Shock: Thomas Aquinas on CBS?

Last updated on: September 30, 2016 at 3:43 pm by Deacon Greg Kandra

Shock: Thomas Aquinas on CBS? 2016-09-30T15:43:06-04:00 Deacon Greg Kandra

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Tony Rossi picks up on a few great details in last night’s premiere of “Madame Secretary.” I caught the episode and thought it was fresh, funny, astute, brilliantly written—and sublimely, surprisingly Catholic.

Tony notes:

Outside of the Washingtonian intrigue, the show’s strongest feature is Elizabeth’s strong and happy marriage to her husband Henry (Tim Daly), a religion professor at Georgetown. Daly and Leoni bring an easygoing chemistry to their on-screen relationship, making their quippy banter and serious conversations completely believable. Theirs appears to be a marriage of equals between spouses who understand what it means to love and support each other.

Daly’s character is also the one to bring Thomas Aquinas into the conversation. When we first meet him, he’s concluding a lecture to his college class. He says, “What Aquinas was trying to say in ‘Summa Theologica’ is that existence and essence are separate things, right? That’s the whole notion behind Catholic transubstantiation. Now, Luther, though, departed from him in significant ways.”

Time runs out so the lesson ends there, but Aquinas comes up again in a later scene between Henry and Elizabeth in which he’s trying to offer her advice about how to approach a problem. He says, “Thomas Aquinas said that if the highest aim of a captain were to preserve his ship, he would leave it in port forever. Aquinas also said, ‘Sorrow can be alleviated by a good sleep, a bath, and a glass of wine.’”

While neither scene offers a deep theological treatise (though when’s the last time transubstantiation got a network TV shout out), the brief references demonstrate that this is a show with an undercurrent of genuine religious knowledge and understanding. That stems from the fact that show creator Barbara Hall, who also wrote this episode, is a convert to Catholicism and an intelligent woman willing to explore issues of faith seriously. That doesn’t mean “Madam Secretary” will be a platform for preaching or evangelizing any particular faith. It does, however, suggest that the presence of religious elements in world affairs – whatever religions they might involve – will get fair and just treatment in the story. That’s more than can be said for a lot of other primetime television fare.

Read the rest.

I couldn’t help but notice that a key scene unfolded inside a Catholic church—presumably because the Secretary of State knows the place isn’t bugged.

My favorite line, from Elizabeth’s husband (Tim Daly), who says: “Being a religion teacher at a Jesuit university? That’s like being one of the Beatles.”

Heh.

This show is off to a promising start. I loved Barbara Hall’s last series, “Joan of Arcadia”—which trafficked more obviously in spiritual themes and the notion of God being present among us in unexpected ways—and I’ll be curious to see if these notions play out in the world of Washington.

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