Viva Christo Rey + Vanity Fair
we follow the influencer at our peril
I’m grateful that so many of you saw fit to send me this Vanity Fair article on celebrity Catholic converts, and while I admit I am slightly tired of talking about online-Catholic-drama, this one whacked me in the face with a desire to respond.
The article was very, very, very long, but I think it can be summed up in a few concise points:
o In recent years, a wave of popular celebrities—particularly more right-leaning ones—have become Catholic. These include Candace Owens, Russell Brand, JD Vance, and others. Jordan Peterson has flirted with Catholicism while saying very benign statements like “God is the call to adventure”, which sounds like something someone in Boulder has on a bumper sticker.
o There is a surge of anti-semitism in the world, and that surge hasn’t left Catholicism unscathed—as an example, the cry of “Christ is king”, which Vanity Fair acts as if Candace Owens made up herself, has frequently been misused by anti-Semites in order to insult Jews.
o There are deep ideological disagreements within church leadership, leading some to believe that the bishops are simply figureheads with no real authority who are leading us all astray.
o Catholics seem very excited for new converts, even when those converts have credible sexual assault accusations against them or seem to have a really roundabout way of not liking Jewish people.
o There’s a push for the church to become more “masculine”, by which influencers mean men should embrace stereotypically masculine tropes and govern “like it’s The Handmaid’s Tale”. (This is a quote—not me being facetious.)
Overall, the article had all of the hallmarks of a large media outlet writing about Catholicism. It thrusts Catholics into political boxes (you’re on the “right” side with Bishop Strickland or the “left” side with Pope Francis), it interviews Catholics that very few people would consider mainstream (Massimo Faggioli? That’s—that’s who we’re going with?), and gleefully paints Catholics as a bunch of backwater woman-haters with a secret plot to take over the world.
It also had a lot of truth.