Like countless numbers of people, I was captivated by Fr. James Martin’s My Life with the Saints when it appeared ten years ago. I was reasonably familiar with the usual sorts of hagiography, but this was the most human, honest, warm, and even humorous treatment of the stories of the saints I had ever encountered. A reviewer once described the book as an invitation to friendship not only with the saints, but with the author, and I can report from personal experience that that’s true. I first met Jim in person a few years after the book’s publication, but I told him I felt we had been friends for a long time because I got to know him, and to cherish him, through the book.
Since then, of course, Jim has gone on to become far more than the author of this one book—the official chaplain of The Colbert Report, a New York Times best-selling author, a regular contributor to the Jesuit-run America magazine, and a ubiquitous presence in the media whenever there’s a breaking story about Catholicism. In effect, he’s become one of the leading public voices on Catholicism in America, and those of us in the Church should feel we won the lottery with that outcome because few people are better at putting an appealing public face on the faith than Jim.
I do a fair number of public appearances myself, largely because I’m a journalist, and it often seems that the only times I get to see Jim in person these days are on TV platforms or when we’re sharing space at a book-signing table at a Catholic gathering. (For the record, his lines are always substantially longer than mine.) And though Jim has become a celebrity, he has remained recognizably Jim: grounded, humble, able to acknowledge his flaws and struggles, and always seeking to identify the good in others. Perhaps his study of the saints has had some transfer effect, because he often seems a bit of a saint-in-the-making himself.
We live in a media-saturated world, in which there’s a bevy of talking heads on every conceivable subject—and thank God for it, because otherwise I’d be forced to find a real job to pay the bills! As a result, Jim is hardly the only Catholic commentator out there, but he fills a niche relatively few others do. It’s not that he’s the smartest of the lot, although he’s an extremely bright guy, or that he’s always the best informed and most connected, although he knows his stuff. And it’s not that Jim is the most effective defender or critic of the hierarchy, because he’s too balanced to be reliably in either camp, or that he’s the most pious cleric you’ll ever find on television.
What makes Jim unique, I would say, is his rare ability to be a truly successful public figure in an age of hyperbolic rage and partisan acrimony without ever succumbing to those temptations. His prominence makes the point that you don’t have to fume and smolder to get attention, and you don’t have to demonize people with whom you disagree in order to be persuasive. Instead, the Jim Martin experiment in American public life shows that a generous and calm personality, one based on treating people with respect and civility, actually can win hearts and minds, as Jim has been doing for a full decade since the appearance of My Life with the Saints.
A further illustration of Jim’s success comes with the fact that most of my conservative Catholic friends see him as a definite liberal, while most of my friends on the left think he’s not nearly liberal enough. Perhaps he leans a little bit to the liberal side of some arguments, but the fundamental truth is that Jim is far too wise to succumb to the illusion that ideology should ever prevail over concrete experience and flesh-and-blood people in shaping perceptions.
Jim has one final quality that’s perennially in short supply, especially when talk turns to religion: a great sense of humor. The Catholic poet and writer Hilaire Belloc once said, “Wherever the Catholic sun doth shine, there’s laughter and good red wine,” and I have to say that twenty years of covering the Catholic Church day in and day out have taught me that that’s true.
Here’s an example from an unexpected quarter. In 2005, I published a book about the election of Pope Benedict XVI, who isn’t most people’s idea of a stand-up comic. The book was divided into three parts, including the final days of St. John Paul II, the inside story of Benedict’s election, and then my projections on where his papacy would go. Later, Benedict had an aide call to deliver the following message: “Please thank Herr Doktor Allen for having written this book . . . especially the last part, about the future of my papacy, because it has saved me the trouble of thinking about it for myself!”
Yes, Catholics know how to laugh and let the good times roll, but we aren’t always as skilled at projecting that quality in public. In terms of its image, Catholicism often comes off as a scold, something like the Doctor No character from the old James Bond films. Not so with Jim, who always has a smile on his face and a laugh-line on his tongue. Sure, his humor is generally a prelude to a serious point or spiritual insight, but it’s the laughter that gets people listening. They are open to the Christian message that Jim presents in large part because they like the messenger.
On this tenth anniversary of My Life with the Saints, I encourage you to read the book if you haven’t done so yet. Once you’re done, seek out as much of Jim’s other work as you can, follow him in the media, and tell your friends and neighbors to do the same. His balanced, civil, and deeply funny voice is a balm to much of what ails this culture (and this Church), and those of us who are Catholics ought to be proud that this voice is coming from one of us.
John L. Allen Jr. is the editor of Crux, an independent Catholic news site, and the author of many books, including The Future Church.