There was an article released the other day on the Church Militant website about Bobby Fischer. It is really well written and covers a lot about Fischer I had never heard before particularly Fischer's end-of-life journey.
The article starts off with this:
"It appears that the greatest avatar of chess mastery that the world has ever known (and that, perhaps, it will ever know), the man with an intelligence quotient that dwarfed Albert Einstein's, the indigent Brooklyn-prodigy-turned-unlikely-Cold-War-hero, former world chess champion Robert James Fischer "crossed the Tiber" and converted to Catholicism in the final days of his life.
The story of Bobby Fischer's remarkable rise, enigmatic disappearance and tragic fall is one that has, for decades, captivated chess fans and chess muggles alike. It's an epic that continues to vex the world because of its sheer inimitability: There's simply nothing like the Fischer story anywhere to be found in the annals of sporting history. And now, it looks as if the legend of Fischer, once widely supposed to have resolved in bitter ignominy, ended on a note of utmost felicity — with his dying in the bosom of God's one true Church.
Perhaps the primary reason that so many sympathize with Fischer's story (aside from their admiration for his unparalleled genius on the chessboard and his lasting contributions to the theory of the game) is that, despite the disadvantageous circumstances that he was born into, he seemed to be — even during the periods of his life in which he proved to be loudly and painfully misguided (and there were many) — a sincere seeker of truth and a stickler for principle."
After a well researched and description of his life as the son of a poor Jewish mother where he got his first chess set at the age of 6, to the point he entered into the Worldwide Church of God, we get to this:
After living an arduous and austere life in an "almost monastic pursuit of the world championship" (to quote Fischer biographer Frank Brady), Bobby wanted to pursue his religious studies — he was a member of a fundamentalist church, the Worldwide Church of God, which he had given $60,000 of his world championship purse — and to meet a girl and fall in love (Frank Brady, Endgame: Bobby Fischer's Remarkable Rise and Fall — From America's Brightest Prodigy to the Edge of Madness (New York: Crown Publishing, 2011), 205)."
And then this:
While he began his chess sabbatical with the high-minded ideals of growing in faith and seeking vocation, such noble intentions were soon derailed by the harsh realities of life in a post-edenic world. Bobby had long proudly carried the banner of the Worldwide Church of God, observing its tenets, bankrolling its coffers, even speaking frequently of the impending "Rapture" per its queer doctrines. But his faith in his church was irreparably damaged when "prophecies" about a 1972 second coming of Christ made by the church's founder, Herbert W. Armstrong, proved to be false. Fischer, realizing that he had been hoodwinked, delivered a searing invective:
The real proof for me were those prophecies ... that show to me that [Armstrong] is an outright huckster. ... I thought, "This doesn't seem right. I gave all my money. Everybody has been telling me this [about apocalyptic events that were to unfold in 1972] for years. And now, he's half-denying he ever said it, even when I remember him saying it a hundred times." … If you talk about fulfillment of prophecy, he is a fulfillment of Elmer Gantry. If Elmer Gantry was the Elijah, Armstrong's the Christ of religious hucksters. There is no way he could truly be God's prophet. Either God is a masochist and likes to be made a fool of, or else Herbert Armstrong is a false prophet.
So Fischer, disenchanted with the version of Christianity he long supposed to be true, began groping for meaning elsewhere, eventually straying into irreligion altogether. Nature, it is said, abhors a vacuum.
The article then goes on to describe his descent into atheism (due to his association and exploitation by the WCG) and then into his publicized anti-semitism. It then describes him meeting up with a man who once again sparks his interest in God. The article ends with this:
However, in his final days, Fischer played one last gambit, a curious move that seems to suggest that — maybe, just maybe — he found his way back home to the Barque of Peter: Fischer requested, according to officials from the Catholic Church of Iceland, that he be "buried as a Catholic." On Monday, Jan. 21, 2008, under the unrelenting blackness of the northern winter sky, Bobby Fischer's broken body was lowered into the frozen earth, in a funeral attended by five people. In accord with his last wishes, a French Catholic priest, Fr. Jakob Rolland, presided over the humble ceremony, commending Fischer's soul to its Maker and, hopefully, to the eternal light of the beatific vision.
While we may never definitively know if Fischer officially became Catholic, he, at the very least, fit the bill for a baptism of desire. While God binds Himself to His sacraments, He is not bound by the sacraments, and He can confer salvation — by means understood by the Divine Mind alone — on those who, by no fault of their own, die without formal incorporation into the Church. The illustrious St. Thomas Aquinas himself tells us that "when a man wishes to be baptized but by some ill chance he is forestalled by death before receiving baptism," he "can obtain salvation without being actually baptized, on account of his desire."
If I were a betting man (and I am), I'd wager that Fischer found his way, at long last, into the one true Church. And, if that's the case, the patroness of chess, St. Teresa of Avila, better watch out: There's a pretty daunting new act in town.
The article is fascinating in the covering of the life of Bobby Fischer that I have not seen in other articles about the man. The article can be found here:
THE REDEMPTION OF CHESS LEGEND BOBBY FISCHER
