January 18, 2004

Star-crossed comments

It’s tempting to blame it all on Britney Spears. But that probably would be unfair.

Spears, the “star” who found herself wedded and unwedded the other day faster than you can say “oops,” is probably more effect and less cause of our fractured culture of marriage, more victim and less perpetrator.

The grown-up-too-fast bubblegum pop singer was the initial subject of a recent Catholic Community of Faith show Father Greg Sakowicz and I host (Monday through Friday, 9-10 a.m on AM820).

The topic was wide-ranging: Marriage, moral responsibility (or lack thereof) of celebrities, role of faith in culture and more.

If you missed this show, you missed a good one. The phone bank really lighted up; we couldn’t even get all the callers on the air.

This is beginning to sound like a commercial—and maybe it is. Radio is a relatively new outreach for the Catholic Church in Chicago. We’ve been doing shows for a couple of years now, bouncing around on different stations and different times. But the archdiocese has developed a sort of partnership with the folks at Starboard Communications, the Minnesota-based radio chain that operates several Catholic radio stations across the nation.

Here in Chicago, you can hear sunup to sundown Catholic programming on WCSN, AM 820, starting at 7 a.m. with Jeff Cavins and Relevant Radio’s “Morning Air” show. Then comes an hour of locally produced shows.

Father Greg and I step up to the mike Mondays and Fridays. The rest of the days include shows with Father John Cusick and Kate DeVires on Young Adult Ministry, Family Ministries, Catholic Charities and much more. Through a month-long cycle there are shows focused on Scripture with Father Bob Barron, respect life issues, interreligious efforts, a show focusing on black Catholics and even the Catholic Conference of Illinois gets into the act, bringing to the public current legislative issues affecting the church. At 8:30 a.m. and again at 8 p.m. Saturdays on WSBC (AM1270), there’s an archdiocesan Spanish-language show, Una Comunicad Catolico de Fe. All in all, it’s a pretty impressive lineup.

Tune us in sometime.

But back to Britney.

We live in a celebrity-drenched culture. And what celebrities do, too many people—much like sheep—end up doing as well.

After apparently some heavy partying, Britney and childhood friend Jason Alexander stumbled through the formalities of getting a marriage license and then tied the knot at one of those all-night Las Vegas wedding chapels. Before the dawn was fully up, the civil annulment machinery was already cranking up. The 55-hour marriage was, Alexander said, just a joke that went too far.

But marriage, of course, isn’t a joke. And how many other celebrity-blinded mopes will see in the Britney-Jason mismatch a further slippage of the real sense of love, relationship, commitment and promise that marriage is?

Guests on the radio show, Father Dan Smilanic of the archdiocesan Marriage Tribunal and Andrew Lyke, Family Ministries Office marriage coordinator, tried to help listeners make sense of the senseless. And, judging by the number of calls, the show touched a nerve.

Celebrity worship isn’t new; neither is its effect on culture. But we really shouldn’t look for cultural models in the stars.

People pay closer attention to the relationships of today’s celebrities than they do their own. On the other hand, the show was a good opportunity to share solid information in support of sacramental marriage as a building block of society.

I guess this did turn out to be a long-winded commercial for all our local Catholic Community of Faith programs. Don’t miss ’em. After all, who are you going to get your faith-support from? Britney and Jason?