A religious spin on a popular TV program draws a large, live ‘studio audience’
The B.C. Catholic
An energetic priest has put a Catholic spin on a popular TV show.
Father James Hughes, the pastor of St. Patrick’s Parish in Vancouver, was the host for what some called Vancouver’s first-ever Catholic Tonight Show Feb. 29.
“This is Father James, not Father Jimmy Fallon,” joked Father Hughes, making a reference to Catholic-raised actor who is the host of NBC’s The Tonight Show.
The Vancouver archdiocesan event was not televised or recorded, and Father Hughes has no plans for any more Tonight Shows.
Clad in a white collar, Father Hughes welcomed four guests to the stage and led light-hearted interviews that touched on topics from Pope Francis to vocation discernment to the challenges facing the Catholic Church.
First up was Makani Marquis, a Vancouver-born Catholic who wanted to become a soccer star. After abandoning that dream at age 17, he took up hypnotherapy, then spent eight years as a hermit.
“One of the things that I was most profoundly taught when I went to become a hermit is that we are filled with noise, to degrees that we are completely unaware of,” he said.
Going away “taught me the incredible voices of appetite the culture ingrained in me” that “I wasn’t truly aware of. It became much more obvious when I came back to the city and found myself drowning in noise.”
Since leaving his isolated lifestyle, he has worked for the Archdiocese of Vancouver as a webmaster. He married Lisa Marquis, who also works for the archdiocese, three months ago.
Lisa, the next special guest, coincidentally also spent eight years discerning a vocation. “It was beautiful to belong fully to Christ,” Lisa said, reflecting on the promises of poverty, chastity, and obedience she made in a lay consecrated community.
She had some advice for the university students and young professionals in the crowd. “Trust in God’s providence. He will lead you. He’ll guide you. Waiting can be hard. I know the many tears that I cried and prayed,” she said.
“One of the biggest things I learned after leaving was that there’s nothing I have to do to be loved by Christ. Who I am now is just as pleasing to God.”
The next interviewee also spoke of discernment. Erin McDougall, a recent convert to Catholicism and a special education assistant at St. Edmund’s school, is considering religious life.
“I felt that sense of peace,” while on a retreat at Queen of Peace Monastery in Squamish. She hopes to take the next step toward aspirancy this year.
The Catholic Tonight Show was punctuated with laughs; Father Hughes introduced a game called Lenten Confessions, taking cues from Fallon’s True Confessions.
The event also had serious moments, as when Father Hughes asked his guests about challenges the Church faces.
Jeremy Keong, a campus minister at St. Thomas Aquinas Regional Secondary, replied that Catholic youth “care less” than they used to.
“That’s the biggest challenge: to do something that has them respond in some way. Christ says, ‘If you are lukewarm, I will spit you out,’ so if I get an angry response, that’s great.”
McDougall said some people “write the Church off” because of “abuses that have taken place,” such as encounters with unfriendly priests or lay people.
Father Hughes shared his views as well, saying what the Church needs is a change, not in doctrine, but in approach. “Go outside. It’s simply that. We’re still living a very insular life. We still see the privatization of faith.”
He urged the ‘studio audience’ at the Vancouver Art Gallery to build a personal relationship with God, and then “be a brighter light to the people around us.”
