For many of the world-wide audience who would listen to Cardinal Foley's voice, he was the only exposure they ever had to the Catholic faith. Doubtless for some, he was their first exposure to it, and although I certainly did not know or think of it at the time, he was probably my first exposure to Catholicism and to what a Mass looked and sounded like. He spent his life finding ways to spread the Gospel of Christ through modern media and social communications. Many souls were surely reached for the Church and for Christ through his tireless ministry in the media.
Someone else passed away this past week who often used the media for very different ends than did Cardinal Foley. Christopher Hitchens was a man of immense intellectual gifts and was a great writer, commentator, and orator. I very often disagreed with Hitchens, but I had a great admiration for his intelligence and wit, and would read, watch, and listen to him often just to get a dose of it. Hitchens had one major problem, however: He hated God, Christ, Christianity, and the Church. He certainly spent an inordinate amount of time attempting (without much success) to defame Blessed Mother Teresa of Calcutta.
Hitchens' brother Peter is a Christian and a social conservative, as well as a gifted award-winning journalist and writer (he literally became the Christian counterweight to Christopher whether he intended to or not). Christopher Hitchens' official position was that God did not exist, but his speeches, media appearances, and writings belied another reality in his head: That he knew God existed, and was just mad at God. When talking about issues of the Divine, his tone often moved from the satirical to the very angry.Indeed, when I think of the kind of atheism marked by anger at God described by Cardinal Kasper in our assigned reading for next month, The God of Jesus Christ, I can't help but think of Christopher Hitchens. He has crossed my mind several times while reading The God of Jesus Christ.
I have met few so-called atheists who, after my encounters with them, did not leave me feeling as though they actually DO believe in God/Higher Power/Divine Presence, but they refuse to admit this because the reality is that they are angry at God-usually for a multiplicity of things that can be chalked up as a direct or an indirect result of human fault, sinfulness, or frailty. (i.e. "Why would a loving God allow so much death in the world/war/destruction/my relative(s) or friend(s) to live or die in such a horrible way/name that social problem").
Christopher Hitchens was a master of this tired old argument. Indeed, he was one of the best at it that I know of, primarily due to his humor and wit. However, Hitchens left me on several occasions after listening to him with the distinct impression that his resistance to God was based less on an internalized conviction that God did not exist, and more on an internalized anger with the Almighty, usually stemming from the fact that the world didn't work the way he thought it ought to and this was all God's fault.
An example of this was his debate over religion with former British Prime Minister Tony Blair last year, in which Christopher Hitchens referred to the laws and dictates of God as a "kind of Divine North Korea" because God lays down the consequences of disobedience. The reality is that Hitchens seemed to live a life of rebellion. He did not want to obey God, so he appears to have literally "looked God in the face" as it were, and in his rebellious spirit he said "I do not want obey you, and I do not respect you, so I am going to say that you do not exist, and I am going to preach that to the world."
Even so, the very reason that I hope, nay, pray, that Christopher Hitchens somehow found faith in the last moments of his life is that for all of his vitriole and hatred for the things and the people of God, he was a man of so many gifts. I trust in and believe that the mercy of God is unfathomable and boundless, and extends even to those who have spent their whole lives denying Him, if they, even in but an instant, acknowledge Him and accept His Divine Mercy.
Judging Christopher Hitchens' soul is not my place, but that responsibility belongs to God. This isn't to say that no atheist exists with an internalized belief of conscience that says there is no God-I've met at least one for whom I believe that was actually the case. For those people, they are in for quite a surprise one day. For those like Hitchens, who appear to choose to deny God out of anger or spite or rebellion-I think they know, somewhere within themselves, that they will give answer for all of those years of rebellious denial of Truth.
Christopher Hitchens' life is a reminder to all of us of the words of the first verse of the 12th Chapter of Ecclesiastes:
Remember also your Creator in the days of your youth, before the evil days come, and the years draw nigh, when you will say, "I have no pleasure in them."What a difference in lives. One of these men spent his life using the modern media to spread the Gospel, while the other very often used those same media to try and undermine it.
I pray for them both, and while we can reasonably deduce that Cardinal Foley died in the peace of Christ that he spread to so many others, I pray that somehow Christopher Hitchens was able to recognize that peace and find it as well.
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