Is comic Jim Gaffigan the Catholic Church’s newest evangelizer?
By Michelle Boorstein, Published: June 7, 2013 at 3:43 pm
Is Jim Gaffigan technically employed by the Catholic Church?
The thought occurred to me in a week during which I saw the awesome Catholic comic speak in person and did some reporting about the church’s major new outreach effort it calls “the new evangelization.”
The sweeping campaign seeks to bring back the many millions of Catholics who have left the church and generally to re-imagine the entire concept of evangelizing, which is more typically associated with, well, evangelical Protestants. The new Catholic version is more subtle, highlighting Catholics who are just living out Catholic teachings and are happy as a result.
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 argued a bit less strenuously.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/on-faith/wp/2013/06/07/comic-jim-gaffigan-the-answer-to-the-catholic-churchs-outreach-effort/
This is from his Comedy Central special about seven years ago.
