It’s very hard for me not to see political motivations and rationalist bedrock in much of what the current regime in Rome does and the Carlo Acutis beatification is no exception. The personal holiness of this pious young man does not need to be in question but the manner in which he is being portrayed and promoted does. Vatican bureaucrats selling him as “the saint with a cell phone and laptop” is doubtless intended to inspire youth to stay in their parishes more than 3 seconds after their Confirmation but this sort of tactic is kryptonite to most youth and will not slow the outflow. Portraying heroic sanctity instead is clearly beyond the modernist imagination.
Current Vatican officialdom is incredibly behind the times. Currently the cutting edge is to question our total immersion in digital technology and to advise strongly pushing back against its hegemony. But for the old codgers in Rome, it's time to promote laptops and cell phones as ways to holiness! It reminds me of how Vatican II was writing for a world that was already rapidly disappearing. It wrote as if the world were simply the world of the Enlightenment, but Nietzsche, Marx, Sartre, Freud, et al. had already destroyed the modern paradigm and relativistic postmodernity was already on hand. In short, when the ink dried on the 16 documents, they were already irrelevant -- as 1968 was quickly to make apparent.
The word that describes modern portrayals would be kitsch. It's fine to have a little in your living room, but not in a Church. Whenever a portrayal of a saint is made, one needs to think of 100 years in the future and ascertain how a future person, with no conception of current trends, sees the work.
A saint fussing on a laptop is going to look foreign and strange to him. Kneeling in adoration will be familiar and timeless.
Excellent point — I very much had the impression from all the promotion that we were somehow canonizing him because he made a website. Which is obviously not an act of heroic sanctity.
And also NOT why he is being canonized! If you look into it more, his story really is moving. But the promoters most certainly are portraying him as a cool tech kid — it’s as if they *want* to convey this misapprehension ….
Specifically speaking of the taste questions, it seems there are two parallel errors to fall into. The one, which you elucidate admirably, is saying there is no distinction between things of high culture and things of low culture. The other one, which I perceive to various levels in the lovers of high culture, myself included, is sniffing at low culture, simply because it is low. As in all things, it is the mean that matters. Sanctity and taste are, as you speak of, completely distinct. But that distinction goes both ways. The formal and casual both have their places, and even though the casual is currently in extreme ascendence, the ideal balance is not 100% formal either.
I'm not so sure. Here, I side with Romano Guardini, who wrote in his excellent little "The Spirit of the Liturgy":
<< Individuals, or short waves of enthusiasm, can to a wide degree dispense with learning and culture. This is proved by the beginnings of the desert Orders in Egypt, and of the mendicant friars, and by holy people in all ages. But, generally speaking, a fairly high degree of genuine learning and culture is necessary in the long run, in order to keep spiritual life healthy. By means of these two things spiritual life retains its energy, clearness, and catholicity. Culture preserves spiritual life from the unhealthy, eccentric, and one-sided elements with which it tends to get involved only too easily. Culture enables religion to express itself, and helps it to distinguish what is essential from what is non-essential, the means from the end, and the path from the goal. The Church has always condemned every attempt at attacking science, art, property, and so on. The same Church which so resolutely stresses the “one thing necessary,” and which upholds with the greatest impressiveness the teaching of the Evangelical Counsels—that we must be ready to sacrifice everything for the sake of eternal salvation—nevertheless desires, as a rule, that spiritual life should be impregnated with the wholesome salt of genuine and lofty culture. >>
That is, in the Church, there is a definite preference for high culture, which has a way of also infusing popular culture with a certain greatness. You can see this is you look at medieval poetry and folklore and plays. They have a richness and beauty to them that you will look for in vain in most of today's secular popular art & music. (And that's often because of the influence of both capitalism & technology - large topics!)
Yes, I certainly am not fully doctrinaire about it either. But it seems that even those same medieval poetry and plays were themselves low culture in their own times. Age has "canonized" them, but the impulse I am referring to would be shocked and scandalized at the release of Chaucer or Dante precisely because they both transgressed established norms of taste at the time.
I certainly agree that current secular popular "art" is...lacking (to be polite). Certainly, some of that is due to rupture with the tradition, but at least a fraction is due to art being difficult to make, and what we have passed down to us has been curated by its excellence (as can be witnessed whenever some historian finds a "lost work" of some great, which was usually lost because it was not very good).
I would say that the Church does lead to high culture, but by allowing popular culture its place to grow into high culture. Our culture needs the Church's irrigation, but I see the parvity of popular art as a necessary step in the process of returning to the well. The post-war era is dying, and along with it the period of experimentation that obviously did not work. Some new blossoming will grow, but the new stalks must be given time to prove themselves. So although the Church leads to high culture, enforcing high culture will only stop new high culture from coming about.
The recent events around Sr. Wilhelmina in Gower certainly suggest that heaven looks favorably on the traditional Mass, and on those who, like Sr. Wilhelmina herself, demonstrated fidelity to it. Given what now appears to be true in her case, it would be difficult to both canonize her and in so doing not highlight the centrality of tradition in her life.
Yes. But then again, we already knew heaven looks favorably on the traditional Mass - this is why it exists in the first place: Divine Providence. It was the liturgical vehicle through which thousands of saints prayed their way to heaven. So its status as solid gold is a given.
I only offered Sr Wilhelmina as an example of a current traditional Catholic who could certainly be beatified, and in light of your observation about the attempts to portray many recently beatified as proof that the Novus Ordo is therefore fertile soil for sanctity.
Great read! I have had several concerns with the Bl. Carlo beatification. He was certainly a holy young man, and likely deserving of sainthood, but the modern Church output is emphasizing the wrong aspects about him. You have conveyed the exact issues, and others in this post, with much clarity.
Another fascinating podcast. A fine opportunity for me to proclaim how unlikely my devotion to Bl. Carlo Acutis is. It began long before it was cool (as it is with most things I am drawn to); perhaps beginning with that beautiful, smiling face on the prayer card I found somewhere. Then came the Eucharistic Miracles display at a local parish, and my appreciation for this young man's faith, devotion and work ethic. Then I started to ask his intercession for aid with the many intractable problems I faced as a software engineer (can't recall a single instance where I was denied); and then for his intercession for my children, being, as they are, part of his generation; and then for his intercession with God to give my wife "a new heart." I find it impossible to fully describe the effects of this devotion on my Catholic life - my only life. At every step of the way since learning about him, devotion seemed to be natural, increasing, and delightful. I'm a revert; this is indeed a special thing for me and not at all something I would routinely seek .
I was overjoyed at the news of his impending Canonization - I have always hoped for it. I rejoiced that another was so blessed by Carlo's intercession; but the description of the miracle left me wondering -- in my state of ignorance -- if it were indeed supernatural. Thankfully, it is not my place to judge such things. But I am left to wonder, not about Blessed Carlo Acutis - for the devotion I have described above is in tact and beautiful and quite enough for me - but about the Vatican's actions here, as I am about all the other things this millennial Vatican decides, and that it's Spin Machinery reports.
Ooof, but you know there are evil forces pushing for just this kind of thing. Nevertheless, I do not believe the gates of hell will prevail, or rather, I believe they will not prevail.
With a sparce bio, Carlo is surely being pushed as a saint. We have Pope Leo XIII, Archbishop Sheen, of course Archbishop Lefebvre all giants of the Faith sidelined, for a rich kid whose mom keeps restacking his story.
Thank you, Dr. I am male, 60 years old and absolutely love Blessed Chiara. I was grabbed, spiritually by her image and her life testimony has left a profound impression upon my soul.
The recognition of the miracles in this modern canonization process is its own problem. In the hyperpapalisn of today, a miracle is what the current Pope declared it is, and his judgement is all that is needed. Although the healing in this case is remarkable, my understanding is that the standard used to be that no possible natural explanation could be invoked as a cause. And a panel of doctors including unbelievers had to agree that there could be no medical explanation. And there needed to be two such miracles. If that was still the case, how many modem "saints" would there be?
And I love the point about the role of popular devotion and the sense of the faithful in determining a saint!
The drive to remove any expression of reverence for the sacred is just too pervasive, in liturgy, in the architecture of sanctuary, specifically the location of the tabernacle, the habits of the religiou, and the msss vestments, the songs, have all subtle designs to drive God from our perception, hence from our consciousness. Even the way relics are classified, as if they are commodities, first class, second class and third class relics, the association of what is modern to what is eternal, timeless truth as what is now being done with Blessed Carlo Acutis has all this common denominator. To erase the sense of the sacred. Lots has already been spoken about the TLM but since it that aspect is limited to form instead to the hidden agenda of removing our sense of the sacred. With the tabernacle at the or at the back, the message it clear. And we are shocked that 70 % of Catholic Americans do not believe in the Real Presence. They have lost their sense of what is sacred.
May the Lord grant the universal Church the grace to pump the brakes on canonizations and be more discerning in principle. Having the Devil’s Advocate in the process again would do wonders. That said, Blessed Carlo Acutis, ora pro nobis!
The boundary and distinction between the sacred and the profane is being “erased”? Our awe and wonder of the holy is being made like they are just common with nothing special about them, all because we want them accessible to all people?
Let us not forget God makes a person or a thing holy, not man.
It’s very hard for me not to see political motivations and rationalist bedrock in much of what the current regime in Rome does and the Carlo Acutis beatification is no exception. The personal holiness of this pious young man does not need to be in question but the manner in which he is being portrayed and promoted does. Vatican bureaucrats selling him as “the saint with a cell phone and laptop” is doubtless intended to inspire youth to stay in their parishes more than 3 seconds after their Confirmation but this sort of tactic is kryptonite to most youth and will not slow the outflow. Portraying heroic sanctity instead is clearly beyond the modernist imagination.
Absolutely spot-on!
Current Vatican officialdom is incredibly behind the times. Currently the cutting edge is to question our total immersion in digital technology and to advise strongly pushing back against its hegemony. But for the old codgers in Rome, it's time to promote laptops and cell phones as ways to holiness! It reminds me of how Vatican II was writing for a world that was already rapidly disappearing. It wrote as if the world were simply the world of the Enlightenment, but Nietzsche, Marx, Sartre, Freud, et al. had already destroyed the modern paradigm and relativistic postmodernity was already on hand. In short, when the ink dried on the 16 documents, they were already irrelevant -- as 1968 was quickly to make apparent.
The word that describes modern portrayals would be kitsch. It's fine to have a little in your living room, but not in a Church. Whenever a portrayal of a saint is made, one needs to think of 100 years in the future and ascertain how a future person, with no conception of current trends, sees the work.
A saint fussing on a laptop is going to look foreign and strange to him. Kneeling in adoration will be familiar and timeless.
Excellent point — I very much had the impression from all the promotion that we were somehow canonizing him because he made a website. Which is obviously not an act of heroic sanctity.
And also NOT why he is being canonized! If you look into it more, his story really is moving. But the promoters most certainly are portraying him as a cool tech kid — it’s as if they *want* to convey this misapprehension ….
I'm saving my money for the Carlo Acutis in blue velvet framed in suede for my mancave. :p
Specifically speaking of the taste questions, it seems there are two parallel errors to fall into. The one, which you elucidate admirably, is saying there is no distinction between things of high culture and things of low culture. The other one, which I perceive to various levels in the lovers of high culture, myself included, is sniffing at low culture, simply because it is low. As in all things, it is the mean that matters. Sanctity and taste are, as you speak of, completely distinct. But that distinction goes both ways. The formal and casual both have their places, and even though the casual is currently in extreme ascendence, the ideal balance is not 100% formal either.
I'm not so sure. Here, I side with Romano Guardini, who wrote in his excellent little "The Spirit of the Liturgy":
<< Individuals, or short waves of enthusiasm, can to a wide degree dispense with learning and culture. This is proved by the beginnings of the desert Orders in Egypt, and of the mendicant friars, and by holy people in all ages. But, generally speaking, a fairly high degree of genuine learning and culture is necessary in the long run, in order to keep spiritual life healthy. By means of these two things spiritual life retains its energy, clearness, and catholicity. Culture preserves spiritual life from the unhealthy, eccentric, and one-sided elements with which it tends to get involved only too easily. Culture enables religion to express itself, and helps it to distinguish what is essential from what is non-essential, the means from the end, and the path from the goal. The Church has always condemned every attempt at attacking science, art, property, and so on. The same Church which so resolutely stresses the “one thing necessary,” and which upholds with the greatest impressiveness the teaching of the Evangelical Counsels—that we must be ready to sacrifice everything for the sake of eternal salvation—nevertheless desires, as a rule, that spiritual life should be impregnated with the wholesome salt of genuine and lofty culture. >>
That is, in the Church, there is a definite preference for high culture, which has a way of also infusing popular culture with a certain greatness. You can see this is you look at medieval poetry and folklore and plays. They have a richness and beauty to them that you will look for in vain in most of today's secular popular art & music. (And that's often because of the influence of both capitalism & technology - large topics!)
Yes, I certainly am not fully doctrinaire about it either. But it seems that even those same medieval poetry and plays were themselves low culture in their own times. Age has "canonized" them, but the impulse I am referring to would be shocked and scandalized at the release of Chaucer or Dante precisely because they both transgressed established norms of taste at the time.
I certainly agree that current secular popular "art" is...lacking (to be polite). Certainly, some of that is due to rupture with the tradition, but at least a fraction is due to art being difficult to make, and what we have passed down to us has been curated by its excellence (as can be witnessed whenever some historian finds a "lost work" of some great, which was usually lost because it was not very good).
I would say that the Church does lead to high culture, but by allowing popular culture its place to grow into high culture. Our culture needs the Church's irrigation, but I see the parvity of popular art as a necessary step in the process of returning to the well. The post-war era is dying, and along with it the period of experimentation that obviously did not work. Some new blossoming will grow, but the new stalks must be given time to prove themselves. So although the Church leads to high culture, enforcing high culture will only stop new high culture from coming about.
The recent events around Sr. Wilhelmina in Gower certainly suggest that heaven looks favorably on the traditional Mass, and on those who, like Sr. Wilhelmina herself, demonstrated fidelity to it. Given what now appears to be true in her case, it would be difficult to both canonize her and in so doing not highlight the centrality of tradition in her life.
Yes. But then again, we already knew heaven looks favorably on the traditional Mass - this is why it exists in the first place: Divine Providence. It was the liturgical vehicle through which thousands of saints prayed their way to heaven. So its status as solid gold is a given.
Amen!
I only offered Sr Wilhelmina as an example of a current traditional Catholic who could certainly be beatified, and in light of your observation about the attempts to portray many recently beatified as proof that the Novus Ordo is therefore fertile soil for sanctity.
"Margaritaville"? A rare pop-culture reference from Dr. K! And now I have Jimmy Buffet's "Cheeseburger In Paradise" going through my head.
Yeah, I've got a whole pop-culture side from my wasted youth, but I'm too ashamed of it to mention it except rarely!
Great read! I have had several concerns with the Bl. Carlo beatification. He was certainly a holy young man, and likely deserving of sainthood, but the modern Church output is emphasizing the wrong aspects about him. You have conveyed the exact issues, and others in this post, with much clarity.
It seems to me the sacred is used to serve the objective of the profane which is an inversion of the created order.
What are you even talking about
I understand why you ask that question.
Another fascinating podcast. A fine opportunity for me to proclaim how unlikely my devotion to Bl. Carlo Acutis is. It began long before it was cool (as it is with most things I am drawn to); perhaps beginning with that beautiful, smiling face on the prayer card I found somewhere. Then came the Eucharistic Miracles display at a local parish, and my appreciation for this young man's faith, devotion and work ethic. Then I started to ask his intercession for aid with the many intractable problems I faced as a software engineer (can't recall a single instance where I was denied); and then for his intercession for my children, being, as they are, part of his generation; and then for his intercession with God to give my wife "a new heart." I find it impossible to fully describe the effects of this devotion on my Catholic life - my only life. At every step of the way since learning about him, devotion seemed to be natural, increasing, and delightful. I'm a revert; this is indeed a special thing for me and not at all something I would routinely seek .
I was overjoyed at the news of his impending Canonization - I have always hoped for it. I rejoiced that another was so blessed by Carlo's intercession; but the description of the miracle left me wondering -- in my state of ignorance -- if it were indeed supernatural. Thankfully, it is not my place to judge such things. But I am left to wonder, not about Blessed Carlo Acutis - for the devotion I have described above is in tact and beautiful and quite enough for me - but about the Vatican's actions here, as I am about all the other things this millennial Vatican decides, and that it's Spin Machinery reports.
TikTok saints?
Wonder when we'll see the first "openly gay" one. May God forgive me for even jesting this way.
Ooof, but you know there are evil forces pushing for just this kind of thing. Nevertheless, I do not believe the gates of hell will prevail, or rather, I believe they will not prevail.
I agree wholeheartedly.
It's on its way I guarantee it. Unless WWIII happens first...
With a sparce bio, Carlo is surely being pushed as a saint. We have Pope Leo XIII, Archbishop Sheen, of course Archbishop Lefebvre all giants of the Faith sidelined, for a rich kid whose mom keeps restacking his story.
Well said Dr K!
Carlo has been used by modernist to push their agenda.....
Thank you, Dr. I am male, 60 years old and absolutely love Blessed Chiara. I was grabbed, spiritually by her image and her life testimony has left a profound impression upon my soul.
The recognition of the miracles in this modern canonization process is its own problem. In the hyperpapalisn of today, a miracle is what the current Pope declared it is, and his judgement is all that is needed. Although the healing in this case is remarkable, my understanding is that the standard used to be that no possible natural explanation could be invoked as a cause. And a panel of doctors including unbelievers had to agree that there could be no medical explanation. And there needed to be two such miracles. If that was still the case, how many modem "saints" would there be?
And I love the point about the role of popular devotion and the sense of the faithful in determining a saint!
The drive to remove any expression of reverence for the sacred is just too pervasive, in liturgy, in the architecture of sanctuary, specifically the location of the tabernacle, the habits of the religiou, and the msss vestments, the songs, have all subtle designs to drive God from our perception, hence from our consciousness. Even the way relics are classified, as if they are commodities, first class, second class and third class relics, the association of what is modern to what is eternal, timeless truth as what is now being done with Blessed Carlo Acutis has all this common denominator. To erase the sense of the sacred. Lots has already been spoken about the TLM but since it that aspect is limited to form instead to the hidden agenda of removing our sense of the sacred. With the tabernacle at the or at the back, the message it clear. And we are shocked that 70 % of Catholic Americans do not believe in the Real Presence. They have lost their sense of what is sacred.
May the Lord grant the universal Church the grace to pump the brakes on canonizations and be more discerning in principle. Having the Devil’s Advocate in the process again would do wonders. That said, Blessed Carlo Acutis, ora pro nobis!
The boundary and distinction between the sacred and the profane is being “erased”? Our awe and wonder of the holy is being made like they are just common with nothing special about them, all because we want them accessible to all people?
Let us not forget God makes a person or a thing holy, not man.