Jim Gaffigan, hipster Catholic

From Michelle Boorstein in the Washington Post comes this profile of funnyman Jim Gaffigan:

Gaffigan seems to effortlessly embody the idea the Catholic Church and other denominations are desperately promoting: You can be a devout member of mainstream American life. You don’t have to leave God in order to live in the regular world. With many Americans bailing on organized religion, the long-popular Christian maxim to “be in the world but not of it” is being promoted a bit less intensely.

Gaffigan literally symbolizes life at the intersection of tradition and hipsterdom. The guy lives with his wife and five children in the Bowery section of Manhattan (doesn’t get a lot hipper than that), from where they walk with their awesome double stroller to church every Sunday.

Listening to Gaffigan at a Tuesday night event at Sixth and I Historic Synagogue, I noted that he promotes core teachings, but not explicitly. For example: He talks and writes a lot about having a big family, and you can’t miss the “Catholic” angle, but the way he explains his reasons for baby-making is subtle.

Asked by interviewer Scott Simon of NPR that night to talk a bit about “family life” (code for five kids), Gaffigan said: “I’m Catholic, my wife is Shiite Catholic. There’s no goalie.”

In his new book, “Dad is Fat,” Gaffigan names a full chapter after the three-word response that proved sufficient through his life when people asked him about being one of six children himself: “Six kids (pause), Catholic.”

Honestly I have nothing to compare the big family experience to. I was the youngest of six children. The scrape of the pot. My parents tried their best, but they were exhausted. It was like the last half hour of a brunch buffet. It’s still a great meal, but let’s just say at that point, the guy working the omelet station has lost some of his enthusiasm.

And later in the chapter, he uses fully secular words to express profound – some might say spiritual – reasons for his big family.

Well, why not? I guess the reasons against having more children always seemed uninspiring and superficial. What exactly am I missing out on? Money? A few more hours of sleep? A more peaceful meal? More hair? These are nothing compared to what I get from these five monsters who rule my life … each one of them has been a pump of light into my shriveled black heart.

He talks often about his love for his wife, Jeannie. He praises everything from her looks to the 50-50 partnership they have in writing. At Sixth and I he lobbed another casual religious half-joke: “I’m kind of surprised she’s staying with me, but she’s Catholic.”

Read it all.