Catholicism in The X-FilesDana Scully and the harmony of faith and reason
Regina HansenCatholicism in The X-Files
In discussions of The X-Files it has become almost a cliché to note that while Fox Mulder is known for being the believer and Dana Scully the sceptic, those roles reverse when the question of religious belief arises, in particular Scully’s adherence to her Roman Catholic faith. Throughout the course of the series, Scully’s acceptance of supernatural belief, as represented by her return to Catholicism, allows her to become more open to the paranormal possibilities advanced by Mulder. Moreover, the relationship between Scully and Mulder, as well as Scully’s own character development, represents the alternating tension and harmony between faith and reason that forms the core of Catholic theology, as exemplified in the writings of theologian Thomas Aquinas, his contemporary Bonaventure of Bagnoregio and others. While the series does not dwell on specific theological questions or writers, the representation of Scully’s religious journey is portrayed as beneficial to the agents’ search for the ‘truth’. The reconciliation of Mulder and Scully’s worldviews addresses societal anxieties over the tension between faith and reason, reflecting Catholicism’s insistence on their interdependence.
Keywords: Scully, Catholicism, Religion, Bonaventure of Bagnoregno, Thomas Aquinas, Faith, Science, Reason.
Narratives of the fantastic – sf, horror or fantasy – frequently make use of Roman Catholicism, either as a central plot element or to create a gothic or uncanny atmosphere. On television, The X-Files (US 1993–2002) in particular is known for employing Catholic themes and imagery with a measure of respect and curiosity that reflect creators Chris Carter and Frank Spotnitz’s own interest in issues of faith. This is especially evident in the character of Dana Scully (Gillian Anderson), a scientist and sceptic of the paranormal who returns to her Catholic religion in a narrative arc that lasts throughout the series and into the most recent film. Although not Catholics themselves, Carter and Spotnitz’s conception of Scully incorporates many elements of Catholic tradition and theology as one means of exploring contemporary anxieties regarding the relationship between faith and reason.1
Faith and reason are thematically and narratively central to The X-Files, both
1. Carter and Spotnitz discussed the spiritual and religious elements of The X-Files, as well as Carter’s own spiritual beliefs, in two interviews related to the release of the film The X-Files: I Want to Believe. See Rhodes; Pilkington.
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in the television series and the second film. A necessary part of that narrative is Scully’s evolution from confirmed non-believer to a character of faith, albeit tempered by continued scientific scepticism. Scully’s reawakening to religious belief is hinted at after her abduction in season two, begins in earnest during the investigation of a series of religiously motivated killings in season three, continues throughout her subsequent battle with cancer and the loss of her daughter and is tested and to some degree resolved in the most recent film, The X-Files: I Want to Believe (Carter US 2008). Scully’s gradual acceptance that ‘the truth is out there’ – both religious/spiritual truth and the truths about the paranormal insisted upon by Mulder (David Duchovny) – is at least in part a result of her return to Catholicism. This article will examine the ways in which Scully’s faith evolution recalls a historic dialogue within Catholicism itself, concerning truths that can be tested and those that are meant to come from divine revelation. This dialogue – some would call it tension – is exemplified in the empiricism of Thomas Aquinas, who stressed the value of human reason and used Aristotelian methods to argue for the existence of God, and in Franciscan mystical devotion embodied in the life of Francis of Assisi and articulated in the writings of his follower Bonaventure of Bagnoregio. While the show’s creators explore faith and reason in many ways, their portrayal of Scully – as an individual and in her relationship with Mulder – calls to mind The Catechism of the Catholic Church and many of the potentially conflicting principles set forth by Aquinas, Bonaventure and their predecessors. These ideas come together in Catholicism’s conviction that while faith and reason are in harmony, human understanding and thus reason are limited.
Throughout The X-Files, Scully’s struggles with her faith reflect Catholic theology with regard to the relationship between faith and reason, particularly the idea that one can both profess religious belief and participate in scientific inquiry. While the modern Catechism supports ‘methodical research in all branches of knowledge’ (no. 159), the Church’s relationship to the scientists in its ranks has often been problematic, and even persecutory.2 At the same time, much of Catholic theology derives from the work of the medieval scholastics. Reflecting in part the aforementioned tension between faith and reason, the scholastics incorporated empirical principles originating with Aristotle into their discussions of theology and the natural world. The works of the mediaeval theologian Albertus Magnus, or Albert the Great, while sharing
2. Early Catholic scientists whose work was at odds with the Church’s hierarchy include the Franciscan scientists William of Occam and Roger Bacon, and most famously Galileo Galilei, whose assertion that the earth revolves around the sun was only officially recognised by Pope John Paul II in 1992.
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his era’s incomplete understanding of certain scientific principles, reveal a scientist’s curiosity and enthusiasm for close observation, and for knowledge derived from experience. Like Scully, who insists on hard evidence for the paranormal claims that Mulder often takes on faith, Albertus Magnus stressed the importance of questioning and testing received notions about the natural world, in his case the existence of fire-breathing dragons rather than extra-terrestrials (Synan 8).
From early in The X-Files series, Scully’s analytical character – her consistent interrogation of paranormal claims, while remaining open to proof when Mulder provides it – reflects Albertus Magnus’s view of reason as an independent faculty, a position further explicated by his student Aquinas. In the Summa Theologica (1265–74), Aquinas posits a distinction between truths that can be arrived at through ‘philosophical science built up by reason’ and truths that require ‘revelation’ (Ia q. 1 a. 1). Elsewhere, Aquinas asserts that some truths can be known by both faith and reason: Although the truth of the Christian faith exceeds the capacity of human reason, truths that reason is fitted by nature to know cannot be contrary to the truth of faith. … Since we know by definition that what is false is contrary to the truth, it is impossible for the principles that reason knows by nature to be contrary to the truth of faith. (Summa contra Gentiles, I.7)
Aquinas’s claim continues to be part of Catholic teaching, the above passage having been cited in Pope John Paul’s Fides et Ratio (Faith and Reason), an encyclical letter issued in 1998, six years into The X-Files series run. Incorpo-rating Aquinas’s work with that of other theologians, The Catechism of the Catholic Church states, ‘there can never be any real discrepancy between faith and reason. Since the same God who reveals mysteries and infuses faith has bestowed the light of reason on the human mind’ (no. 159). While Scully clearly embodies reason’s autonomy as a means of inquiry, in many ways she also exemplifies these statements of complementarity between reason and faith.
Scully’s relationship with Mulder, professionally and later romantically, portrays both the tension between faith and reason and their potential harmony as expressed by Aquinas. Early in the series pilot, Scully exhorts not just the autonomy of reason but its primacy, setting up what at first seems to be a dichotomy between the two characters:MULDER: When convention and science offer us no answers, might we not turn to the fantastic as a plausibility?
SCULLY: What I find fantastic is any notion that there are answers beyond the realm of science. The answers are there. You just have to know where to look. (‘Pilot’ 10 September 1993)
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Yet, even at this early stage, the narrative hints at Scully’s potential to integrate faith and reason, both within her own character and in her interactions with Mulder. While Scully’s sceptical nature is established in the first episode, so is her potential for belief in the supernatural. A medical doctor with a degree in physics, she is also introduced as a Christian, if not necessarily a Catholic, by her gold cross, an item that will take on increasing significance as the series progresses.3 The faith/reason barrier initially expressed in Mulder and Scully’s relationship – between his will to believe and her scepticism – is soon revealed to be porous and moveable. Even in the pilot episode, Mulder professes to have ‘the same doubts’ as Scully regarding the evidence for extra-terrestrial life, while she conveys her need to know and understand: ‘I’m here just like you, to solve this.’ The pilot establishes Mulder and Scully as two seekers after the ‘truth’ whose views on how to find it exist not in opposition but in partnership.
Scholars have commented on Mulder and Scully’s interdependence – and its reflection of the complementarity of faith and reason – from both literary and philosophical perspectives. In her essay on The X-Files as a ‘paratext’ (128) of Shakespeare’s Hamlet – with Mulder and Scully as Hamlet and Horatio – Sharon Yang emphasises Mulder’s dependence on Scully’s ‘hi-tech autopsies and various biological testings, as well as her scepticism, to affirm his suspicions about the disquieting presence of aliens, supernatural beings, and arcane conspiracies’ (103–4). Mark Wildermuth takes on the characters’ relationship from the point of view of epistemology. Working from David Hess’s Science in the New Age, Wildermuth calls Mulder a ‘paracultural skeptic’ (151) in the style of New Age believers and parapsychologists who see ‘themselves as skeptics who are defining the boundaries of true scientific inquiry’ (148). If Scully and Mulder represent two of ‘what might be called the varieties of skeptical experience’ (Hess 15), they are also united in their ability to move beyond scepticism and reason when the occasion calls for it: ‘both characters make intuitive leaps requiring suprarational thinking, which nevertheless interact productively and dialogically with the skeptical scrutiny of physical evidence’ (Wildermuth 152). Within the world of The X-Files, Scully’s experience of the paranormal and her relationship with Mulder prepare her to perceive reason as limited. Her background in Catholicism only furthers that perception.
3. The empty cross is not an obvious Catholic symbol, and theologically is more associated with Protestant denominations, which prefer its symbolic emphasis on the risen Christ. Crosses bearing the image of a suffering Jesus, known as crucifixes, are generally found in Catholic and Eastern Orthodox churches, though sometimes in Anglican and Lutheran churches as well. Traditional gold crucifixes are worn almost exclusively by Catholics. Scully’s cross has generated a great deal of discussion on the Internet and even has its own fanlisting (http://cross.alekwasframed.com).
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Over the centuries, theologians have disagreed about the extent to which the power of reason is constrained by humanity’s finite nature. While Aquinas believed in ‘things beyond man’s knowledge [which] may not be sought for by man through reason’ (Summa Theologica Ia q.1 a. 1), he also saw theology as a science (Ia q.1 a.7) and claimed that experience and observation, aided by logic, could prove the existence of God (Ia q.2 a.3). On the other hand, Augustine of Hippo, Aquinas’s predecessor by 800 years, asserted that God stood outside reason’s ability to comprehend him: ‘We are talking about God; so why be surprised if you cannot grasp it. I mean, if you can grasp it, it isn’t God’ (‘Sermon 117’ 5). Bonaventure of Bagnoregio, Aquinas’s contemporary and theological rival, sided with Augustine in thinking that reason is unnecessary to know God or to believe in his existence.4 Moreover, Bonaventure was a follower of Francis of Assisi, whose life and rule stressed prayer and service, knowing God by loving him and one’s fellow human beings. In his ‘Journey into the Mind of God’, Bonaventure wrote that to understand the Divine, one must ‘interrogate grace, not doctrine, desire, not understanding … the groan of praying, not the study of reading; the spouse, not the teacher … transferring one into God both by its excessive unctions and by its most ardent affections’ (VII.6). As The X-Files series unfolds, and Scully becomes more observant in her Catholicism, her words and ideas begin to parallel those of Augustine and Bonaventure in regard to her faith in both God and the supernatural/paranormal possibilities she encounters. Scully’s susceptibility to revelation develops over time, and she is portrayed early in the series as a potential visionary. The first visions – of her dead father (Don S. Davis) in season one’s ‘Beyond the Sea’ (7 January 1994) and season two’s ‘One Breath’ (11 November 1994) – are supernatural but not overtly religious. In ‘One Breath’, the comatose Scully also encounters Nurse Owens (Nicola Cavendish), who may or may not be an angel, and whose stated mission is to help Scully ‘find [her] way home’, back to the conscious world.
Although she never abandons science or the need to question, Scully’s evolving acceptance of the supernatural, and the part her Catholicism plays in that acceptance, is most evident in the episodes ‘Revelations’ (15 December 1995) and ‘All Souls’ (26 April 1998). Season three’s ‘Revelations’ follows Mulder and Scully as they investigate the murders of a number of stigmatics, people said to bear the wounds of Jesus’s crucifixion on their hands and feet, a possible mark of sainthood; in season five’s ‘All Souls’ Scully investigates the death of a
4. Augustine believed in part that reason was limited by humanity’s fallen nature, hence the need to rely on faith. Certain theologians argue that Martin Luther’s interpretation of Augustine was integral to the Reformation concept of sola fida, or ‘justification by faith alone’.
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girl who may or may not have been one of the nephilim – a term found in some translations of the Book of Genesis (6:4), and understood in folklore to denote the offspring of women and angels – and is called upon to protect another such creature. In ‘Revelations’ Scully’s supernatural experiences recall Catholic belief, as expressed in the Catechism: ‘that the submission of our faith might nevertheless be in accordance with reason, God willed that external proofs of his Revelation should be joined to the internal helps of the Holy Spirit’ (no. 156). These proofs include ‘the miracles of Christ and the saints’ (no. 156), and can include stories from extra-biblical sources such as saints’ lives and Catholic mystical writings. While the murdered stigmatics all turn out to be frauds, Scully comes to believe that the next potential victim, a young boy named Kevin (Kevin Zegers), may be genuine. She witnesses other signs of sainthood throughout the episode: Kevin’s ability to ‘bilocate’, literally be in two places at once,5 and the ‘faint floral odour’ coming from the dead body of Kevin’s protector Owen Lee Jarvis (Michael Berryman). This last sign, along with Jarvis’s lack of decomposition, Scully associates with childhood stories of the ‘incorruptibles’, like Saint Cecilia and Saint Francis whose bodies were said to have remained intact after death. While Mulder calls such tales ‘hagiographic fabrication’, Scully’s potential acceptance of these events reflects the catechetical teaching cited above. She tells Mulder, ‘I believe in the idea that God’s hand can be witnessed. I believe he can create miracles’. She believes, as Mulder says, ‘Even if science can’t explain them’: her visions reflect not just spiritual or even general Christian faith but the particular beliefs of Catholicism. She even reports having learned the stories ‘in catechism’. In ‘All Souls’, Scully shows further knowledge of extra-biblical Catholic teaching: on seeing the inverted cross worn by Father Gregory (Jody Racicot), the nephilim girls’ self-appointed protector, Scully explains it not as the satanic symbol Mulder believes it to be, but as the cross of Saint Peter who ‘would only be crucified upside down, out of humility towards Christ’.6
5. Actually, Scully tells Mulder that Kevin can bilocate ‘like Saint Ignatius was able to do in the Bible’. There was no Saint Ignatius in the Bible. The obviousness of Scully’s error (at least to anyone familiar with the Bible) has been the subject of much Internet speculation as to the origins of this line of dialogue, whether the mistake was conscious or unconscious on the part of the series’ writers. Mulder does not catch the error either, merely telling Scully that biblical stories are ‘metaphors’.6. The story is found in Eusebius, History of the Church from Christ to Constantine, vol. III, ch. 1. While many people may know the story from Henryk Sienkiewicz’s novel Quo Vadis (1895), and the 1951 film of the same name, here Scully is represented as possessing special knowledge because of her Catholic upbringing. Scully discusses the more esoteric aspects of Catholic belief in other episodes as well. In the season six episode ‘Milagro’ (18 April 1999), a clue leads Scully to seek out an image of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, a particularly Catholic devotion with origins in seventeenth-century France. See Morgan.
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Over the course of seasons three, four and five, a series of events – including Scully’s cancer and the death of her daughter Emily (Lauren Diewold) – leads Scully back to the practice of Catholicism. She begins to take part in the Catholic sacraments, particularly those of Mass and Confession, now known as Reconciliation. The end of ‘Revelations’ occurs in the confessional, although Scully makes clear that she is not there to take the sacrament. On the other hand, two seasons later, ‘All Souls’ is narrated entirely from the confessional and the implication is that Scully has been participating in that sacrament at least somewhat regularly. Also, the action in ‘All Souls’ begins at Easter, with Scully coming out of Mass, which she is ‘making an effort [to attend] more often’. These two episodes show a progression in which Scully’s acceptance and internalisation of the sacraments, along with Catholic stories and supernatural imagery, prepare her to enact Bonaventure’s call to know God through faith and acts of brotherly love, and in particular to act as a protector of the helpless in a supernatural battle represented as separate from Mulder’s battle against Cancer Man and his syndicate. ‘Revelations’ and ‘All Souls’ deal both with Scully’s Catholicism and with biblical apocalyptic writings that Mulder refers to as ‘crap’ (‘All Souls’). In both episodes, using almost identical language, characters describe a ‘war’ between ‘good and evil’ in which ‘forces of darkness’ seek ‘to claim all souls’. The concept of the threat to ‘all souls’ is referred to explicitly in each narrative, and both Jarvis (‘Revelations’) and Father Gregory (‘All Souls’) challenge Scully’s resistance to what they see as her supernatural calling. In particular, Jarvis rejects Scully’s notion that her ‘religious convictions are hardly the issue’ in her attempt to protect Kevin, insisting, ‘How can you help Kevin if you don’t believe?’
For both Jarvis and Father Gregory, Scully’s gold cross functions as a sign that she will be a protector and ally against supernatural evil. In ‘All Souls’ Father Gregory recognises Scully as a Catholic by her cross, expecting her to understand the seal of the confessional and to know the story of St Peter’s crucifixion.77 He also expects her to recognise the angelic origins of the four young girls he has been trying to protect. In ‘Revelations’, Kevin gravitates to Scully even without seeing her cross, saying, ‘Are you the one who was sent to protect me?’ Despite her initial resistance, in both episodes Scully will take on
7. Although Scully’s cross leads Father Gregory to assume she has knowledge of the Catholic sacraments, the cross is a symbol universal to all Christians. At the same time, the fact that Scully wears an empty cross suggests something interesting about the series’ understanding of Scully’s Catholicism: the relative absence of Jesus from the narrative. Although Jesus is alluded to in the extra-biblical stories mentioned earlier, Scully’s faith evolution is portrayed in terms of her relationship to God, or what Catholics would call ‘God the father’.
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the role of protector, acting on faith rather than reason. In ‘All Souls’, a vision of her daughter Emily helps Scully understand that she is meant to protect the nephilim’s soul, ‘to release [it] to Heaven’, rather than save her life, even though the decision goes against her duties as a doctor and an FBI agent. In ‘Revelations’, Kevin’s father (Sam Bottoms) tells Scully, ‘You must come full circle to know the truth’. This declaration both leads her to where Kevin is hidden, and, when repeated by the unseen priest later in the episode, suggests that if ‘the truth is out there’, Scully is meant to find it through faith as well as reason. If others recognise Scully as a protector, she herself also feels spiritually called to that role. In ‘Revelations’, Mulder sees this before she does: ‘You think it’s you, don’t you? You think you’re the one who’s been chosen to protect Kevin’. Later in the episode, in the confessional, Scully accepts the priest’s suggestion that the signs she has been experiencing were meant only for her to see, to ‘find [her] way back’, an echo of Nurse Owens in season two’s ‘One Breath’. In ‘All Souls’ Scully tells her confessor about Father Gregory’s admonition to protect the nephilim girl: ‘I wouldn’t admit it to Mulder, but as we stood there I felt as if Father Gregory were speaking directly to me, in a language only I could understand’. She adds, ‘I was meant to save her’. Scully chooses to act on faith in ways different from Mulder, in situations when he would use reason.
Scully’s Catholicism – as well as the actions inspired by it – initially seems to threaten her partnership with Mulder. Still, Scully’s religious faith will eventually strengthen their bond, reflecting the potential harmony between faith and reason. Writing on conspiracy theories and The X-Files, Douglas Kellner notes the porous boundaries between Mulder and Scully’s representations of faith and reason, suggesting that the series ‘deconstructs the oppositions’ between the two concepts as supposedly embodied by the characters ‘with Mulder often becoming more critical and skeptical, and Scully becoming more open to extrascientific explanations, faith and what are referred to as “extreme possibilities”’ (209). Initially, Mulder reacts sceptically, even antagonistically, to Scully’s expressions of faith, seeing them as motivated by emotion. In ‘Beyond the Sea’, Scully confronts Mulder’s disbelief regarding Luther Boggs (Brad Dourif), who claims he can help Scully speak to her deceased father, one of many cases when Scully’s willingness to make leaps of faith is related to her personal relationships.8 Although series creator Carter has referred to
8. Numerous critics have noted the ways in which Mulder and Scully’s relationship reverses gender stereotypes, with Mulder’s faith seen as feminine and Scully’s reason as masculine. This gender switch is mentioned so often that people even comment on how often it is mentioned (see Wakefield 137 n. 14). Still, as stated above, Scully’s desire to act on faith when personal relationships are at stake is an emotional response that seems more stereotypically ‘feminine’.
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Mulder’s faith in the paranormal as ‘tantamount to a religious belief ’ (Rhodes), Mulder is most sceptical about organised religion, particularly Catholicism. Wildermuth notes how in both ‘Revelations’ and ‘All Souls’, Mulder and Scully ‘almost completely chang[e] their declared roles as doubter and believer’ (154). This is especially evident in ‘Revelations’ when Mulder insists that what Scully calls ‘religious lore’ concerning the existence of stigmatics is ‘wholly unsubstantiated’, and asserts that reports about the incorruptibles ‘are mostly regarded as hagiographic fabrications, not historical truths’. Mulder’s standard of proof here is much more stringent than in other episodes, something on which Scully herself remarks.
Yang asserts that Mulder, like Hamlet, is ‘driven by anger that the social order and the people involved in that order – especially those in authority – refuse to acknowledge truth out of either stupidity or self-interest’ (99). Mulder’s scepticism of Catholicism may in part stem from this distrust of hierarchical authority. In ‘All Souls’ he tells Scully, ‘Religion has masqueraded as the paranormal since the dawn of time to justify some of the most horrible acts in history’. This statement reflects many cultural depictions of supernatural or paranormal events in which ‘traditional religion is regarded as dead, misleading, and exclusive’ (Baron 118). If Mulder’s distrust of religion originates in his anger at authority, the temptation is to conclude that Scully’s embrace of Catholicism comes from deference. Critics have remarked on the
‘Revelations’, The X-Files. Twentieth Century Fox Home Entertainment, 2001.
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representation of Scully as ‘the rational one who respects and obeys authority’ (Braun 93) and ‘is remarkable for her capacity to embrace patriarchal, skeptical, rationalism’ (Wildermuth 147). It is very important to remember, however, that both Scully and Mulder share a distrust of institutions.
Yang makes clear that scepticism of authority is something Mulder and Scully share with many people: ‘the television series draws on a mythos of Western culture also shaped by anxieties about loss of faith in benevolent higher powers (spiritual and political), in human relations, and in one’s own integrity’ (97–8). Scully’s return to religious faith does not always coincide with obedience to Church authority. While the narration of ‘All Souls’ from the confessional clearly implies Scully’s embrace of Catholicism as a faith tradition, the episode depicts her involvement in events outside of official teaching and reflects a historical tension between folk Catholicism and the Church hierarchy which has sometimes rejected popular religious devotion as superstitious. This tension is particularly evident in Scully’s interactions with her parish priest, Father McCue (Arnie Walters). Although the word nephilim does appear in modern Catholic translations of the Bible,9 the Church does not interpret the passage as describing a monstrous pairing of women and angels. In reminding Scully of this fact, Father McCue can be seen to appeal to reason. At the same time, when Scully describes an encounter with a seraph – an angel with four faces (lion, man, bull and hawk) that actually does figure in Catholic teaching – Father McCue calls the being a ‘figment of your imagination’. Despite Father McCue’s scepticism, Scully continues to protect the girls. She cites ‘larger forces at work’, even as in confession she worries that her actions may have led to the last girl’s death. While Scully takes part in the sacraments, and embraces much of Catholic symbolism and belief, like Father Gregory, who has ‘left the Roman Church’ to start his own, Scully’s actions in ‘All Souls’ are portrayed as decisions of conscience that she continues to examine.
In being ultimately motivated by conscience, Scully follows both Aquinas and Bonaventure. Aquinas writes of conscience as an intellectual faculty, ‘knowledge applied to an individual case’, but also as an ‘act’: ‘For conscience is said to witness, to bind, or incite, and also to accuse, torment, or rebuke’ (Summa Theologica Ia q.79 a.13). For him it is at least in part a way of applying reason to moral decisions. Bonaventure also sees conscience as a ‘binding force’, though entirely because of what he sees as its Divine origin (qtd John Paul, Veritatis Splendor n. 56). The Catechism assents to the binding nature of conscience with the statement that ‘a human being must always obey the
9. See Genesis 6:4, the New American Bible.
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certain judgment of his conscience’ (no. 1800), and also affirms its origin in both reason and divinity (no. 1798).10 In the film The X-Files: I Want to Believe, Scully acts in conscience but against the institutional Church – as represented by Father Ybarra (Adam Godley), the administrator of her Catholic hospital – when she decides to try an experimental therapy to save the life of a boy with a degenerative brain disease. Throughout the series, by listening to her conscience, Scully reflects Church teaching, even if she sometimes does not follow the Church hierarchy. This fact draws her closer to Mulder who, while informed by different traditions, is also a man of conscience.
In his Summa contra Gentiles, Aquinas writes, ‘There is a certain desire in man, as an intellectual being, to know truth’ (ch. 63), suggesting that even the scholastics believed the truth to be ‘out there’. As Catholicism’s assertion of the obligatory nature of conscience reflects the integration of faith and reason, so does the partnership between Mulder and Scully. Acting in conscience to find the truth, their ‘first and foremost’ goal (Kellner 210), Mulder and Scully’s methods are not opposed but complementary. At first, Scully is led to believe in Mulder – his ideas and his character – through her own reasoning and scientific skill, just as Aquinas believes that reason can lead one to religious faith. Yang writes,The rationality that she uses to anchor Mulder is partially responsible for her conversion: the evidence of her senses reveals Mulder as not a credulous crank but insightful and an
10. It is worth noting that there is disagreement among modern theologians as to the extent to which conscience, informed by reason and the will of God, may differ from Church Authority. This is especially true in recent years as the Church hierarchy has grown more conservative, and can be seen in ongoing discussions of issues of sexuality and family planning.
‘All Souls’, The X-Files. Twentieth Century Fox Home Entertainment, 2002.
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intellectually honest and rigorous man, while those who sent her show themselves to be hypocritical and dishonest. (105)
More than that, however, Scully is led back to her faith in God at least in part because of her love and faith in Mulder. The Catechism says, Even in human relations it is not contrary to our dignity to believe what other persons tell us about themselves and their intentions … to share a communion of life with one another. If this is so, still less is it contrary to our dignity to ‘yield by faith the full submission of … intellect and will to God who reveals’,11 and to share in an interior communion with him. (no. 154)
This is visible in the second-season episode ‘One Breath’. When Scully is dying of cancer and ready to return to the Church for confession, Mulder says, ‘You’ve always had the strength of your beliefs.’ She replies: ‘I had the strength of your beliefs.’
Mulder’s previous resistance to Scully’s claims of the supernatural is actually well within his character. While Mulder believes, he must always search for proof of those beliefs; Scully – increasingly throughout the series – has shown herself able to accept mystery and ‘the possibility of a miracle’ (‘Revelations’). In the final episode of The X-Files, called ‘The Truth’ (19 May 2002), the following exchange between Mulder and Scully reveals their relationship as both an embodiment of the integration of faith and reason, and an acceptance of reason’s limits, at least within the world of the series. Sitting in a hotel, just as they did in the pilot, Mulder suggests that his only success has been to ‘convince’ Scully of the truth of the paranormal and government conspiracy. Scully’s response, and the dialogue to follow, suggests the difference between believing and ‘wanting to believe’:SCULLY: You’ve always said that you want to believe, but believe in what Mulder? If this is the truth that you’ve been looking for than what is left to believe in?
MULDER: I want to believe that the dead are not lost to us, that they speak to us, as part of something greater than us, greater than any alien force, and if you and I are powerless now, I want to believe that if we listen to what’s speaking it can give us the power to save ourselves.
SCULLY: Then we believe the same thing.
Here the camera zooms in on Scully’s cross, which Mulder takes in his hand. Wildermuth writes, ‘Scully and Mulder form a charged circuit where the shifting of boundaries in their declared roles as skeptic and believer (which they help each other to subvert, support, and complicate) enables them to
11. The interior quotation is from the Dei Filius 3:DS 3008, a document of the First Vatican Council, 1869–70.
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find harmony, if only momentarily, with the perturbations they must face’ (152). This last scene not only shows the harmony between their characters, and thus between faith and reason, but also suggests something about how that harmony was achieved. While Mulder expresses satisfaction at having made Scully a believer, in focusing on her cross he also seems to accept and draw comfort from the particular form her belief takes, her Catholic faith. Of course, Mulder does not suddenly become a Catholic, but the fact that Scully remains true to her faith gives him strength. While Mulder expresses the will to faith (‘I want to believe’), Scully affirms it for both of them (‘We believe the same thing’). Mulder’s last line of the series, ‘Maybe there’s hope’, is inspired by Scully and finds support in the words of the theologians: ‘Yet with us it is still by faith and not by sight. For we are saved by hope; but hope that is seen is not hope’ (Augustine Confessions 13:13).12 Mulder’s reliance on hope expresses both faith in the harmony of his and Scully’s views, and his ability to rest for a while in her belief. This hope will also allow him to uphold Scully when her faith – in God and in herself – is tested.
In the film, The X Files: I Want to Believe, Scully’s religious convictions, as well as her professional confidence, are challenged by her interactions with the bureaucrat Father Ybarra, and Joe Crissman (Billy Connolly), a defrocked priest and convicted paedophile. Crissman claims a psychic connection to the victims of a string of murders, and says that his visions can lead Mulder and Scully to the killer. Crissman also sees these visions, and the suffering they cause him, as potential redemption for his crimes. While both Scully and Mulder are justifiably dubious of the former priest, Mulder is more open both to Crissman’s visions and to the possibility of his salvation, reflecting Catholi-cism’s theologically complex and often controversial position that even the most grievous sins can be forgiven through reconciliation and penance.13 Despite her moral outrage, Scully eventually comes to wonder if God is speaking to her through Crissman, in particular his dying admonition, ‘Don’t give up’, which she interprets as encouragement to perform the medical treatment mentioned earlier in this article, in defiance of Father Ybarra. Mulder encourages Scully in her belief, advancing (though not affirming) the possibility that Crissman’s prayers for redemption were answered, that his visions were from God. While once again placing Mulder in the position of believer to Scully’s sceptic, Mulder’s acknowledgment of Crissman’s visions and possible salvation also
12. The interior quotation is from Paul’s letter to the Romans 8:24.13. For discussion of the issue of Crissman’s potential redemption, see my essay, ‘Mad, Drunken Exorcists: The Decline of Hero Priest’ (Hansen) and Chris Carter and Frank Spotnitz’s interview at forteantimes.com.
68 Regina Hansen
shows the extent to which Mulder has come to see the value in Scully’s Catholic belief, even when she herself questions it. Mulder’s willingness to encourage Scully’s belief in God’s will and forgiveness reveals, if not a full harmonising of faith and reason, then at least a dedication to the pursuit of that harmony. In trusting Mulder’s interpretation of Crissman, Scully also shows trust in herself and the faith she developed throughout the series .
The X-Files series and films are examples of what Craig A. Baron calls the ‘re-enchantment’ of the modern world, in which television and other forms of popular culture ‘are all directly engaged with religious themes or indirectly so through supernatural and gothic subjects that confound the idea that reason alone is the bearer of truth and meaning’ (117). The relationship between faith and reason, their interdependence, continues to occupy a place of primary importance in Catholicism (see ‘Pope’). As recently as 2010, Pope Benedict XVI referred to the potentially conflicting theological beliefs of Aquinas and Bonaventure as examples of a faith that is ‘one, in the diversity of its expressions’ (‘General Audience, 1 March 2010’). As both scientific sceptic and religious believer, Scully enacts the complexities of Catholic theology: in her own character and in her relationship with Mulder, Scully reflects the belief in – and pursuit of – the harmony of faith and reason expressed in the Catholic Catechism and originating in the work of Aquinas. Focusing on the resonances – intended or unintended – between Scully’s faith evolution and Catholic theology, and its inspiration from the work of the scholastics, allows viewers to experience the integration of faith and reason as a pursuit both age-old and of continued cultural significance.
Works cited
Aquinas, Thomas. Summa contra Gentiles. Trans. A.C. Pegis. South Bend: U of Notre Dame P, 1957 (orig. pub. c.1264–73).
—. Summa Theologica. Trans. Fathers of the English Dominican Province, rev. second edn, 1920 (orig. published c.1265–73).
Augustine of Hippo. The Confessions of Saint Augustine. Trans. John K. Ryan. New York: Image Books, 1960 (orig. c.397 to 398).
—. ‘Sermon 117’. Essential Sermons. Ed. Daniel Edward Doyle and Edmund Hill. Hyde Park, NY: Augustinian Heritage Institute, 2007.
Baron, Craig A.. ‘Christian Theology and the Re-Enchantment of the World’. Crosscurrents 56.4 (Winter 2007): 112–23.
Bonaventure of Bagnoregio. ‘Journey into the Mind of God’. Trans. S. Bonaventurae. Opera Omniae. Grand Rapids, MI: Christian Classic Ethereal Library, 2002.
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Supernatural Representations’. Journal of Popular Film and Television 18.2 (2000): 88–94.
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Hansen, Regina. ‘Mad, Drunken Exorcists: The Decline of Hero Priest’. Roman Catholicism and Fantastic Film. Ed. Regina Hansen. Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2011. 268–74.
John Paul II, Pope. Fides et Ratio, Encyclical Letter. 14 September 1998. www.vatican.va/holy_father/john_paul_ii/encyclicals. Accessed 25 August 2012.
—. Veritatis Splendor, Encyclical Letter. 6 August 1993. www.vatican.va/holy_father/john_paul_ii/encyclicals. Accessed 25 August 2012.
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Morgan, David. The Sacred Heart of Jesus: The Visual History of a Devotion. Amsterdam: Amsterdam UP, 2009.
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