Jesuit Higher Education: A Journal

Volume 6 | Number 2 Article 17

12-2017 What Can TV Teach Us About the Spiritually Healthy Institution? Susan Scheibler Loyola Marymount University, [email protected]

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Recommended Citation Scheibler, Susan (2017) "What Can TV Teach Us About the Spiritually Healthy Institution?," Jesuit Higher Education: A Journal: Vol. 6 : No. 2 , Article 17. Available at: https://epublications.regis.edu/jhe/vol6/iss2/17

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What Can TV Teach Us About the Spiritually Healthy Institution?

Susan Scheibler Associate Professor of Film, TV, & Video Games McGrath & Reilly, Loyola Marymount University LMU President’s Institute [email protected] Collection: Introduction and Abstract Overview

This article posits that the television series offers a model for a lively, vital, and spiritually Snyder, Necessary Companions: st healthy 21 century Catholic institution of higher education. It does this through a close analysis of Faith and Reason the series as a whole as informed by arguments posed by Catholic thinkers, and it argues that the show—through its characters, settings, stories, plots, and themes—self-consciously and McGrath & Reilly, consistently engages and explores various aspects of faith and reason, justice and ethics, within the President’s Institute on the context of a multidisciplinary research institution. In this way, an examination of the series can add Catholic depth and dimension within which educators are able to find spiritual, intellectual, and affective Character of resonances. LMU: A Twenty- One-Year Introduction ethics. They situate their stories and Tradition characters within a broad range of settings, Bouvier-Brown, Whether we watch them on a television set, a all of which provide a context for exploring Nurturing Student mobile device, or a computer, television series a wide-range of issues, concerns, questions Scientists as enter our lives, shaping and informing our and values, among which are the qualities People of Faith values both personal and cultural. We dissect we associate with a spiritually healthy Jarvis, Faith our favorite shows, putting our thoughts on institution. and Reason in display for others to engage by means of a the Pursuit of variety of social media platforms. Because Having just completed its twelfth and final Understanding they enter our lives through such an intimate season, the 20th Century Fox Television Rohm, Our medium, the characters we encounter take on series Bones provides one such example, and, Students’ Search something very close to a lived dimension. as such, is worth closer examination for for Meaning They show up week after week, episode after what it offers as a model for a lively and episode, year after year. Thanks to the power vital twenty-first century Catholic Scheibler, What of online streaming and DVDs, even after a institution. 1 The series, in many ways, is a Can TV Teach Us About the series is cancelled they do not go away. We conventional forensic procedural. However, Spiritually Healthy meet them over dinner, after work, before we the means by which the characters, settings, Institution? head to school, in the hours we should be stories, plots, and themes self-consciously studying and writing, and in those gap times and consistently engage with and explore Reilly & McGrath, when we find ourselves with time on our various aspects of faith and reason, justice Faith and Reason in Antiquity: hands. and ethics, within the context of a A Photo Essay multidisciplinary research institution adds The power of television has much to do with depth and dimension. It is within these the fact that, unlike a movie that must tell its complex associations that educators can story in one film, a series unfolds over several find spiritual, intellectual, and affective episodes and, if it’s lucky, many seasons. This resonances. allows a series to explore, deepen, complicate, and transform characters over time within the Bones and the Fictional Jeffersonian comfort of familiar settings, stories, and character types. TV shows can reinforce, The series, inspired by the life and work of challenge, question, or subvert our deeply real-life forensic anthropologist Kathy held ideas, values, attitudes, and perspectives Reichs (who is also a producer on the on a variety of issues, including gender, race, show), features a team of forensic scientists ethnicity, class, sexuality, religion, faith, and who work with the FBI to solve murders.

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At the center of the team is Seelye Booth, a The narrative structure of the series provides former Army Ranger sniper turned FBI agent, the characters with the means, opportunity and Dr. Temperance Brennan, a brilliant and motives to explore and discuss matters of forensic anthropologist. Booth and Brennan, faith and reason, justice and ethics, religion also called “Bones” by Booth, work with and science, and the relationships between Camille “Cam” Saroyan, an accomplished disciplinary ways of knowing that characterize medical coroner; , the “bug and their work in all their nuances and slime guy”; , talented artist complications. The series adheres to the and computer expert; and an array of conventions associated with a police/crime Brennan’s most promising graduate students. procedural show. Each episode begins with The scientists work together at the the discovery of a badly decomposed body, Jeffersonian, a fictional institution that calls to then unfolds through a double investigation mind the Smithsonian. Like the Smithsonian, with the Jeffersonian team using their various the Jeffersonian is a museum, education and skills and expertise to determine the identity research complex located in Washington, D.C. of the victim, the time and cause of death, and The members of the Jeffersonian team are any relevant details that might help solve the intellectually engaged members of their case. Meanwhile Booth, sometimes with disciplines. Many of them hold multiple Brennan’s help, rounds up and interrogates advanced degrees and, in spite of the amount potential suspects. Once the crime is solved, of time they spend helping the FBI solve each episode ends with an epilogue that crimes, they continue to contribute well- allows the characters to recall and reflect on respected and peer-reviewed scholarship to what they have learned. They apply these their disciplines. For his part Booth is a highly lessons to their personal and professional decorated Army Ranger and FBI agent who is lives, and, in some sense, gain consolation called upon to lecture to other law even in the midst of the grief and loss that enforcement agencies, including Scotland comes from looking into the abyss of so Yard. much evil and suffering on a daily basis.

Booth is a devout Catholic who attends The Spiritually Healthy Institution church regularly and, until he and Brennan start living together outside of marriage, goes In order for it to be effective in helping the to confession weekly. His faith informs every FBI investigate and solve complicated crimes aspect of his life, including, perhaps most requiring a full array of scientific expertise profoundly, his reason for joining the FBI, from a variety of disciplines and approaches, which is, as he tells Brennan in the there is no doubt that the Jeffersonian must episode, a desire to find absolution by solving be an intellectually healthy institution. Due to one murder for every one of the fifty “kills” its emphasis on investigation, the series he committed as a sniper. Brennan, on the celebrates science and the use of inquiry- other hand, is a rational empiricist and self- based rational analysis and argumentation. proclaimed atheist who stands out, even The dialogue between the members of the among the other empiricists, atheists, and team is a constant interchange of scientific agnostics with whom she works, as hyper- knowledge from a variety of discourses all rational. She finds it almost physically painful challenging and informing each other in a way to make intuitive leaps or posit hypotheses that enlarges and deepens the knowledge pool that aren’t supported by a careful analysis of on which they rely to solve crimes. I would the evidence. Her ability to compartmentalize argue that what sets Bones apart from other combined with her almost rabid embrace of television shows is precisely the same objectivity and hard evidence often sets her in characteristics that set a spiritually healthy opposition to Booth, who depends on his Catholic institution apart from its secular intuition and instinct. counterparts. That is, its emphasis on the centrality of the religious experience; a focus on the dialogue between faith and reason; and

Jesuit Higher Education 6(2): 51-63 (2017) 52 Scheibler: What TV Can Teach Us About the Spiritually Healthy Institution? a commitment to an ethos of hospitality and Buddhism, Hinduism, and a variety of new concern for the individual (cura personalis). age spiritual practices. The series is able to do this in great part because Brennan’s character The Centrality of Religious Experience is a forensic anthropologist, well-versed in religious beliefs and practices both ancient The series uses many opportunties to explore and contemporary. Her disciplinary expertise questions, issues, and concerns about religious as well as her scientific objectivity and experiences and the role they play in the lives curiosity provide an opening for the series to of individuals as well as institutions and explore and reflect on the centrality of culture at large. Besides Booth’s Catholicism, religious experience, even when there are which shapes and informs every episode, conflicts between the religious or spiritual several episodes have used specific characters practice at hand and her own rational, to explore faith and religious belief. empiricist worldview. In spite of her own Numerous cases have involved nuns, priests, personal scepticism, she remains respectfully bishops, and congregants as victims, suspects, open to learning about and understanding the witnesses, and/or survivors of one kind or beliefs of others. In this way the series, more another. In addition to using characters to than any other procedural show, devotes a represent faith traditions, numerous episodes great amount of narrative time to an have situated the crime and/or victims within exploration of the varieties of religious specific religious groups, including Islam, the experience, as the following (non-exhaustive) Amish, Voodoo, Native American spirituality, episode list in Table 1 reveals.

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Table 1. Exploration of religious experience in Bones episodes Episode Title Religious Theme Air Date 1.1 Pilot Introduces Booth’s Catholicism September 13, 2005 1.2 The Man in the SUV Islam September 20, 2005 1.3 Catholicism (Booth’s and the victim’s) September 27, 2005 1.4 Man in the Bear Native American spiritual traditions November 1, 2005 1.6 Booth’s Catholicism November 15, 2005 1.9 The Man in the Fallout Shelter Christianity in general December 13, 2005 1.19 The Man in the Morgue Voodoo April 19, 2006 2.2 Mother and Child in the Bay Booth’s Catholic beliefs September 6, 2006 2.9 Aliens in a Spaceship Booth’s Catholic beliefs November 15, 2006 2.16 The Boneless Bride in the River Traditional Chinese religious rituals March 21, 2007 2.17 The Priest in the Churchyard Catholicism March 28, 2007 3.1 The Widow’s Son in the Knights of Columbus; secret societies; September 25, 2007 Windshield the Jesuits 3.8 The Knight on the Grid Knights of Columbus November 20, 2007 3.9 The Santa in the Slush Coptic Christianity November 27, 2007 4.7 The He in the She TV evangelists; faith communities October 8, 2008 4.16 The Salt in the Wounds Islam March 19, 2009 4.22 The Girl in the Mask Shinto April 23, 2009 5.3 The Plain in the Prodigy Amish October 1, 2009 5.14 The Devil in the Details Catholicism and Islam February 4, 2010 5.20 The Witch in the Wardrobe Wicca May 6, 2010 6.12 The Sin in the Sisterhood Christian fundamentalism; Catholicism February 3, 2011 6.19 The Finder Jesuits April 21, 2011 6.22 The he Heart Catholicism May 12, 2011 7.7 The Prisoner in the Pipe Christianity; Nativity story April 2, 2012 8.13 The Twist in the Plot Buddhism January 28, 2013 8.15 The Shot in the Dark The question of an afterlife February 11, 2013 9.1 The Secrets in the Proposal Catholicism September 16, 2013 9.17 The Repo Man in the Septic The value of raising children in a faith March 17, 2014 Tank environment; church 9.19 The Turn in the Urn Romani beliefs March 31, 2014 Source: “Bones: Episode list,” IMDB.com, accessed November 16, 2017

Dialogue Between Faith and Reason (episode 1.9). In this episode the team, confined to the Jeffersonian under quarantine The spiritually healthy institution is a place on Christmas Eve due to the possible where faith and reason encounter one another ingestion of spores, make the best of a bad in dialogue. It is also a space that reflects what situation by figuring out a way to celebrate Mark Roche argues is the task of the Catholic Christmas while solving a 50-year-old murder. university: “to create enough safe spaces and Brennan is puzzled by their efforts to trusting relationships within the academic celebrate Christmas, assuming that her workplace—hedged about by appropriate Jeffersonian colleagues either are atheists like structural protections—that more of us will herself or, at the very least, informed be able to tell the truth about our own intellectuals who understand the constructed struggles and joys.”2 As he points out, the goal nature of Christmas as a holiday. is to create the conditions by which each person can cultivate the gifts with which he or Brennan: Indications are that Christ, she has been endowed, including reason.3 if he existed, was born in late spring and the celebration of his birth was We find one example in an early episode shifted to coincide with the pagan rite entitled “A Man in the Fallout Shelter”

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of the winter solstice so the early Angela: I do, Christmas and Easter Christians weren’t persecuted. anyway. Booth: Who are you, like the Hodgins: Though I believe that Christmas killer? organized religion is just another Brennan: It’s the truth. political movement designed to Booth: No, it sounds like the truth control the masses doesn’t mean God ‘cos it’s so rational, but the true truth doesn’t love me. is that you hate Christmas and you Zach: I’m an empirical rationalist all just spout all these facts and you just the way unless you talk to my mother. spoil it for everyone else. Then I’m Lutheran.

They continue the conversation later on in the In another episode, “Aliens in a Spaceship” episode: (episode 2.9), Brennnan and Hodgins are kidnapped by a serial killer/kidnapper known Brennan: How would you like me to as the Gravedigger whose modus operandi is to spend Christmas? kidnap children, bury them alive in a container Booth: Christmas is the perfect time with limited air, then demand a ransom. If the to re-examine your standing with (he ransom is paid on time, instructions are given points up), you know? as to where to find the children. If it’s not, the Brennan: A helicopter pilot? children are left to suffocate in an undisclosed Booth: Oh right, right, you can’t location. The episode opens with a shot measure the man upstairs in your showing Brennan waking up, and after beaker so he can’t possibly exist. struggling to get out of the car, she discovers Brennan: The man upstairs? that the car is buried. She turns around to see Booth: You don’t know if you’re sick Hodgins lying, injured in her back seat. From but you’re more than willing to take there we have a flashback to a crime scene drugs, just in case. Seems to me that where two bodies are found. They turn out to you could give the man upstairs the be young brothers whom the Gravedigger had same benefit of the doubt that you taken several years before the discovery. The give a fungus. episode continues as a flashback, showing the team working to solve the murder, until it Later, as the team gathers together to eat reaches the point when the Gravedigger dinner, they discuss the murder they are trying kidnaps Brennan and Hodgins. At this point, to solve. Based on the evidence found with it shifts to the present in which the team the body, they speculate that the murder works frantically to discover where Brennan victim “got a woman in trouble” in the ‘50s and Hodgins might be buried while the two and possibly came to D.C. to procure an use their scientific knowledge to survive and abortion for her. send a signal to their colleagues at the Jeffersonian. Angela: This isn’t a very Christmas Eve type story. Early in the episode, before Brennan is Brennan: Of course it is. The whole kidnapped, she and Booth have the following Christ myth is built on the travails of conversation: an unwed mother. Booth: Ok can we just stop bringing Brennan: Has it ever occurred to you up the whole Christ myth thing? that God is a lot like the Some people believe it’s more than Gravedigger? just a myth. Booth: What? Brennan: Who besides you? Brennan: He lays down the rules. No Dr. Goodman: That would be me, way to question him or negotiate. Doctor Brennan. I’m a deacon at my Then it’s almost as if he doesn’t care church. how it works out. Either you do as he

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says, make some sacrifices, and you’re Booth: The candles. And I said delivered, or you don’t and you end “thanks.” You should try it some up in hell. time. Booth: I’d really appreciate it if you Brennan: If I were going to pray, I wouldn’t say things like that because I would’ve done it just before we set really don’t want to get struck by off the explosion. lightning. Booth: And you didn’t? Brennan: Do you go to church every Brennan: No, see, if there was a Sunday? God, which there isn’t... Booth: Yes, I do. Booth: Shhh, do you see where we Brennan: Can I come with you? are? Booth: No, you can’t. Brennan: And if I were someone Brennan: Why? It might help me to who believed he had a plan... understand. Booth: Which I do... Booth: I’m not going to help you Brennan: Then I’d be tempted to disrespect God in his own house. If think he wanted me to go through you want to do some anthropological something like I went through study, turn on a religious channel. because it might make me more open to the whole concept. Later, as they are buried alive in the car, Booth: It obviously hasn’t. Brennan and Hodgins have the following Brennan: I’m ok with you thanking conversation: God for saving Hodgins and me. Booth: That’s not what I thanked Brennan: Booth will find us. him for. I thanked him for saving all Hodgins: You have a lot of faith in of us. It was all of us; every single Booth. one. You take one of us away and Brennan: No, faith is the irrational you and Hodgins are in that hole belief in something that is logically together. And I’m thankful for that. impossible. Over time I’ve seen what Booth can do. It’s not faith. For Booth, and for the show as a whole, it is Hodgins: No offense, we’re out of community and the relationships between air. We don’t know if our message people that inform religious experience and got out, much less if anyone faith. understood it and we’re buried under ground. What you have is faith, baby. The dialogue between faith and reason takes on an additional aspect when Arastoo Vaziri, Of course, Brennan’s faith in Booth is a new intern of Iranian descent who is a rewarded. Even though the Gravedigger devout Muslim, joins the team. When he joins remains at large, Brennan and Hodgins are the team in season 4, he speaks with a thick rescued just in time. The epilogue finds Booth accent and a bumbling bundle of and Brennan in church. She watches him as colloquialisms that give the impression that he he finishes his prayer, crosses himself and is a naive, backwards kid who is “fresh off the then settles back into the pew: boat” from Iran. By the next season, he is caught out when he lets his accent slip, Brennan: What’d you ask for? revealing that he speaks English fluently, like Booth: That’s between a certain saint the educated person he is. Cam asks Sweets, and me. I did ask for a little help the FBI psychologist, to talk to him: finding the Gravedigger. Brennan: Good move. What’s that Sweets: This place, the Jeffersonian, smell? they see things in very black and white kind of terms.

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Arastoo: It comes with the gig. We’re it. But the search for truth is scientists. honorable and I honor Allah through Sweets: Yeah, but unlike any of the search for truth. them, you’re religious. Arastoo: Muslim. In their acceptance of Booth’s Catholicism, Sweets: This man I see in front of Dr. Goodman’s Protestant faith, Arastoo’s me, rational, pragmatic, highly Islamic practice, Angela’s new age spirituality, intelligent; that man might have to and their encounters with a variety of faiths, explain his religion to people like that the Jeffersonian team provides an illustration every single day whereas… of a spiritually healthy university. In other Arastoo: … a kid from the sticks of words, the fictional Jeffersonian offers us a Iran, newly arrived in the West, it’s way to imagine what Roche observes as a no wonder he clings to his cultural “desire for new perspectives through reason, superstitions. and, quite simply, the evaluation of the value Sweets: There you go. Frustrating of all persons” as fundamental to leading “a enough to drive a guy to fake an Catholic University to welcome persons of accent, which in my professional diverse faith.”4 He continues to state that such opinion is not crazy. “a University gladly embraces those who, with Arastoo: You’re a pretty smart guy. intelligence and respect, can challenge and Sweets: But I don’t need a scientist complement the Catholic character of the to tell me who I am. Neither should institution” and observes that “the Catholic you. University must seek to cultivate the inspiring model of those medieval thinkers from the Later in the same episode, Arastoo, arriving three great Monotheistic religions who so from prayers, speaks in his true, unaccented elevated reason that they sought out English to Cam, Hodgins and Angela. He tries competing traditions in order to see what was to avoid the subject but Hodgins and Angela of value in them and to ask how these might will not let him off the hook so easily. When relate to their own.”5 Cam suggests that it is easier if he would just explain, he states that “I don’t have an accent The fact that the Jeffersonian team deals in but I am devout and I do pray five times a murder on a daily basis provides a way in day. When I speak as if I just got off the boat, which the show can investigate the ways that people accept my religious convictions. Plus faith and reason encounter, and respond to, fewer terrorist jokes.” Angela and Hodgins let the deepest aspects of human experience. In the topic go for the moment in order to focus the face of grief and loss, reason meets its on their investigation of the crime at hand limits, leaving faith to carry the burden of but, once the case is solved, they bring up the offering comfort and solace. For the believer, issue again: loss, like evil and suffering, can test faith, raising the question “how can a good and Angela: Ok, let’s have it. loving God do this, or allow this to happen?” Arastoo: Have what? For others, including the empirical Hodgins: How do you balance an rationalists, death and suffering can be the archaic religious belief with a life conduit through which an inquisitive and devoted to science? open mind can explore other possiblities. Arastoo: This discussion is exactly what I’d hoped to avoid. Not content to leave death to touch only the Cam: It’s not our fault you let the victims, suspects, and survivors, the series has accent slip. confronted the Jeffersonian team with its own Arastoo: There’s no conflict between losses. In “The Hole in the Heart” (episode Allah and science. Allah created the 6.22), a sniper turned vigilante murderer mystery of the world, and science shoots Vincent Nigel Murray, one of struggles, and mostly fails, to explain Brennan’s favorite interns, straight through

Jesuit Higher Education 6(2): 51-63 (2017) 57 Scheibler: What TV Can Teach Us About the Spiritually Healthy Institution? the heart. As he lies bleeding out with In addition, the two are often put in situations Brennan and Booth working desperately to where Booth, feeling helpless or lost, must staunch the wound, he says between each allow Brennan to use what she has learned agonized breath, “Please don’t make me leave. from him to help him find his way out of I love being here. Please, just don’t make me doubt and back towards faith and his leave. Please, just don’t make me go. I don’t commitment to compassion, understanding, want to go. It’s been lovely.” Brennan, forgiveness and reconciliation. distraught, keeps assuring him that they don’t want him to leave, that they want him there, Together they experience what Pope John that he’s loved and is, in fact, her favorite. Paul II describes in Fides et Ratio, when he Later, a grief-stricken Brennan and Booth points out that: have the following exchange: the truths sought in this interpersonal Brennan: He kept saying “don’t relationship are not primarily make me go.” empirical or philosophical. Rather, Booth: What? what is sought is the truth of the Brennan: Vincent. He was looking at person—what the person is and what me and saying, “don’t make me the person reveals from deep within. leave.” He said that he loved being Human perfection, then, consists not there. Why would he think that I’m simply in acquiring an abstract the one making him leave? What kind knowledge of the truth, but in a of person am I? dynamic relationship of faithful self- Booth: You’ve got that all wrong. giving with others… knowledge Brennan: No, I heard him. You did through belief, grounded as it is on too. “Don’t make me leave.” That’s trust between persons, is lived in what he said. truth: in the act of believing men and Booth: He wasn’t talking to you. women entrust themselves to the Brennan: I was the only one truth which the other declares to there..and you. He wasn’t talking to them.6 you. Booth: He was talking to God. He Season 9 most powerfully exemplifies these didn’t want to die. words. At this point in the series, Brennan Brennan: No, Vincent was like me, has, through her relationship with Booth and Booth. He was an atheist. other members of the team, begun to let go of Booth: Ok, then he was talking to her imperviousness, becoming more the universe then. He didn’t want to vulnerable and therefore more open to others. go. He wasn’t ready, Bones. He She has entered a romantic relationship with wanted to stay. Booth, they have had a daughter and Brennan Brennan: If there was a God, he has asked Booth to marry him. At the would have let Vincent stay here with moment of their most intense happiness, us. Polante, a crazed serial killer obsessed with Booth: It’s not how it works. Brennan, forces Booth to break off the engagement and threatens to kill several As the series unfolds, Brennan begins to trust innocent people if Booth tells Brennan the Booth and, as she does, she begins to open up reason why. The desolation they are to the possibility of faith; if not in God, then experiencing is destroying both Brennan and in something that gives meaning to life and, Booth, and putting a strain on the entire perhaps more important, allows her to accept, Jeffersonian team, who care deeply about through experience, the fact that some things both of them. Brennan discovers that Booth can’t be explained by rational argument or has been going to a bar so she goes there, empirical proof. Booth learns from Brennan hoping to find some answers. how to critically examine his faith and beliefs.

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Aldo: You’re Booth’s girl? with a rightly tuned spirit they search Temperance Brennan? for it within the horizon of faith. Brennan: I wouldn’t use the term Therefore, reason and faith cannot be “girl.” separated without diminishing the Aldo: I’m Aldo Clemens. I used to be capacity of men and women to know Booth’s confessor when he was a themselves, the world and God in an ranger. Me and him are having a hard appropriate way.7 time breaking the habit even though Booth’s the reason I quit being a Her faith in Booth’s faith helps her find a way priest and decided God was my worst to tune her spirit in such a way that she begins enemy. to allow faith to expand her limits, accepting Brennan: God is a myth. that, in the words of Fides et Ratio, “there is no Aldo: Oh, I don’t think so. I think reason for competition of any kind between he’s a bastard. reason and faith: each contains the other, and Brennan: Booth was a sniper. He each has its own scope for action.”8 In this asked for forgiveness from you every way, she exemplifies the Pope’s comments in time he killed somebody? Fides et Ratio, “The desire for knowledge is so Aldo: Through me, technically. You great and it works in such a way that the can imagine why I might get soul- human heart, despite its experience of sick, providing absolution. insurmountable limitation, yearns for the Brennan: I don’t believe in souls infinite riches which lie beyond knowing that either. there is to be found the satisfying answer to Aldo: Booth loves you. every question as yet unanswered.”9 Brennan: Booth told you that? Aldo: He confessed it to me. Not Her yearning for the riches that lie beyond being married is a sin to him. I’m not knowing becomes clearer to her in “The Shot sure an unbeliever can understand in the Dark” (episode 8.15). Brennan is shot that kind of sacrifice. while working in the lab late at night. Booth, Brennan: I wanted to marry him. on an impulse, comes to find her. As she is Aldo: Not as much as he wants to being rushed to the operating room, she loses marry you. consciousness, floats into a white space, then Brennan: You want me to have faith finds herself in a space that looks like her in him? childhood home, complete with her dead Aldo: I’ve seen Booth do so very mother, Christine. terrible and difficult things, but only if he was compelled by a very good Christine: Hello Tempe. reason. Brennan: Mom. Ok, I understand what’s happening. I’m hallucinating. When she returns home, Brennan tells Booth, Christine: Most people get shot and “I’m not leaving you. I have absolute faith in appear in another reality, they ask you. I trust you. I know you love me. I’m themselves maybe they’re in heaven? sorry I lost sight of that temporarily. You’re a Brennan: I don’t believe in heaven. good man. You have your reasons and when Christine: Yet, here you are, having a you can, you’ll share those with me.” conversation with your dead mother. Brennan: You aren’t actually here, Brennan’s path illustrates Pope John Paul II’s mom. I lost consciousness while my words in Fides et Ratio: adrenal system was working overtime. My brain is struggling to make sense With the light of reason human of what’s happened. beings can know which path to take. But they can follow the path to its Always the observant scientist, Brennan looks end, quickly and unhindered, only if around the room and comments on how

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Her heart stops and, once again, she finds The episode ends visually with a high angle, herself in the other place where her mom “God’s eye-view shot,” looking down on says, “I hate to tell you I told you so, but it’s Booth and Brennan. Whether Brennan not your decision.” To which Brennan believes it or not, the visual design implies repeats, “I have to go back. I have a that someone is looking down. daughter.” As they talk, her mother tells her that “your one, small problem is that you Cura Personalis and an Ethos of think you understand things that are simply Hospitality not understandable. They throw you for a loop,” at which point Brennan returns to the The commitment the members of the land of the living. Cam informs Booth that Jeffersonian team show one another is Brennan has survived the surgery and tells essential in helping them stay centered and him how lucky they were that he got it in his balanced in the face of the suffering and evil head to visit her in the lab late at night, which with which they are confronted every day. allowed him to find her on time. Booth There are times when the pressures of the job replies, “It’s a miracle. Brennan, she doesn’t become too much and while they may not use believe in God but that’s the only explanation, these words, they are at times overwhelmed right?” with the challenge of finding God in all things. Yet they know that the only way they In the course of the episode, Brennan has two can maintain their balance and humanity is to more close calls, and each time she ends up in keep looking for the good and to keep the other place, talking to her mother. She fighting for justice. tells Booth: They succeed to the extent that they maintain Brennan: For some reason, I think their community as men and women for others, it’s you who keeps calling me back. reminding each other that good does exist, Booth: Calling you back from where? and offering each other opportunities to Brennan: I went to another place. reclaim the sense of wonder that informs their My mother is there. Obviously I’m humanity, exemplifying what Pope John Paul hallucinating, so… II observed in Fides et Ratio: Booth: Or she’s helping you. You came back, that’s the main thing. Human beings seek to acquire those Brennan: You honestly believe I universal elements of knowledge could be seeing my mother? which enable them to understand Booth: Yes, I do. themselves better and to advance their own self-realization. These In her last visit to the other place, she tells her fundamental elements of knowledge mother that they will never see each other spring from the wonder awakenening again and her mother reassures her that they in them by the contemplation of

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creation: human beings are in the family, as they are often reminded in astonished to discover themselves as word and deed by the main characters. part of the world, in a relationship Because the show follows an “intern-a-week” with others like them, all sharing a structure, the team and the viewers get to common destiny. Without wonder, know, respect, and care about each one men and women would lapse into individually. deadening routine and little by little would become incapable of a life As scientists who use and expand their which is genuinely personal.10 scientific knowledge to solve murders, they exempify the ideal of the life-long learner, in For example, in “A Boy in a Bush” (episode love with the life of the mind. In this way, the 1.5), Angela reaches a point where, Jeffersonian and its inhabitants exemplify overwhelmed by death, destruction and what Mark Roche as identified as: human depravity, she feels that she has lost something vital to who she is as a creative, The Catholic tradition, inspired by artistic person. Dr. Goodman, who was in the concept of the unity of season 1 their boss (he was replaced by Cam knowledge, seeks…to cultivate in season 2), helps her find another meaningful and integrative thought perspective on her contributions to their across disciplines and argues that efforts: morality is not one sphere separate from the others but that it infuses all Angela: Zach’s work consists in spheres…that] the diverse spheres of removing flesh from human corpses. inquiry should be studied to Hodgins dissects bugs that have been illuminate one another…and that] the eating people’s eyeballs. diverse branches of human Dr. Goodman: And how do you see knowledge can be integrated and your job? synthesized, and that a greater Angela: I draw death masks. harmony exists among the spheres of Dr. Goodman: Is that really how you knowledge or about the greatness and see it? limits of her own disciplinary Angela: Don’t you? contributions.11 Dr. Goodman: You are the best of us, Miss Montenegro. You discern They are also deeply moral, compassionate humanity in the wreck of a human and empathetic individuals, drawing on their body. You give victims back their own experiences, including race and ethnicity faces, their identities. You remind us (Clark and Cam are African-American, Angela all of why we’re here in the first place; is half Chinese, Rudolfo is Latino and Arastoo because we treasure human life. is Persian), gender, class (Wendell, Booth and Finn represent the working class) as well as The series is unique in that, while it relies on a regional, national, and religious identities. cast of regular recurring characters, as do They grapple with their histories, use them to other television series, it invests each of its gather and exchange wisdom and seek counsel characters with dignity and respect. Its and comfort from one another. For example, characters do not just exist to propel the her parents and brother abandoned Brennan narrative forward or to provide a foil for the when she was fifteen, leaving her in the care leads. They are not there to add atmosphere, of the foster system. As the series unfolds, she diversity, or texture. All of its characters are discovers that her parents were bank robbers allowed to make mistakes, fall in love, fall out and abandoned her and her brother Russ to of love, deal with trauma, learn and grow save them from very dangerous people. She from trauma, and contribute to the growth also learns that her mother was murdered by and development of one another. They are one of these dangerous men. Her father re- fully embraced members of the team, included enters her life and, with Booth’s help, she

Jesuit Higher Education 6(2): 51-63 (2017) 61 Scheibler: What TV Can Teach Us About the Spiritually Healthy Institution? learns to forgive, accept, and invite him back the cases where survivors can’t afford them, into her life. Her experience of spending so and, in one case, investing in a community many years not knowing what happened to devastated by the economic downturn. her parents motivates Brennan to work so hard to identify bodies and to give their Conclusion families answers. From the beginning, the series sets up the Booth’s father was a raging alcoholic who Jeffersonian as a place in which the characters beat Booth, his mother, and brother. His will not just solve murders but will also, in mother abandoned the family when Booth their friendship and companionship, was very young and his grandfather raised the accompany one another on a journey towards two boys. Later in the series, Booth finds that growth and development as men and women he cannot forgive his father or his mother in solidarity with others. This includes the and, in a reversal of positions, Brennan victims whose stories they try to tell, the confronts Booth with the fact that he is acting families who seek answers, and even the contrary to his own belief system, which perpetrators who, no matter how terrible the opens the space for Booth to forgive and crime, are still humans, deserving accept. His experiences have shaped him into understanding and compassion. In their the kind of man who runs into the burning encounters with one another, the team building to save others. reminds us that, as Pope John Paul II wrote in his encyclical letter Fides et Ratio, “reason too Sweets’s father was also abusive, resulting in needs to be sustained in all its searching by Sweets having been removed from the home trusting dialogue and sincere friendship. A and placed in foster care when he was very climate of suspicion and distrust, which can young. An elderly couple who died not long beset speculative research, ignores the before Sweets joined the team eventually teaching of the ancient philosophers who adopted him. It was his encounter with a proposed friendship as one of the most loving family who created a safe space in appropriate contexts for sound philosophical which he could heal and flourish that led him inquiry.”12 into psychology and the desire to help others find a way to accept and then transform their “The Lance to the Heart” (10.2) shows this suffering into something good. most profoundly. The team has lost Sweets who has been killed in the line of duty. At the For them, morality is not a sphere separate end of the episode, they gather in Sweets’s from others but infuses every aspect of their favorite spot to say good-bye: lives. Time after time they give evidence through their actions and speech that they see Daisy: He would have been so happy themselves acting in solidarity with others to to know that you were here. make the world a more just, fair and safe Booth: He knows. place. In episode after episode, different Hodgins: Yeah, I think we all feel characters are given the opportunity to stand that way. with others. For example, both Brennan and Brennan: I don’t. Sweets use their experiences with the foster Booth: Bones. system to connect with young suspects Brennan: I do believe Sweets is still and/or victims. In several episodes, the team with us. Not in a religious sense shows up at the cemetery to show solidarity because the concept of God is merely with the family whose loved ones have been a foolish attempt to explain the murdered. Brennan and Hodgins use their unexplainable. wealth (Brennan’s from her other life as a Booth: Bones, I don’t think this is best-selling novelist and Hodgins from a the place. family inheritance) to help those in need, Daisy: It’s Ok providing scholarships, paying for funerals in

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Brennan: But in a real sense, he’s another on a regular basis within the context here. Sweets is a part of us. Our lives, of a community of people committed to the who we all are at this moment have highest principles of hospitality and care for been shaped by our relationships with one another as individuals shaped by their Sweets. Each of us is like a delicate personal histories. equation and Sweets was the variable without whom we wouldn’t be who we are. I might not have married Booth or had Christine. Daisy Notes certainly wouldn’t be carrying his 1 Bones, created by Hart Hanson (Los Angeles: 20th child. We are all who we are because Century Fox Television, 2005-2017). we knew Sweets. So I don’t need a 2 God to praise him or the universe he Mark Roche, The Intellectual Appeal of Catholicism and the Idea of a Catholic University (Notre Dame: Notre Dame sprang from because I loved him. I University Press, 2003), 30. used to explain love as the secretion of chemicals and hormones but I 3 Ibid., 32. believe now, remembering Sweets, 4 Ibid., 27. seeing what he left us, that love can’t be explained by science or religion. 5 Ibid. It’s beyond the mind, beyond reason. 6 John Paul II, Fides et Ratio, Encyclical Letter (Vatican What I do know, loving Sweets, City, Italy: Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 1998), September loving each other, that’s what makes 14, 1998, sec. 32, retrieved from life worthwhile. Right now, I don’t https://w2.vatican.va/content/john-paul- need to know more than that, which ii/en/encyclicals/documents/hf_jp- is extremely embarrassing coming ii_enc_14091998_fides-et-ratio.html from an extremely intelligent, fact- 7 Ibid., sec. 16. based person. 8 Ibid., sec. 17. In the relationships that develop between the 9 Ibid. characters as well as the ways in which specific cases raise questions about faith and 10 Ibid., sec. 4. reason, the Jeffersonian exemplifies the 11 Mark Roche, The Intellectual Appeal of Catholicism, 34-35. spiritually healthy institution, defined by John B. Bennett and Elizabeth A. Dreyer as a place 12 John Paul II, Fides et Ratio, sec. 33. in which “faith and reason, knowledge and 13 John B. Bennett and Elizabeth Dreyer, “Spiritualities character…are not distinct and sufficient unto of—Not at—the University,” in A Jesuit Education themselves. Each involves the other.”13 They Reader, ed. George W Traub, S.J. (Chicago: Loyola Press, observe that “oppositional contrasts between 2008), 128. faith and reason in religiously sponsored 14 Ibid., 33. universities are almost always unproductive and misleading. Instead, the more energetic the faith dimension, the better the university—understanding the energy of faith to point toward comprehensive understanding of the creation (both the natural world and human reason)” so that “both inquiry and faith intrinsically lead into and engage the other.”14

While the Jeffersonian is not a religiously sponsored university, it is a place where inquiry and faith lead into and engage one

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