Buddhist Catholic Contemplative Evangelical General Christian Hindu Jewish Latter-day Saint Muslim New Visions Progressive Christian

Beliefs

Topics

Columnists

Resource Library

Research Tools

Video

Podcasts

Thought Readers

Faith In Media Tracker

Newsletters

Ad-Free & Subscriber Log-In Subscription Support

Follow Patheos

Home
Catholic
Religious Music & Entertainment
The Complicated Catholicism of Megyn Kelly

The Complicated Catholicism of Megyn Kelly

Last updated on: January 6, 2016 at 1:26 am by Kate O'Hare

The Complicated Catholicism of Megyn Kelly 2016-01-06T01:26:56-08:00 Kate O'Hare

LOGO Patheos Explore the world's faith through different perspectives on religion and spirituality! Patheos has the views of the prevalent religions and spiritualities of the world.

Fox News Channel anchor and rising — or by this time, risen — star Megyn Kelly of nightly news show “The Kelly File” is the subject of a splashy photo shoot and profile piece in Vanity Fair, a magazine not known these days for its kindness to anyone to the right of center.

But the portrait of Kelly is neither a puff piece nor a hit piece. It’s a briskly written look at the life and career of a smart, beautiful woman who found success as a lawyer only to upend her life and reinvent herself as a TV reporter. She’s now a wife and mother of three, and, Bill O’Reilly notwithstanding, the centerpiece of Fox’s primetime lineup.

In recent months, she gained credibility on both sides of the aisle by going head-to-head with presidential candidate Donald Trump, especially regarding his comments about women. Trump, as he does, hit back, but when the dust settled, it doesn’t appear that he laid a glove on Kelly, who emerged a more respected figure for her candor and fearlessness.

Here’s a bit from Vanity Fair:

Kelly’s Trump episode was one in a string of satisfying male-ego deflations … Her occasional, yet highly entertaining, bucking of the conservative party line has attracted more independent-minded viewers and has even earned praise from liberals such as Chris Matthews, Joy Behar, and Gayle King. As of late, passersby have been calling out versions of “It’s not too late to come to the other side!” Still, some media types warn against getting too excited over Kelly. As Bill Maher put it, “We think of Megyn Kelly as the sane one over there at Fox News. It’s just because she’s surrounded by Hannity and Bill O’Reilly. She’s like the blonde dragon girl on Game of Thrones. Everyone else is a zombie or a dwarf or f*****g their sister, so she looks normal.”

Whatever the case, Kelly has become a feminist icon of sorts—the sort who won’t actually call herself a feminist. Perhaps this is because Kelly works at Fox News, where “feminists” are in the same scary category as “liberals” who wage war on Christmas each year. Perhaps, as she claims, it’s because her accomplishments speak for themselves and have nothing to do with her gender.

Or perhaps, Kelly’s just sharp, tough and talented, while not finding it necessary to downplay her femininity.

One thing the Vanity Fair profile left out was Kelly’s Catholicism. Raised in an Irish-Catholic family in a suburb of Albany, N.Y., the 45-year-old Kelly is a lot like many of her fellow American Catholics. She remains strongly identified with the Faith while not necessarily following all of its edicts.

I’ve met and interviewed Kelly, before she became a primetime star — most recently for The Los Angeles Times in 2011, when she was a GOP debate moderator — but the issue of faith didn’t come up at those times. So, I don’t have a window into her soul and will just examine what’s in the public record.

Kelly married her first husband, Dr. Dan Kendall, in a Catholic ceremony in 2001 — and she went by Megyn Kendall for a while on TV — but the marriage didn’t last. They divorced, reportedly amicably, in 2006.

Said the U.K.’s Daily Mail early this year:

But even before they married there were signs that they were not meant to be. Kendall was setting out as a successful doctor and his bride-to-be was still a high-powered attorney.

Even the Roman Catholic priest who married them expressed his worries that they would be able to make their marriage work, Kendall remembered.

‘He could see the potential conflict. I remember him telling Megyn it is going to be important to take care of your husband at home and I remember her saying “what about him taking care of his wife?”‘

While Kelly was covering the ultimately debunked rape allegations against Duke University lacrosse players in 2007, she attracted the attention of Duke alumnus Douglas Brunt, who’s now a successful novelist and at-home dad.

From Vanity Fair:

While they were falling in love, he told her, “By the way, if you don’t want children, you should tell me soon.” As it happened, Kelly had long believed that she didn’t want kids, but she had recently experienced an epiphany: “I’ll never forget being in my own bed and thinking to myself, Oh my God! It’s not that I don’t want children. It’s that I didn’t want to have children with my first husband.” Thirty-seven when she married Brunt, Kelly got right to work on that front.

Since Kelly’s first marriage wasn’t annulled, they wed in early 2008 at a historic hotel on Long Island, with one of Kelly’s FNC colleagues, Kelly Wright, who’s an ordained minister, officiating. According to an account of one of Kelly’s later appearances on “The Don Imus Show” in 2010, it didn’t appear she had abandoned the Faith.

From Imus.com:

As he tried to ask Kelly her legal expertise on state Attorneys General around the country threatening to sue over the health care bill, Imus was distracted by the strange use of “Attorneys General” instead of “Attorney Generals.”

“It’s just people trying to sound fancy,” Kelly speculated. “It’s like people who went to Harvard saying, ‘I studied in Cambridge.’ Do we have to go through the two-step question? Harvard’s fine. I get it.”

She doubts that the states suing have a legal leg to stand on, since the Supreme Court almost never strikes down laws passed by Congress under the commerce clause, as the health care bill was. “I’m not going to say it has no chance, but it doesn’t have a great chance,” she added.

Kelly is saddened that, as Imus put it, the “wheels are coming off the Pope-mobile.” But she’s also frustrated, trying to find a church in which to baptize her now six-month old son. Kelly, a Catholic, has run into some problems because her first marriage was never annulled in the church, and her current husband is a Presbyterian.

Is this what happens to an innocent child, Kelly wondered frantically, when a Catholic marries a Presbyterian and doesn’t have an annulment in their first marriage?

No. It’s what happens when you agree to appear on Imus in the Morning.

But in 2014, during the struggle over the ObamaCare birth-control mandate, Kelly was energetic in her defense of the Little Sisters of the Poor, subjects of legal action by the federal government over their refusal to comply with the mandate, while interviewing former National Organization for Women (NOW) president Patricia Ireland.

At one point, Kelly asked, “Are you Catholic? Well, I am. We follow rules. It’s not a religion for wusses!”

Then, this past summer, Kelly called out The New York Times for hypocrisy for publishing a photo of a piece of art depicting Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI using condoms, after not publishing cartoons depicting Mohammed, claiming that it didn’t want to “offend” anyone.

Little Sisters of the Poor

Megyn Kelly

ObamaCare

Vanity Fair

Previous Post

January 2, 2016

Pope Francis and Donald Trump: America's Runners-Up

Next Post

January 7, 2016 'Greater': When Tragedy Happens to Good People (VIDEO)

Browse Our Archives

Select a Category books breaking news digital media Faith practice food interview jane the virgin media movies music NFL Pope Francis Showbiz 101 social media sports technology television Uncategorized video

Select a Month October 2026 September 2026 August 2026 July 2026 June 2026 May 2026 April 2026 March 2026 February 2026 January 2026 December 2025 November 2025 October 2025 September 2025 August 2025 July 2025 June 2025 May 2025 April 2025 March 2025 February 2025 January 2025 December 2024 November 2024 October 2024 September 2024 August 2024 July 2024 June 2024 May 2024 April 2024 March 2024 February 2024 January 2024 December 2023 November 2023 October 2023 September 2023 August 2023 July 2023 June 2023 May 2023 April 2023 March 2023 February 2023 January 2023 December 2022 November 2022 October 2022 September 2022 August 2022 July 2022 June 2022 May 2022 April 2022 March 2022 February 2022 January 2022 December 2021 November 2021 October 2021 September 2021 August 2021 July 2021 June 2021 May 2021 April 2021 March 2021 February 2021 January 2021 December 2020 November 2020 October 2020 September 2020 August 2020 July 2020 June 2020 May 2020 April 2020 March 2020 February 2020 January 2020 December 2019 November 2019 October 2019 September 2019 August 2019 July 2019 June 2019 May 2019 April 2019 March 2019 February 2019 January 2019 December 2018 November 2018 October 2018 September 2018 August 2018 July 2018 June 2018 May 2018 April 2018 March 2018 February 2018 January 2018 December 2017 November 2017 October 2017 September 2017 August 2017 July 2017 June 2017 May 2017 April 2017 March 2017 February 2017 January 2017 December 2016 November 2016 October 2016 September 2016 August 2016 July 2016 June 2016 May 2016 April 2016 March 2016 February 2016 January 2016 December 2015 November 2015 October 2015 September 2015 August 2015 July 2015 June 2015 May 2015 April 2015 March 2015 February 2015

TAKE THE

Religious Wisdom Quiz