If Stephen Colbert is such good Catholic, why would he even have Garry Willis on his show? That seemed like some kind of endorsement to me.
It isn’t unusual for Colbert to have guests with whom he disagrees. When his live audience, which is young and liberal, starts in with catcalls and boos, Colbert admonishes them with a a stern look and pointed finger, reminding them that the guest is a “Friend of the show, friend of the show.”
As for Gary Wills, I guess I am surprised he would be interested in appearing. He seems to have faded from the national scene, but at one time was prominent. Here is a biographical article about Wills, written by John Allen. If anyone has an interest in who Gary Wills is, and his many contradictions, it is worth a read.
ncronline.org/news/people/poped-out-wills-seeks-broader-horizons
When Wills was young he identified as being a distributionist and still finds Chesterton to be a powerful influence. He still prays the rosary every day and attends Mass every week. He says he has never seriously questioned the Church, but does disagree with with its teachings on papal infallibility, abortion and transubstantiation.
He is one of America’s most famous presidential historians, has a PhD in Classics (publishing books in that field), and has had a long and distinguished journalistic career.
Such is the stratosphere of secular regard in which Wills moves that when the Monica Lewinsky scandal broke, he published an opinion piece for TIME magazine calling upon President Bill Clinton to resign, and yet Clinton still felt compelled to give Wills the National Medal for the Humanities. In a White House ceremony just after the piece appeared, Clinton read a citation praising Wills’ “amazing set of insights over a broad range of subjects” – adding the impromptu qualification, “Sometimes I have a little problem with that one.”
He completed his graduate work at Yale, where Buckley recruited him for the National Review. One of Wills’ first assignments was to help Buckley defend himself against Catholic liberals who had charged him with disrespect for papal social teaching, especially John XXIII’s 1961 encyclical Mater et Magistra, which Buckley saw as a soft on socialism. Wills’ contribution was to coin the famous quip #147;Mater Si, Magistra No!” In many ways, the line could serve as a motto for Wills’ brand of Catholicism – deep love for the faith and tradition, coupled with skepticism about ecclesiastical authority and its claims to special wisdom.
George Weigel had an interesting, if wistful, comment about Wills
He seems to live in a world that’s ‘forever 1968,’ and that means he’s missed a lot of what’s been evangelically exciting and fresh about the last 40 years, including the greatness of John Paul II,” George Weigel told NCR. “That’s a sadness, both for the U.S. Catholic debate and for American culture.”
and anyway I don’t care for his personality.