well. But it also deserves credit for confronting us with questions that need to be asked in our era of rapid scientific advancements – and for being willing to say that there should be limits to the types of advancements we pursue. The fact that the show integrates issues of substance with compelling stories, vividly rendered characters, and unexpected comedy makes it must-see viewing in my book.

“Fringe” airs on Fox on Friday nights 9E/8C.

“The kernel of St. Therese’s teaching is often called ‘the little way,’ meaning that no Christian is too humble or too insignificant to follow it and no thought or action too negligible to infuse with love. In other words, God cherishes not only great actions of love, but also minor childlike ones. No matter what spiritual darkness you find yourself in, choose as your North Star a tender love of the persons that life’s contingencies have put next to you. Do not go looking for more fascinating neighbors to love. Love those nearest you.

“You cannot see God, even if you try. But you can see your neighbor, the tedious one who grinds on you: Love him, love her. As Jesus loves them. Give them the tender smile of Jesus, even though your own feelings be like the bottom of a birdcage. Do not ask to see Jesus, or to feel Him. That is for children. Love Him in the dark. Love for the invisible divine, not for warm and comfortable human consolation. Love for the sake of love, not in order to feel loved in return.”

- Michael Novak, “No One Sees God”

Though we won’t be announcing the full slate of this year’s Christopher Award winners until some time in March, we are ready to say that the film, “The Way,” directed by Emilio Estevez and starring Martin Sheen, is one of the winners in the Film category this year! To celebrate that, we’ll be giving away three DVD copies of the movie on its official home video release date, Tuesday Feb. 21. To enter, you only have to do two things:

1. Leave a comment below about why you want to win “The Way” (or what you thought of it if you’ve already seen it). The comment can be short and sweet – anything from “I like the idea of going on a pilgrimage” to “Because I liked Emilio in ‘Young Guns’ and Martin in ‘Apocalypse Now.’”

2. After you leave a comment, kindly subscribe to email updates for the “Christopher Closeup” blog by scrolling to the box on the right side of the screen that says “Subscribe By Email,” and entering your email address.

We’ll pick three winners on Tuesday afternoon, so be sure to enter before then. In case you’re not familiar with the movie, here’s a brief description:

THE WAY is a powerful and inspirational story about family, friends and the challenges we face while navigating this ever-changing and complicated world. Martin Sheen plays Tom, an irascible American doctor who comes to France to deal with the tragic loss of his son (played by Emilio Estevez). Rather than return home, Tom decides to embark on the historical pilgrimage “The Way of St. James” to honor his son’s desire to finish the journey. What Tom doesn’t plan on is the profound impact this trip will have on him. Through unexpected and oftentimes amusing experiences along “The Way,” Tom discovers the difference between “the life we live and the life we choose.”

Since it’s Valentine’s Day, I thought it would be the perfect opportunity to highlight a Christopher News Note called “Secrets of a Successful Marriage.”

In case you’re not aware, Christopher News Notes are pamphlets on various spiritual or social issues that we’ve been using to stay in touch with our supporters via direct mail for more than 60 years. Individual copies are sent out free-of-charge, while some churches get them in bulk in return for a donation that helps offset our printing costs. We also send them to some prisons and hospitals where people find them sources of hope and encouragement.

Here’s an excerpt from “Secrets of a Successful Marriage:”

“I DO.” WITH THOSE TWO LITTLE WORDS, A MARRIED COUPLE SETS OFF ON A LIFELONG JOURNEY OF LOVE AND COMMITMENT.

Even the most blissfully happy couples will tell you, however, that marriage is hard work. These husbands and wives don’t just coast through life on a wave of romance and passion; they are constantly gauging the state of their relationship and how they can make it stronger.

“Exceptional couples, on the other hand, while concerned with all of these to some degree, spend most of their energy working together to pursue the development of positive character traits, moral virtue, and spiritual growth—a theme I call a marital imperative,” he says. “In other words, exceptional couples consider their marriage to be their best hope for becoming the people they want to be at the end of their lives.”

To read the complete News Note, “Secrets of a Successful Marriage,” you can request a free copy by writing to mail@christophers.org – or you can read it online.

And if you need a last-minute Valentine’s gift, you’re in luck because the angelically-voiced Audrey Assad’s new album, “Heart,” is out today. You can check out sample tracks and buy the album on iTunes or Amazon. The album will soothe your soul and establish world peace.

Christopher Closeup Podcast – Guest: Christopher West

Christopher West admits that, when he was in college, he bought into the common belief that sex is just a fun, recreational activity without any inherent purpose. He says, “I had eaten from what I call ‘the fast food gospel of the culture’ which promises us immediate gratification for all our desires. But by eating the fast food, I ended up like the guy in the movie ‘Super Size Me.’ He ate McDonald’s for breakfast, lunch and dinner for a whole month, and he was dying. That’s me in my college years. I was dying inside.”

As West explained to me during our interview about his new book, “At the Heart of the Gospel: Reclaiming the Body for the New Evangelization,” it was exposure to Pope John Paul II’s Theology of the Body teachings that opened his eyes to a new reality – that our bodies and our natures as men and women need to be looked at as symbols that point us toward the higher reality of God. “Our bodies tell a story,” he says. “We’ve reduced the human to a collection of cells, and we no longer see the spiritual mystery behind it…What do we mean by that? If you want to get into the mind and heart of an artist, then study his art. If you want to get into the mind of the ultimate artist – God – then study His art and His creation. And what is at the crown of all creation? We are, as male and female. We are made in the image and likeness of God. That means our bodies have something very particular to say about who God is and who we are.”

Though seeing our bodies and sexuality as good has always been a teaching of Christianity, the Church hasn’t always done a good job promoting that belief. West explains, “This idea that a lot of us have while growing up in a religious environment is that the spirit is the good part of us, and the body is the bad or less-than-holy part…That is an ancient heresy…The Incarnation reveals that the physical world is sacred and holy, and is destined in Jesus Christ to be taken up into the very life of God. We profess belief, not only in the salvation of our souls. We profess belief in the redemption of our bodies and the resurrection of our bodies. That’s what the Incarnation teaches us. God is not afraid to enter into the mess and chaos of this world to heal it, restore it and transform it.”

Throughout “At the Heart of the Gospel” and even in conversation with West, his upbeat and positive approach to spreading this message is constant. Instead of presenting Christianity as a set of prohibitions, he follows Pope Benedict’s advice to “show the positive option that Christianity is.” West continues, “We can’t just go out there and yell and scream about what’s wrong in the world. Scripture says that we overcome evil with good. This is the Good News that we have to proclaim. There’s a time and place to say, ‘That’s wrong.’ But it is so much more important that we show what is true, good and beautiful.”

The beauty that comes from looking at our lives in light of the theology of the body is a constant refrain for West. When I mention that his observations remind me of the author Dostoevsky’s claim, “The world will be saved by beauty,” Christopher elaborates, “I often like to say to my audiences, ‘Think of a time in your life when you were pierced by beauty. Maybe it was a song, a sunset, the birth of a child or the smile of your husband or your wife when you first met them.’ Those are moments when God is inviting us into His beauty. He’s made the world so beautiful to lead us to Him. In our pornographic culture, we have reduced beauty to something merely physical. When we do that, we actually lose sight of true beauty. Physical beauty is meant to point us to spiritual beauty. That spiritual beauty is what the heart craves. And when it is upheld, when it is proclaimed, our hearts yearn for it and are attracted to it.”

West advocates using this same positive approach even with people we might consider dead to sin. He quotes 20th century mystic Caryll Houselander’s book, “The Reed of God,” as saying, “We should approach even hardened sinners with the same reverence with which we approach the tomb of Christ. Why? Because Christ is dead in them, but He is awaiting resurrection.”

West adds, “When we start to look at the world this way, it changes everything. And guess what? We have to look at ourselves this way too. We are sinners. And wherever sin is in our lives, Christ is dead there waiting to be raised up. It’s not just ‘us against them.’ The wheat and the weeds grow together, Jesus says. There are plenty of weeds within the Church and within our own individual hearts, just as there’s plenty of wheat out there in the secular culture. There are weeds out there too, but we need to learn how to discern these things, not just think ‘we’re the good guys and the secular world’s the bad guys.’ We have to find a way to build bridges, to affirm elements of truth out in the culture.”

Listen to the complete interview with Christopher West: Christopher Closeup Podcast – Guest: Christopher West

In this “Light One Candle” column, The Christophers’ Jerry Costello recalls the struggle for civil rights that Black History Month calls to mind:

The civil rights struggle of the 1950s and 1960s is something fresh in my memory, and at times it’s hard to realize that not everyone shares those recollections. The fact is, I have to keep reminding myself, that for many young people what they know of those events comes mainly from history books. It’s one of those things, I guess, that prods us into realizing that time is indeed moving on.

These thoughts are inspired by the fact that February is Black History Month, a time for all Americans to reflect on what that means for the country. And while that history is multifaceted and richly diverse, few periods are as dramatic or as significant as the battles that took place during those decades.

Battles they were; make no mistake. The papers and the TV newscasts were full of them, day after day: the marches, the sit-ins, the freedom riders. That was part of it; there were also police dogs, tear gas, bombings and murders. The struggle took place mainly in the South, where the mood was defiant and, for a time, unyielding. For example, when James Meredith was finally enrolled as a graduate student in 1962, The New York Times gave it front-page, banner-headline treatment (“Negro at Mississippi U.”). The incident was all too typical of those days; the National Guard moved in, six federal marshals were shot and a campus riot took the lives of three men. It’s against that backdrop of violence that Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. emerges as a towering figure–make that the towering figure–of an era.

Continue reading on The Christophers website.

Christopher Closeup Podcast – Guest: Joe Ehrmann

You might think that a former defensive lineman for the Baltimore Colts and Detroit Lions would believe a coach’s job—especially a coach of young people—is to teach them to win games. Joe Ehrmann, however, says, “The greatest crisis in America today is a crisis of masculinity…A coach’s responsibilities include helping young people to confront and comprehend the toxic culture that is trying to seduce and shape them.”

Ehrmann came to that belief due to the male influences in his life when he was growing up. When I interviewed him on Christopher Closeup, he explained that he had an angry, verbally abusive, mostly absent father who only gave him approval when he succeeded at a sport. The picture of manhood his father passed on to him was that men were rough, tough and unemotional. In addition, Ehrmann was beaten and raped by a stranger at the age of twelve, leaving him physically and emotionally wounded.

False images of manhood were reflected by coaches for whom Ehrmann played as well. He recalled a basketball game when he was 10-years-old: “The player on top of me wouldn’t allow me to inbound that ball. The coach called time-out…and told me to bring that ball over my head and bring it down on that kid’s face as hard as I could. I knew that didn’t feel right, [but] to validate myself in that coach’s eyes, I went ahead and did that. I split that boy’s nose. He went down on the floor screaming. There was blood everywhere. Afterwards in the locker room, my coach held me up as the epitome of what it means to be a player [that demonstrated] manhood.”

Ehrmann’s propensity for anger and violence lasted many years despite a few positive coaching influences along the way. His healing finally started with help from his wife, Paula, a psychologist. Reading Henri Nouwen’s book, “The Wounded Healer,” was also a major turning point. Ehrmann explains, “All of us, as we go through life…get wounded…Nouwen makes the point that…we really have two choices. One, you can ignore, deny or repress your own woundedness. If you do that, you’ll continue to wound other people with your unhealed wounds…The other choice is to take your own wounds, accept them, bring healing and wholeness into them, then use them as an opportunity to offer other people the chance to heal. So I became a wounded healer.”

One of Ehrmann’s coaching role models is Moses. Though we don’t usually think of the Old Testament prophet in that way, the analogy works. Ehrmann says, “Moses was given this unbelievably difficult coaching job of taking two million people that have just come out of 430 years of slavery, and building them into a team that’s going to represent God’s values. The manifesto of the team is to love God with all your heart, soul, mind and strength—and love your neighbor as yourself. So Moses has to take these relationally, spiritually, and psychologically broken people—and he’s got to rebuild them, help them reformulate who they are.”

Ehrmann—dubbed “The Most Important Coach in America” by Parade magazine—has now written a book called “InSide Out Coaching: How Sports Can Transform Lives.” He’s also been working with young people, their coaches and even the NFL to promote better coaching philosophies. He says, “I coach to help boys become men of empathy and integrity who will lead, be responsible and change the world for good. That [dictates] how I run my drills, talk to my players, and how I integrate with their parents as well.”

Ehrmann also believes this approach can influence the way young men treat women, saying, “Once you redefine masculinity for boys—understanding that it doesn’t mean power, dominance and control over women, but learning how to be allies and support them—that’s how you bring about radical change [in society].”

Listen to the complete interview with Joe Ehrmann: Christopher Closeup Podcast – Guest: Joe Ehrmann

Photos courtesy Simon and Schuster