Belief and doubt in "It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown"

The Halloween classic  still gets high TV ratings

Almost fifty years after it first aired, the 1966 Halloween classic, “It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown”, remains popular. Despite the simple plot and rudimentary animation, it gets higher television ratings than more sophisticated shows. Its humor and pathos, which communicate some realities of human behavior and experience, may account for the cartoon’s appeal.

The plot is straightforward. Linus believes in a Great Pumpkin, a Santa Claus like figure who rises up from the most sincere pumpkin patch on Halloween to drop toys to faithful believers.  The rest of the Snoopy gang mock and insult him. Even little Sally, who adores Linus, abandons him after waiting in vain for the arrival of the Great Pumpkin.  A secondary plot line deals with the bullying of Charlie Brown, by both his peers and the unseen adults who put rocks, instead of treats, into his bag on Halloween night. The show ends with Charlie Brown and Linus working through their disappointment, and with Linus vehemently asserting his belief that next year the Great Pumpkin will come and everything will be different.

Belief  and doubt are bedfellows in the cartoon

The cartoon touches on a variety of themes.  One of these themes is the relationship between belief and doubt, and it anchors the story. In “It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown”, belief and doubt are bedfellows, existing in relationship, not in opposition, to one another.

Linus holds fast to his belief in the Great Pumpkin despite the overwhelming evidence that refutes its existence, and the crushing disappointment he experiences annually when the Great Pumpkin fails to appear. Yet, Linus moves back and forth between certainty and uncertainty as he struggles to overcome the doubt that threatens to swallow up his faith every Halloween. The letter Linus pens to the Great Pumpkin sums up his painful struggle to reconcile his belief and doubt, “If you really are a fake, don’t tell me. I don’t want to know.”

"True faith is about doubt negotiated..." 

Linus is not alone in the struggle to reconcile belief and doubt.  From the great prophets to doubting Thomas to Pope Francis today, spiritual seekers have always recognized the presence of doubt and its importance to the spiritual life.  To quote author and social psychologist, Diarmuid O’Murchú, “True faith is about doubt negotiated, not doubt avoided.”  And as Pope Francis has said, it is important to leave room for doubt in the quest for God; there are dangers in certitude.

The cartoon probes the foibles of adult behaviour

The cartoon also uses the actions and frequently comical dialogue of its child characters to subtly probe the foibles of adult behaviour.

There is the example of Sally, who blames Linus for her decision to join him in the pumpkin patch. Angry and disappointed because she missed the fun of Halloween, she threatens to sue Linus, shouting at him, “You owe me restitution!” While her reaction is comical given her tender age, it pokes fun at the adult world. Sally’s desire to get even, through the courts if necessary, mimics a litigious adult society as well as our reluctance to take responsibility for our actions and to consider the ways in which we may have contributed to a problem.

Linus and Charlie Brown, like Sally, have great expectations that quite literally fail to materialize.  Linus comes away empty handed from the pumpkin patch; there’s no reward for his sincerity, belief or good behavior. Charlie Brown ends the night with a bag of rocks, although he had every reason to expect a bag of candy. In their disappointment, we might recognize our own feelings of disillusionment when life treats us unfairly, and when our actions fail to produce the desired results.

We have packed around that bag of rocks

In Charlie Brown’s bag of rocks, we find a symbol for rejection and bullying.  Everyone can relate to Charlie Brown’s experience of standing on ‘the outside looking in’. We have packed around that bag of rocks.  Or, maybe we have thrown rocks into someone else’s bag.

“It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown” holds a mirror up to human behavior and experience in an understated, sensitive and often comical fashion. This may explain, in part, its enduring appeal despite its straightforward story and rudimentary animation in an age of superior technology and elaborate plot lines.

Synod on the family will test the Pope's credibility

This column was published on October 10, 2014.

A pivotal moment in Pope Francis's papacy

The synod on the “Pastoral care of the family in the context of evangelization” could be a pivotal moment in Pope Francis’s papacy, demonstrating the degree to which the bishops of the world accept the pope’s vision for Roman Catholicism.

In a groundbreaking interview with the Jesuit magazine America in September 2013, Francis spoke boldly about the need for the Church to engage with the world, to focus less on questions of sexual morality and more on the merciful love of God.  He likened the Church to a field hospital, healing wounds and touching hearts; and he cautioned against a Church that is too much like a laboratory, shut off from everyday life and focused on a “compendium of abstract truths.”

It is my view that these two images of the Church will be at odds, vying for precedence over the outcome of the synod. While the synod will not change Church teaching, it could change pastoral practices. The synod will either chart a new course, or reiterate the same old attitudes that a majority of Catholics have already rejected.

In the west, there are great expectations for change in the Church’s attitude and practice towards divorced Catholics who have remarried without obtaining an annulment from the Vatican. These expectations have arisen in large part due to the pope’s pastoral style and the groundwork laid prior to the opening of the synod.

In advance of the synod, Francis took a risk; he asked the world’s Catholics to respond to a questionnaire on the family. This novel approach, coming from a centuries old institution where all decision-making powers reside with a male clergy, engaged lay people, and gave them hope that they might finally have a meaningful voice in the hierarchical church. In the west, those voices make known that the Church is like the laboratory Francis wants to avoid; responses indicate that there is a significant gap between the lived experience of Catholics and Church teachings.

Francis took another risk when he invited his theologian, Cardinal Walter Kasper, to address the world’s cardinals this past February.  Kasper, with support of the pope, spoke to the possibility of relaxing the rules so that divorced and civilly remarried Catholics could receive communion.

A missionary field hospital versus a sterile laboratory

The German cardinal’s approach, which is to re-interpret and adapt Church teaching so that its pastoral practices respond to the realities of people’s lives, is in line with the image of the Church as a field hospital. But, Kasper’s views are not universally well regarded.  Some bishops, notably Cardinal Raymond Burke of the United States, seem attached to the laboratory. They have publicly rebutted Kasper’s position, putting limits on mercy and insisting that nothing around communion for divorced and civilly remarried Catholics can change.

As much as the communion question has galvanized the west, it is only one topic with which the synod will wrestle. There are other challenges facing the family, and these vary around the world. Some of them, such as AIDS, violence and migration, which affect life and limb, are more acute problems, in my opinion, than the question of communion for divorced and civilly remarried Catholics.

Still, the question could create some high drama inside the synod room as bishops struggle to balance doctrine and pastoral practice in the face of today’s realities and according to Francis’s vision. 

This pope’s words and actions indicate that he wants a more open and missionary church, a field hospital not a laboratory. Has the pope’s imagery of the Church, and his beautifully evocative language of God’s mercy and love penetrated the hearts of the bishops who will make the decisions? And if not, what will be the pope’s response?

The pope's credibility is on the line with this synod

The final results of the synod on the family, which will not be known until after the 2015 meeting of the bishops, will demonstrate the influence of the “Francis effect”, and the degree to which his brother bishops accept his vision.  While the topic may be the family, the pope’s credibility is on the line with this synod.