Star Wars and Catholicism
When I was really young, Star Wars captured my imagination and never let go. As a child of the 1980s, I grew up on the original trilogy. This may result in losing some credibility as a fan, but at first glance my favorite was Star Wars: Episode VI – Return of the Jedi (1983). Some of my earliest memories involve getting home in the afternoon from St. John’s Catholic School, hurrying to the living room, and playing the VHS tape we owned of the film before my sister could get anything else started. If I did not succeed in this endeavor, I took to the neighborhood and surrounding woods and cornfields and mostly daydreamed about speeder bike chases and green lightsabers.
As I entered my teenage years, met other Star Wars fans, and learned about loss, Star Wars: Episode V – The Empire Strikes Back (1983) became my favorite. When you think about it in terms of its immediate predecessor, Star Wars: Episode IV – A New Hope, you can see the loss of innocence that takes place in the character of Luke Skywalker (Mark Hamill) when he learns that dad is the ultimate villain, Darth Vader (David Prowse, voiced by James Earl Jones). When we first see Luke, he is full of the kind of bright-eyed optimism that made relatable scenes where he looked to the horizon, always an apt symbol and God stand-in for the hope of a brighter tomorrow. He is eager to take his place as a part of the legendary Jedi Order, like his father before him, to fight the evil and oppression he witnesses in his world and in the universe. For a cradle Catholic like me, such stories aligned famously with the Faith on which I was raised.
When we think about a cultural phenomenon like Star Wars in the context of a Faith like Catholicism, some tantalizing comparisons and frustrating differences arise. I say “frustrating” because I want there to be more. You see, in an odd way, I partially credit the famous science fiction franchise for helping bring me back to my Faith. My family moved from the Chicago area to Florida, and when we did they no longer put my sister and I in parochial school. Yet, like Luke Skywalker staring off into the distance, I was always searching for something. In my formative years, I looked in places other than the Church. You can laugh if you like, but among the religious choices I seriously considered was joining the Jedi religion. Okay, the government has ruled that it is not a “real” religion, but they roughly believe in the Force and other aspects of the Jedi code. I was that kind of a Star Wars fan.
God watches out for fools like me. My attempts to convert to another religion always met with failure. You can chalk it up to poor timing, or the kind of bouts of laziness that make older people say ruefully that youth is wasted on the young. Still, that sense of yearning never left me, and it eventually led to me coming back to the Faith in which I was born. I also did not stop being an aficionado of Star Wars. How does one reconcile being in love with God with also loving a set of tales that feature a mythical energy field and, if we are honest, a great deal of violence? At first, I kind of ignored these potential pitfalls. After all, it is not like Harry Potter, where the witchcraft and wizardry has come under a great deal of scrutiny from many Catholics. Hence, Star Wars is sort of the guilt-free fantasy option. With the scrutiny that came with age, though, I began to realize there is more to these movies than laser swords.
No matter what trilogy you look at, be it original, prequels, or the new ones, the overarching theme of Star Wars is a cosmic struggle between good and evil. More specifically, as Yoda (voiced by Frank Oz) trains young Luke in the ways of the Jedi, the mentor warns the student of the dangers of giving in to the temptations of anger and fear. In these, you can hear parallels to Christianity. Our society all but demands that we opt for whatever is “quicker, easier, more seductive,” as Yoda describes the Dark Side of the Force. Doing the right thing can be quick and easy, but it is seldom motivated solely by selfish ends. That is why Anakin Skywalker (Hayden Christensen) became Darth Vader. He foresaw the death of his wife, Padme (Natalie Portman), and was told by Palpatine (Ian McDiarmid) that the only way to save her was by becoming a henchman of evil. This is not to say that by sticking to the straight and narrow, by being a practicing Catholic, you will never know any bad times in your life. It is the constant love that God provides us all that allows us to endure anything, not any kind of power we may or may not have within ourselves. Importantly, Yoda basically sums this principle up when he says that a Jedi uses the Force primarily for knowledge. That is a pretty good description of our relationship with God.
The other half of the lesson mentioned at the end of the last paragraph is that a Jedi also uses the Force for defense. This pertains to how they are supposed to be galactic protectors of justice and peace, but in the films it always seems to result in them fighting wars they were never supposed to seek out. As I have matured as a Star Wars fan, this is an aspect of them that has increasingly troubled me. Star Wars, though firmly science fiction, are basically action movies. Thus, if you had no action in them, I doubt people would watch them. And perhaps this is me taking them too seriously, but these days I want them to be more. This is why I liked Star Wars: Episode IX – The Rise of Skywalker, even though I am apparently alone amongst most of my friends. When Rey (Daisy Ridley) confronts Palpatine, it does not involve a series of clashing lightsaber blows with an old man. Rather, it is a battle for her soul. Instead of taking the easy path to save her friends, as Anakin did, she chooses the difficult path to remain a servant of the light. When she does so it is with the knowledge that she is not alone. Past Jedi whisper their encouragement to her. I could not help but think of the cloud of witnesses the Church recognizes as saints when I first saw this scene, and, frankly, it gave me goose bumps. I just wish there were more moments like this in all the films.
