As another social media ‘influencer’ seeks to join the Church, Karl Gustel Warnberg looks into the fascination with Catholicism in our culture
In the past few years, an apparent paradox has emerged. While Catholicism is generally declining in the West, many prominent individuals are converting to the faith and bringing their followers with them.
The most recent example of this is the case of Oli London, a 32-year-old British singer and social media influencer, who revealed earlier this month that he has become interested in the Catholic faith and is considering being baptised.
London claims to have struggled for many years with body dysmorphia leading him to have multiple plastic surgery procedures to make him look more feminine.
He revealed that he had started attending Mass and reading the Bible, and that his experience at the Catholic church made him realise that changing his appearance was not important — what was important was “on the inside.”
“Letting Jesus and God into my heart [has] saved my life. It’s brought me back to who I am as a person, finding God.”
London added that he had found a priest in America to baptise him, which begs the perhaps cynical question: why not just use your own parish priest? Is this baptism to become another social media opportunity? If the answer is “yes”, this raises the further question: has Catholicism become trendy?
This cultural fascination with Catholicism also imbues much of the popular culture we see today.
On Netflix here in the UK there are currently several documentaries about the Church, such as Vatican Girland Examination of Conscience.
On top of this, there is the popular film starring Anthony Hopkins, The Two Popes.
The allure is the same as it has been since the Reformation: scandal, power, corruption, and the Papacy. The papacy seems to retain an almost mythical state in people’s imaginations, with all of the authority and earthly glory that comes with it. Meanwhile, the spiritual side is entirely divorced from these material elements.
Herein lies a great problem for the Church. People are clearly enthralled by anything to do with the Church, or else there wouldn’t be so many cultural artefacts and events drawing upon its traditions. Even the Met Gala in 2018 had the theme “Heavenly Bodies” which was a clear reference to Catholicism.
It is sad that among all the interest most people entirely miss the point of what the Church actually stands for, evoking an aesthetic divorced from all meaning. Is it mere cynicism? Something even more sinister? Or plain ignorance? It is hard to tell, but the films, events, and documentaries roll on year after year.
The cultural fascination with Catholicism should, however, be seen an opportunity for evangelisation. The public mind is already filled with Catholic imagery, iconography, terminology and history. Now it is time to add the missing part to the puzzle that lies before us: the Truth.
People always seek some truth, for nobody wants to be misled willingly. But, as the Prussian General and military strategist Carl von Clausewitz noted in his classic On War, the step from truth to action has to be mediated by something else – emotion.
If there is no emotional attachment to the truth, and no personal investment in truth, it is very difficult to move to action. You can recognise something as true abstractly, but it won’t make any difference to you unless you feel it affects you.
That is why documentaries about the Church are popular: we know corruption is wrong, and we are made to feel the injustice of a moral authority failing its moral duties. It’s a powerful message and it should not be hidden. Injustices perpetrated by the Church should be called out, but we also have a duty to find ways that showcase the beauty and strength of the Christian message.
Catholic films can sometimes come across as cheesy, overly pious, or merely sentimental. But there are exceptions. The Passion of the Christ is one such example; Passolini’s Gospel According to Matthew is another in the way it draws attention to the beauty of the Gospel message while being broadly thought to be the best religious film of all time.
As Catholics, we have a duty to convey the Gospel message, and culture is one of the most forceful vehicles for this. The truth the Church presides over is eternal, just as power, authority, and corruption are themes which endure over the ages and captivate people’s imagination.
If we can pique the interest of people into gazing deeper into eternal values such as sacrifice, loyalty, and redemption, we have come part of the way to rebuilding our culture, which so often seeks to dwell on the miserable, rather than aiming for the exalted.
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