What Obi-Wan Kenobi can teach us about the Catholic priesthood

Ever since Obi-Wan “Old Ben” Kenobi pulled back the cowl of his monastic style Jedi robes to say “Hello there!” to Luke Skywalker and by extension the audience of the first Star Wars film, there have been both comparisons and contrasts made between the Jedi Knights and the Catholic priesthood. This was only increased by the revelation in Episode II: Attack of the Clones that Jedi Knights were not allowed to have any sort of romantic relationships or to marry. It must be pointed out of course that in the case of the Jedi, the prohibition was not on marriage per se but on the sort of attachments that one would develop toward one’s romantic partner or spouse. Nevertheless, this is effectively a vow of celibacy like Catholic priests are required to take. Furthermore, detachment from all created goods is a goal in the spiritual life as one strives for sanctity.

Additionally, there are obvious parallels between the fall of the order of the Knights Templar on Friday, October 13^th, 1307 and that of the order of Jedi Knights via Order 66 as shown in Episode III: Revenge of the Sith. The Knights Templar were officially monks in addition to being warriors, thus providing another link between the Jedi and Catholic clergy.

This comparison places the revelations of the Obi-Wan Kenobi miniseries in a very interesting light. The series opens with Dark Side users called (ironically for the purposes of this analogy) Inquisitors, acolytes of Darth Vader who serve the Sith Lord as Jedi hunters, tracking a Jedi on the planet Tatooine. The viewer of courses assumes that the Jedi is Kenobi. This conclusion would be reinforced by the Grand Inquisitor who states that “The Jedi hunt themselves…Jedi cannot help what they are. Their compassion leaves a trail…So what is the Jedi to do? Help you and risk exposure or move on? Now if he were smart, he would keep moving but the Jedi Code is like an itch. He cannot help it, so he steps in.”

However, when the Grand Inquisitor’s companion Third Sister, who was once a Padawan named Reva, impulsively throws a knife at the saloon owner whom her superior is interrogating, the knife stops in mid-air, indicating that a Force user is suspending it. The Jedi in question is revealed not to be Kenobi, but a young Jedi, another former Padawan like the ones seen surviving Order 66 in the opening flashback of the series. Rather it is soon revealed that Kenobi has followed the Grand Inquisitor’s advice and gone completely in to hiding.

The young Jedi finds Obi-Wan and is excited. He believes that with a powerful Jedi Master, they can reunite the surviving Jedi and Sith led Empire. However, Obi-Wan quickly reveals himself to have become disillusioned and rejected his Jedi identity. He tells the young Jedi that the Order is gone and that he should take his lightsaber, something that identifies him as a Jedi, in bury it in the desert. Later in the episode, Obi-Wan shows that he is practicing what he preaches when he goes out in the sand and digs up a box containing both his and his former Padawan Anakin Skywalker’s blue-bladed lightsabers.

The Inquisitors eventually capture and kill the young Jedi whom Obi-Wan refused to help. They hang his body from a gate in the city of Anchorhead as a warning to both any other Jedi or those who might try to help or shelter them. The scene is full of crucifixion imagery. Just as the Galactic Empire was originally a Republic, the Roman Empire was originally a Republic. The Romans used crucifixion primarily against members of populations they had enslaved or colonized as a deterrent to them rising up in rebellion against the Roman occupation. The Romans almost always crucified their victims outside of the city but within sight of it, usually just beyond the walls near the gate or by a major thoroughfare to serve as a warning.

This is why Golgotha, the hill upon which Our Lord Jesus Christ was crucified, was outside of the city of Jerusalem. Priests participate in the sacrifice of Our Lord on the Cross in a unique way, making that sacrifice present again on the altar during Mass. The priest offers the sacrifice of the Mass in persona Christi (in the Person of Christ) and on the Cross, Christ was both priest and victim.

The Catechism of the Catholic Church states “The sacrament of Holy Orders…confers an indelible spiritual character and cannot be repeated or conferred temporarily. It is true that someone validly ordained can, for grave reasons, be discharged from the obligations and functions linked to ordination, or can be forbidden to exercise them; but he cannot become a layman again in the strict sense” (1582-1583) He remains “a priest forever, in the line of Melchizedek” (Hebrews 7:17, Psalm 110:4).

The graces of Holy Orders (and the priestly power that come with it) are conferred by God through the sacrament while the sensitivity of a Jedi to the Force, which is what gives him his power, is inborn. However, one must be trained to use these skills. Part of the training is learning the Jedi Code, which is what the Grand Inquisitor states “is like an itch” causing a Jedi to reveal himself by using his powers to help others. Similarly a priest cannot help who he is and a good and holy priest can’t stop himself from helping others with the graces which have been bestowed upon him by virtue of his ordination.

Throughout the Church’s almost 2,000 year history, priests have been hunted down with the same implacability with which the Imperial Inquisitors hunt down Jedi. In Bolshevik Mexico and Spain, priests would be hung in the streets and in even in some cases from the rafters of their churches, as a public warning. In Elizabethan England and Revolutionary France, they were publicly while being branded as traitors to their country due to their loyalty to the Pope in Rome. In all these cases, priests were believed to be agents of a power that was opposed to the prevailing oppressive government, much like Emperor Palpatine accused the Jedi of carrying out an attempt to assassinate him as the Clone Wars ended.

Jesuit martyrs like St. Edmund Campion in England and Blessed Miquel Pro in Mexico dressed in civilian clothes and assumed disguises but this was so they could they could carry out their ministries more effectively and bring the sacraments to more people. They did not bury their chalices, patens, breviaries and stoles in a box in the ground and try to forget about them. They, and many other priests, continued to minister in secretly and ultimately gave their lives for it.

Campion well knew the dangers he was in, yet still went to the estate of a known Catholic when asked to travel there to preach and offer the sacraments. As more and more Catholics flocked to confess their sins, receive communion and hear him preach; he could not bring himself to leave and there he was captured. Pro was arrested on false charges of being involved in an assassination attempt, but many other priests who were martyred like him in Mexico were caught while administering the sacraments.  In fact, as dramatized in Graham Greene’s novel The Power and the Glory, the Mexican authorities began to employ the ruse of a dying person requesting last rites to capture priests. Nevertheless, like Jesus going to Jerusalem, many priests went, fully aware it was likely a trap.

In one remarkable case, St. Matteo Correa Magallanes was arrested while bringing Viaticum to a dying woman. Shortly thereafter, summoned by a Mexican general to hear the confessions of captured Cristero rebels who were about to be executed. Magallanes obliged but then the general demanded to know what the rebels had confessed. The priest refused to break the seal of Confession and died along with the men whose confessions he had heard.

Interesting, in Obi-Wan Kenobi, despite not using his Force powers in order to avoid detection for almost a decade, the eponymous exiled Jedi finally uses them to save a young Leia from falling to her death when he rescues her from her kidnappers. The next episodes show him gradually opening himself back open to the Force, to the point where in the final episode he is able to best Darth Vader in a spectacular lightsaber duel and is finally able to see the spirit of his deceased Master, Qui-Gon Jinn, with whom he had been attempting to communicate for ten years. He is only able to do this when he finally once again accepts his identity as a Jedi (symbolized by his once again taking up his lightsaber) and uses his extraordinary powers to save others, at the risk of his own life.  If priests had done what Obi-Wan Kenobi did after the fall of the Jedi, the Catholic Church would have never made it out of the catacombs, much less survived persecution after persecution into the year of Our Lord 2023. Let us be eternally thankfully for holy saints and martyrs like Edmund Campion, Matteo Correa Magallanes, Miquel Pro and countless others, who continued their ministries at the cost of their lives.