Father Martin: The Priest Who Prays for Stephen Colbert

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Father Jim Martin did not seek the title of Stephen Colbert's TV priest. All he was doing was waiting in the wings for his third appearance on the comedian's show, on which the ebullient, bespectacled cleric was scheduled to be quizzed on poverty - why Martin embraces it when its allure escapes so many other Americans. Then the priest suddenly heard his host direct the audience to welcome "The Colbert Report chaplain."

"I remember being surprised and delighted," says Martin. He shouldn't have been too shocked. In the decade since he joined the staff at America, the Roman Catholic weekly run by Jesuits like himself, he has utilized just about every existent platform in becoming one of the highest profile religious "explainers" in the country, a status that should only be enhanced by his user-friendly new book, The Jesuit Guide to (Almost) Everything.

Every creed has its pop experts - the backgrounders and sound-biters parsing their traditions for a sometimes-perplexed nation. The Buddhist slot, for example, is occupied by Uma Thurman's father Robert, a professor and former Tibetan monk. In the 1990s reporters looking for a conservative Catholic voice sought out Fr. Richard John Neuhaus, editor of the journal First Things; for a more liberal take they called America's then editor Fr. Thomas Reese. But Neuhaus passed away and Reese (who remains a brilliant analyst) was controversially fired by the Pope. Since then Martin, America's culture editor, has out-outreached them both in their primes.

His ability to communicate with church outsiders may derive from his six-year stint as a General Electric executive - "before I saw the light," as he informed Colbert, deadpan. He is also less edgily polemic. David Gibson, a veteran religionista and columnist at Politicsdaily.com, notes that while Martin does champion "marginalized" Catholics like gays and women, as well as nuns, who are currently undergoing a Vatican doctrinal investigation despite their declining numbers and often-heroic works., he excels at spiritual and pastoralnuns (currently under a Vatican microscope), he excels at spiritual and pastoral issues. "He's like a campus chaplain at a very large non-Catholic school" says Gibson. Raymond Arroyo, a popular host at the conservative Eternal Word Television Network, concedes, "I think his cultural writing is interesting and has its place," while noting that "some have offered that at times the attempt to be relevant has caused his magazine to muddle and nuance church teaching." (See how Pope John Paul II dealt with the Jesuits.)

http://news.yahoo.com/s/time/20100307/us_time/08599196966600