Colbert Report chaplain and envoy-at-large to the entertainment community, Jim Martin, S.J., has announced the very good news that Walter Ciszek’s With God In Russia, is now available on Kindle, courtesy of America Press.

For anyone not yet familiar with Ciszek or this book, I urge you to get hold of it. You will be rewarded by encountering heroic sanctity, not through the hagiographic distancing of centuries, but in the searing light and existential detail of a time still very much our own. It is an opportunity to be with someone who loved God the way so many of us yearn to.

Walter Ciszek was a Jesuit who answered his Church’s call to serve in the Soviet Union during the darkest days of Stalin’s repression. It proved to be an exacting call.After completing his rigorous preparation at the Russicum in Rome, Ciszek was deployed to a village on the blurry border between Poland and Ukraine, and was soon arrested on suspicion of espionage.

For the next two and a half decades he lived life as a prisoner – from the dread confines of Lubianka to the brutalizing camps of Solzhenitsyn’s gulag. Throughout, his daily bread included torture, deprivation, and humiliations of nearly every stripe.

The book clearly means a great deal to Martin, and in his fine introduction to the new edition he exercises pastoral sensitivity in anticipating that, “. . . Some readers might put this book down, moved and inspired to connect it to their own lives. They might say, ‘I’m no hero. I could never do what Ciszek did.’  Or, ‘What do my small problems have to do with his?’ That, however, would be missing the point of this book, which offers a great deal of wisdom for our daily lives.”

I too have been touched deeply by this book, and had the great privilege of meeting Fr. Ciszek. The first time was in the skullery of the Jesuit novitiate in Wernersville, Pa. There, upon recognizing him, I worked up the courage to accost the sleepy tea-seeker.

In a brief exchange, he kindly agreed to remember a special intention of mine. But, it was late at night, long shadows everywhere, and he was, as they say, no spring chicken.

A year later, almost to the day, I met him a second and last time. He’d just arrived from Fordham to work with the guys about to profess vows. It was lunchtime. The large dining hall was full, and the pre-retreat din, swelling.He reached our table and promptly traveled the length of it  – greeting, novice, brother, and priest with equal cheer.Then, he paused – for the slightest moment – behind my chair. His hands, turned to leather by years of brutish labor – hands that had blessed so many – alighted upon my shoulders.

Leaning in quickly, he whispered earnestly, “How did that intention turn out?” 

Not a miracle perhaps, but the cause for his sainthood is, in fact, officially underway.

Walter Ciszek was in the first novice class to pass through Wernersville. His name is carved on a beam inside the bell tower that soars above the gentle hills and quilted landscape of the Pennsylvania-Dutch farm country. I know because I risked life and limb climbing to its very top, and was delighted to discover it there. I confess here – I immediately carved my own, close to his.

Walter Ciszek – the name etched in rough wood by a young, admittedly stubborn, would-be servant of God, will likely soon be inscribed forever in the book of his Church’s saints. Ad Maiorem Dei Gloriam.

Still, exceptionalism, in the case of the United States is not merely a matter of historical record. It remains hugely relevant. Fortunately, other nations have gotten on a track built, tested, and largely maintained by the United States. As with so much that undergirds our existence and its quality, this fact tends to be taken for granted. Whatever the reasons, the result is a disposition of ingratitude. And, in a citizenry, ingratitude can be a symptom of a life-threatening condition.

Barring some sinister manipulation of the vote, the American people have the power to act either as America’s greatest enemy–or the reinvigorated stewards of its freedom. Freedom is not an ideology. In many ways it is the antithesis of it. It is the exercise of that which is universal and self-evident, whose provenance is not temporal, but transcendent. It is not permitted; it is endowed. To miss this truth–and the difference it makes–is to enable the erosion of freedom’s foundation we have seen accelerate so dramatically in recent decades. Ideology is the solvent of this erosion. It has challenged boundaries with varying degrees of success, and intends to cross lines so critical that doing so would alter the nature of the republic as basically as altering the DNA of an individual.

In our present moment, prosecution of that agenda proceeds in the conviction that the people have become so unfamiliar with their history, so easily distracted, and so eagerly tranquilized by the trivial, that they won’t notice–or see it as such.

In the final analysis, ideology is always and everywhere reducible to self-reference. Being closed to the transcendent, it atomizes, divides, and is at intrinsic odds with the spirit of E Pluribus Unum, the motto discerned in 1776 for the Great Seal of the United States.

Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness–the order is significant. They are the self-evident, divinely endowed pillars of freedom. And America’s greatness will ever stand in direct proportion to its incarnate gratitude for them.

George and Hahn are serious people, and readers can draw their own conclusions about their respective arguments. But, in reading them you may agree that very quickly, and necessarily, the question of drones leads to a more fundamental claim—one invoked by, of all people, Barack Obama, in of all contexts, his acceptance speech for the Nobel Peace Prize.

On that occasion the president appealed to the concept of bellum iustum—the “just war”—presumably, to defend the two operations being waged concurrently under his command and to brush back charges the Nobel Committee was using him as a prop in that political theater whose repertoire consists of a tired farce in which the U.S plays the villainous lead.

Just War theories, of secular as well as religious provenance, have come in a variety of shapes and sizes, including those that either reject the notion or place it low on the ladder of realpolitik priorities. As part of a Christian lexicon, though, it can understandably seem a contradiction in terms. Indeed, Christian apologists treating the topic tend to begin by acknowledging that the very effort is self-indicting—a function of our sinful condition—and thus, a concession.

Please understand: I do not count Dr. George and Mr. Hahn among those I’m about to describe. I am, however, troubled by Christians who can ascertain divine warrant for say, capital punishment (an issue that, aside from his own death by such means, Jesus addressed at best obliquely), yet find ambiguity in such daunting Gospel moments as “turn the other cheek” and “love your enemies, do good to those who hate you.”

In the last century, Mohandas Gandhi waged a different kind of war. Through it he made a compelling case for the radically nonviolent activism of ahimsa, and demonstrated its potential as a lever for seismic social change. Born as it was, from the union of religious reverence and political pragmatism, his pugnacious brand of pacifism accomplished the seemingly impossible. It also caught the attention of Christians who wondered if the mahatma was on to something Christ himself might prefer to some of the alternatives expounded in his name.

Yet, throughout his campaign, Gandhi remained keenly aware of the profound challenges posed by ahimsa, and the total commitment it required. In his eyes, if one could not manage it, it would be better to fight tooth and claw than default to inert pacifism.

Gandhi’s example had a documented influence on the formerly pistol-packing Martin Luther King, Jr. In turn, King’s exercise of Christian nonviolence has assumed its rightful its place as one of the noblest chapters in American history.

Human beings do unspeakably vicious things—are doing so as I write and you read this. Christians are commissioned to witness to the love that is the antidote to that eruptive darkness, the unconditional love that is the true nature of things.

While it is no small feat to turn the other cheek, it is another thing when the cheek being struck is not one’s own but that of a loved one—or an innocent stranger. I like to imagine I could rise to the challenge of Gandhi and King’s model with respect to my own hide. I am decidedly less sure when met with hypotheticals, like whether my killing a dictator would spare millions suffering and death.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer confronted that proposition and concluded he had the paradoxical obligation to violate the sixth commandment—in order to be faithful to its author. The cost of his discipleship was death—hanged two weeks before American troops liberated the concentration camp in which he had been held.

In the course of history there have been countless wars, short and long. For over a decade now the U.S. has been engaged in military conflicts that, in the views of the present pope and his predecessor, could and ought to have been avoided with a more rigorous application of just war doctrine. Unfortunately, in the words of Bill Vallicella, “Philosophy is magnificent in aspiration, but miserable in execution.”

It is very curious business – and a further burden on the people of the Church who have struggled to navigate the white water of recent leadership scandals in which Jonah played no part, and whose election was hailed by so many as the dawn of a new era.

So far, the main characters in the drama are staying quiet while websites grow long with lists of conjectures, regrets, accusations, frustrations, and exhortations – all of which throws into sharp relief just how opaque things are.

Barring the sudden engagement of Mr. Holmes, Dr. Watson, Monsieur Poirot and Captain Hastings, we may just have to wait and watch. We could also pray that Metropolitan Jonah, and the entire OCA, are able to discern and follow the promptings of the Holy Spirit through what will undoubtedly be a difficult and painful process.

His story is well worth reading, partly because it seems so timely, and because his humbling example is truly timeless. St. Martin, please pray for us, and for all who aspire to lead.

The trial and sentence have been almost universally vilified as the political machination of current president, Viktor Yanukovytch. If true, the embattled leader may have unwittingly stepped into a bear-trap—one designed not for, but by, the Bear.

The martyr angle here ought not be exaggerated. Tymoshenko was not accused, nor was she convicted, of saintliness. She remains, however, a charismatic figure, only a whisker away from being elected president in 2010, with an army of newly-inflamed supporters. What’s going on?

A look at some headlines announcing the sentence intrigues:

Moscow Sees Anti-Russian Implications in Tymoshenko Verdict (Moscow Times), Tymoshenko Verdict Isolates Kyiv (Kyiv Post), West Fears Kiev’s Drift Into Russian Embrace (Financial Times), Putin Slams Prison Sentence For Former Ukraine PM (National Post.)

Were you to frame it with such headlines, the event might start to look more like a puzzle than a picture. One could wonder, for example, why such a supposedly pro-Russian leader as Yanukovych has gone on the offensive, using the global theater to threaten the Kremlin with legal action over issues related to natural gas.

The simple answer is that things are not nearly so cut and dry. Ukraine’s president has an entire country of interests to balance. In the U.S., when states sue the federal government, they typically consider it a matter of local self-interest, exercised in the spirit of an over-arching national patriotism. That analogy is limited, of course. Ukraine is not a province of Russia. Then again, it wasn’t, even as part of the Soviet Union, when it held its own membership in the UN.

At 2008’s NATO-Russia Council summit in Bucharest, Vladimir Putin was hardly subtle when he put it this way:

Well, you understand, George (Bush), Ukraine is not even a state . . . what is Ukraine? One part of its territory is in Eastern Europe, and the other part, the significant portion, was a gift from us.

In this, and numerous other statements, the message has been consistent—Ukraine is a confection—whose independence, like the gas it receives from Russia, will be regulated by Moscow. The one-way nature of the relationship is apparently something the Kremlin-leaning in Kiev either tolerate or simply will not admit to themselves. President Yanukovych seems to be of the second persuasion.

In a departure from his predecessor, he has made large concessions. They include a lease extension of Russia’s Black Sea Fleet base in Sevastopol, an official, revisionist depiction of the Holodomor, and a halt to the pursuit of NATO membership. In return, he has gotten precious little.

By all accounts, Mr. Yanukovych has a low threshold for embarrassment. He now claims that compensation for these concessions—chiefly, improved terms for Russian natural resources—have not been forthcoming. Ostensibly, it is this that has led him to seek legal remedy.

Yulia Tymoshenko, may thus be a pawn in an ongoing chess match. Yanukovych, perhaps, wagered that he could undo the deal she brokered with Moscow and rid himself of her opposition in one elegant move. If that was the plan, he miscalculated.

A maneuver intended to galvanize power and boost prestige has so far proved a wedge, driving Ukraine further from the EU and closer to Putin’s envisioned Eurasian counter to the various Western alliances. This Customs Union has alarmed more than a few observers who consider it an initial blueprint for a new empire. The lines being drawn are sharp. And Moscow has been clear about the terms—Ukraine is either in fully or not at all.

Writing in the New York Times, Ellen Barry appears sanguine about how this will play out—a scenario in which President Yanukovych can save face and assuage EU concerns by decriminalizing Tymoshenko’s offense. But, Tymoshenko has insisted she will acknowledge no wrong doing in the matter, even if the government chooses to call it a “abuse of office” without criminal valence. If her feisty courtroom comportment is an indication, her continued refusal cannot be discounted.

For a fuller treatment of the case and its context, I recommend the work of Taras Razio—particularly this piece.

However this episode plays out, Ukraine seems likely to remain the tug-o-war, in-between place—the borderland from which its name derives. And its people will continue to bear the many burdens of that role. It is a burden made no lighter if their President has a foot caught in the teeth of a bear trap.

The mother of a dear friend died suddenly – at a very young age. They had been a family of three, émigrés from Moscow, and the funeral took place at a Russian Orthodox church in a New Jersey setting so rural and thick with surrounding forest, it must have felt a bit like home.

Beside the grave, with only three of us standing there, the priest who was warm, present, and large enough to have made a career wrestling bears, addressed my friend’s abject grief. Turning squarely to face her, he took her hands in his and declared with exquisite gentleness, “In your life, be a beautiful monument to your mother.”

This past weekend, the world surrendered one of the giants of our era. On January 18, 2011, Robert Sargent Shriver commended himself to God, assisted in this last exercise of faith by his children.

There have been some touching tributes written by those who knew and loved him. Although I never had the privilege of meeting the man I have been more fortunate in the case of one of those children.

I met Tim Shriver at the wake of a mutual friend, the great Thomas King, SJ. It was the same summer the Shrivers suffered the deaths of mother Eunice and uncle Ted. At the time, I was preparing to begin work on a short documentary film, commissioned by First Things, on the subject of the Nicene Creed.

Knowing something of Tim’s background – including his taking the time to earn a Master’s degree in theology at Catholic University – I asked if he might consider enduring an on-camera interview for the project.

With genteel but candid deference, he suggested it probably wouldn’t be a good fit. Days later, he called; admittedly surprised to find himself suddenly enthused about participating.

The film is now finished and will be made available to the public in a matter of days. It is blessed by the contributions of some remarkable individuals – scholars and thinkers whose insights are the fruit of life-long study, prayer, struggle and love. Each was chosen for the perspective they could uniquely bring to the consideration of the subject.

Tim Shriver shines as he speaks honestly, thoughtfully and incisively about the Creed – not least when identifying what specifically in it has challenged and strengthened him in moments of wrenching loss.

I am profoundly grateful to all who agreed to take the time to contribute to this project. I acknowledge Tim now because of this recent event – another difficult moment for him and his family.

I’m also grateful to have experienced once more that it is Christ, the head and heart of the Church, his mystical body, who alone is able truly to bring together those in that body who may differ on issues of civic policy and course; reminding us that we all drink from the same Paschal cup of forgiveness and salvation.

As husband and wife, Robert Sargent Shriver and Eunice Kennedy Shriver nurtured a family of faith. From it they strove to incarnate the Gospel in concrete ways while remaining faithful to the deepest priorities of the Church they loved.

I do apologize for singling out but one of the Shriver siblings. But, Tim is the only one I know. And in him, mother and father, indeed, have a beautiful monument.

May their memories be eternal.

While I won’t pretend to be a fan, don’t look for any schadenfruede here. Based on what’s been disclosed thus far, there’s no reason for the man to lose his job.

Why shouldn’t Mr. Olbermann be free to spend his mammon stripping shellac where he chooses? If that be on the slippery deck of an ideological Titanic, so what? Besides, what jury would indict, let alone, convict him on charges of being an actual news reporter? Last I heard, you still need evidence for that sort of thing.

What are his superiors up to then? Is this a gesture to the next Congress, a bold first step into a belle-epoque of civility, an invitation to tea? Or is it perhaps a portent of what’s in store once Comcast takes over at NBC-Universal? Who knows, maybe it’s part of some dark pact that will oblige Rupert Murdoch to sacrifice one of his own.

Whatever the case, for Misters Schultz, O’Donnell, and Matthews, as well as for Ms. Maddow, the road ahead looks suddenly uncertain. Until this gets sorted, all I can say is, what a difference a (Tues)day makes.

One night, the hotel held a Jeopardy-type contest for kids that I wound up winning. From the several prizes available, I picked a record album—a collection of John F. Kennedy’s speeches.

His Inaugural became my favorite. No big surprise. After the Gettysburg Address, it’s probably the most quoted political speech in American history.

At one time I could recite the whole of it. A winning parlor trick for a kid who didn’t mind attention—so long as it wasn’t from the back of a nun’s hand.

The rhetoric of that speech served as wings to lift the young president’s native elegance to heights lofty and morally authoritative enough to stir the nation and world. It dazzled me.

In those days it never occurred to me that anyone but John F. Kennedy had composed it. Not until high school did I hear the name, Ted Sorensen. From there I began to learn of the role he played in the short-lived, much-romanticized Kennedy presidency. I was an instant fan.

In fall of 1999, my agent called to say I had an audition. A film called, “Thirteen Days.” I was aware of it—knew it was in pre-production—but I didn’t have high hopes of reading for it.

“What role am I going in for?” I asked. “Um…” I could hear my agent flipping through her appointment sheets. “Um…the character of…Ted Sorensen.” I froze. This was a double-edged sword alright! On one side, tremendous excitement; on the other, lancing trepidation. What if I go in and blow it? Or, what if I they just don’t like me as much as someone else?

The next day I was in a room with director, Roger Donaldson, who kindly made the audition so much less than an ordeal—at one point even cajoling a producer to lend me the more Sorensen-esque pair of spectacles he had on.

It was one of those rare occasions when I heard back in the same week. A Friday, around dinnertime. I’d been hired to play Sorensen.

The first day of filming, I asked the bosses if I might be “introduced” to Mr. Sorensen. I was told, rather tersely, that this would not be possible. Not possible? How could that be?

A week or so later, one of the producers pulled me aside and, exhorting me to clandestine discretion, slipped Sorensen’s contact information into my palm.

That night I dialed New York City and got an answering machine. At the beep I stammered like Ralph Kramden and then hung up, certain I’d just wrecked my chance of ever speaking to the man. Next morning, his assistant called. I was given an appointment to lunch with him.

The first thing that impressed me was how youthful he looked. Lean, dapper, dagger-sharp, he appeared a quintessential gentleman of the old school. He’d been fighting a vicious cold he warned, but it didn’t stop him from leading our dash into the raw autumn afternoon with nothing over his suit jacket.

Once seated in his favorite lunchtime haunt, he began asking about the production. I discovered in short order that he was not pleased with the way things had gone; how he’d been kept away from the project, and why. For reasons not appropriate to dredge up here, it began to make sense.

Before the appetizers arrived, we’d moved beyond talk of the film. He now made himself available for interrogation and observation. As I drew a breath to pose my first question, he preempted with a raised finger followed by a singular non-negotiable.

“I will not talk about that day.”

His tone and gravity left no doubt that the day in question was, November 22, 1963.

I’ve run that through my mind many times since, groping for some definitive interpretation. Yet, I suspect my first hunch was right; despite all the years, it was simply too painful, Kennedy’s assassination too impossibly personal for him.

Chastened, I felt obliged to brief him on what seemed the pertinent basics of my own story. They included references to seminary training and, of course, those crowd-pleasing parlor performances for which he was in some measure responsible. In truth, I was trying to convey my admiration without coming across like Rupert Pupkin with a Kennedy obsession.

In turn, he spoke of how he came to be the “speechwriter”; how he’d ventured forth from the heartland to Washington, equipped with a Nebraska law degree, eventually landing a position on the staff of John Kennedy, then the junior senator from Massachusetts.

One particular spring, Kennedy had a commitment to speak in his home state before a Catholic audience on St. Paddy’s Day. According to Sorensen, the senator mentioned, rather casually, that he’d be needing a speech for the occasion. And, that he’d appreciate it if Sorensen would write it.

Across from me Mr. Sorensen took a sip of water. “I had no clue what to say to a Catholic crowd—in Boston—on St. Patrick’s Day no less. And I told him so.”

“What did he say?” I asked like a kid listening to the best bedtime story ever.

“He said, ‘Well…come up with something.’”

“And…?” I asked, near tripping over myself.

After the briefest hesitation he said, “Well, I came up with something.”

Here he paused and smiled for the first time, adding, “Apparently it went over pretty well.”

So well it turns out, that immediately afterward, Kennedy informed him, “You write the speeches from now on.”

That was funny to me—and to him—up to a point. He followed quickly with the report of his protest that he was not a speechwriter.

Clearly, Sorensen didn’t view himself as such. Not first or foremost. I doubt President Kennedy did either. He was at the very heart of Kennedy’s counsel. He’d earned that remarkable degree of confidence. And it was this that seemed truly to matter to him.

In his last book, Counselor, he ruefully predicted that, upon his death, the headlines would likely misspell his name and misstate his role in history. Can’t say I blame him. Our national indifference to the past both shames and weakens us.

Sorensen’s days in Washington were dangerous ones. Keen sensitivity to the nuances of individual temperaments seems to have played a vital role in averting an unspeakable global horror. And I think it’s fair to wonder where things might have gone had Ted Sorensen not been in the Oval Office during the critical hours of the Cuban Missile Crisis.

At lunch he talked. I listened. And, of course, as an actor, I observed, humbled by the historic achievements of a man I was tasked somehow to approximate for moviegoers and a paycheck.

Mr. Sorensen spent two and a half hours with me that day. He had nothing to gain from it. On top of that, he really was sick with a cold.

One might be justified in opposing any number of his political convictions. So be it. I will, however, be ever grateful for our brief acquaintance and for those words I simply had to learn by heart all those years ago.

In Counselor, he poignantly acknowledged, “I became – with the exception of his (JFK’s) running mate, the vice president – virtually the first member of the Kennedy administration. Now I am almost the last.”

Theodore Sorensen died this week, on October 31, 2010, at the age of 82.

If indeed, “The torch has been passed,” I pray it is to those who will safeguard it with at least a modicum of his unyielding sense of honor.

May his memory be eternal.

Dorothy Kilgallen was a perennial presence on that show’s panel and since I “murdered” her in a TV series a while back; forcing her to drink copious amounts of vodka at gunpoint, I should probably recuse myself from weighing in.

I would, however, point to a headline in yesterday’s Variety that suggests a kind of unity—or perhaps yearning for it—latent in the story’s statistics, “There’s no stopping the NFL, as NBC’s season opener of “Sunday Night Football” drew the highest overnight score for a Week 1 primetime game in 13 years.”

I should also mention that Thursday night’s game between defending lords of the ring, New Orleans Saints and the Minnesota Vikings, led by Brett Favre, drew the biggest primetime audience for an NFL game in 12 years. In fact, fans in Favre’s former “home town” of Green Bay tuned in at a 33 share—five points higher than the overall number, demonstrating the enduring magnetism of football’s grey gunslinger.

On top of this, the league was facing competition from such glittering cultural gems as the MTV Music Awards and HBO’s erotic gore fest, True Blood—as well as ratings bully, CSI Miami. Why then the big numbers?

Maybe, in a time of such toxic rancor and hyper-extended subjectivism, there is a yearning for something simpler, truer—something gloriously free from interpretation and posturing. Football’s rules are fairly straightforward. When a field goal is attempted, the ball either goes through the uprights or it doesn’t. And despite the emotions surrounding Calvin Johnson’s non-touchdown in Sunday’s Lions-Bears game, Rule 8, Section 1, Article 4 held and the matter was unequivocally settled.

It’s also quite a thing to look at the screen and see people who truly deserve to be there. Here I’m talking in terms of raw performance, not off-field antics.

Then there’s the pleasure of watching individuals of different races and religions working together in a common purpose, embracing each other in the good moments and exhorting each other through the tougher ones.

In a weekend marked by a somber anniversary—with a creepy parade of book-burning pastors, cagey imams, race-hypocrites and compulsive finger-pointers swelling audiences eager for the discipline, excellence, camaraderie and fun on display in the opening of the NFL season suggest a yearning for that unified culture even in this micro form. It was a tonic I know I was thirsty for.