From the Editor's Desk:
Who is The Interim editor?

For starters, he reads papal encyclicals and watches The Simpsons

I noted when the From the Editor's Desk column began in March that you would get to know me a little better. I could offer my c.v., but that would be cheap and insulting. You don't need to know that I have an Honors History BA from the University of Waterloo and a Journalism diploma from Conestoga College. Nor do you need to know that before becoming editor-in-chief of The Interim, my part-time jobs included supervising an arcade and working with the developmentally handicapped in a group home setting (at different times, of course). It would be gratuitous to note that I was (am) a widely published freelance writer, whose articles, columns and reviews have appeared in more than 30 publications including The National Post, Globe and Mail, Toronto Star, Ottawa Citizen, Montreal Gazette, Calgary Herald, Halifax Herald, Report magazine, Catholic Insight, the Catholic Register, Christian Week and Faith Today, to name just a few.

The most important things I can say about myself is that I am a Catholic, husband and father of three (one of whom is presently developing inside my wife Christina, who begins her column "Letters to an Unborn Child" in the national edition of the paper.*) Or more properly, I am a Catholic, a Catholic husband and a Catholic father. That means that my faith infuses all that I do. Or at least it should and I try.

It has been a strange journey back to being a faithful Catholic for while I never stopped attending Sunday Mass and I was educated in a Catholic school, for a while I stopped believing. Oddly, I held pro-life views before returning home to the Catholic Church. One of the things - one of many - that brought me back was the unwavering position of the Church on life issues. (My initial opposition to abortion was based in my politics, not my faith.)

Pope John Paul II summed up why the Church believes in the sanctity of life in his magnificent encyclical Evangelium Vitae (1995). In it he wrote, "Truly great must be the value of human life if the Son of God has taken it up and made it the instrument of the salvation of all humanity." There is no better summation of the inherent goodness of human life than that.

Before Evangelium Vitae, though, was Centesimus Anus (1991), an encyclical that dealt with economics that I read when I was still an agnostic, but which instilled me with a new respect for my fellow man (and woman) and began the process back to the Church. In it John Paul II wrote a stunning defence of free markets and liberty (properly understood), based on the Catholic understanding of the dignity of the human being. In it he called not for a restriction of markets but to enlarge the "circle of productivity" to include everyone. Free markets need not be, as John Paul has pointed out, exclusionary.

When not reading encyclicals, I'm probably reading something else; books, to quote Malcolm X, are my alma mater. History, philosophy, politics, economics and a dash of the better literature, make up the bulk of my reading. Magazines such as First Things, Crisis, National Review, the Economist, and a slew of other publications - I subscribe or regularly buy 16 magazines and journals - round out my reading list.

But all work and no play makes Paulie a pretty boring guy, even to my (generally) nerdy, well-read friends. While I don't succumb to watching professional wrestling as at least one Interim contributing writer does (who will remain nameless for his own protection), I do watch TV and movies when the time allows - which means when not helping with the household chores, playing road hockey or Nintendo with my oldest son or serving as a human trampoline for my youngest. After watching every episode of Law and Order a dozen times on A&E, I have finally stopped watching the show and I have given up on Saturday Night Live ever recapturing the greatness of his early days (which I watched in reruns - I have yet to turn 30 so I was in bed hours before the show aired when Chevy Chase, John Belushi and Eddie Murphy were regulars).

I won't list the shows I enjoy watching or the shows I tolerate when the TV is turned on (a bad habit, I admit), with a single exception: The Simpsons.

It must be noted that The Simpsons is not appropriate for young children. Anyone without a sufficient sense of irony will miss the point of the show because its creator Matt Groening makes fun of what is important. And what are the usual goats in The Simpsons? The Simpson family, church, community.

Can a social conservative and person of faith watch The Simpsons with a good conscience? Yes. It is the only secular show on TV in which religion plays a prominent role. The Simpson family regularly goes to church as do most in the community. The Simpsons' fundamentalist and evangelical neighbour family, led by Ned Flanders, try to live their faith. (Despite Homer's vitriolic hatred of his neighbour, which at least once included proclaiming to him a homicidal tendency, Ned demonstrates week after week the principle "Love your neighbour as yourself" from Matthew 19:19.)

Furthermore, The Simpsons has more than any other show, illustrated the importance of community by having such a large roster of well-developed characters from captain of industry Montgomery Burns to convenience store owner Apu to Principal Skinner. Even minor characters reappear to reinforce the notion of community. As Paul A. Cantor, a professor of English at the University of Virginia has noted (in his essay in The Simpsons and Philosophy: The D'oh! Of Homer), television has "increasingly tended to isolate the family - to show it largely removed from any larger institutional framework or context." Thus, just like real life, school, church, and the places where we shop, work and play, are integral parts of the Simpson family.

This sense of community is essentially conservative, harkening back to an earlier age, when families felt more connected with the institutions that impacted their lives as they were "solidly anchored in a larger but still local community."

Whatever problems there may be with the functioning of the largely dysfunctional Simpson family, at least the show portrays the traditional nuclear family as normal and good, which is more than can be said of most of television today. Whatever problems members of the Simpson family have with one another, they eventually unite against a common foe (bad educators, industrial pollution, etc...), although they may not always win, thus reinforces the centrality of the family in society.

All this is not to imply The Simpsons is perfect; there is certainly situations and language that is offensive. But neither is the show as dangerous as some pro-family people might believe.

All this said, long-time readers of The Interim should not worry that The Simpsons will be quoted as an authority on life and family issues alongside Pope John Paul II or other religious leaders.