A fathom event about the first millennial saint, this aught to be interesting. Hello catholiccontriversy here, and I'm getting back from the documentary Carlo Acutis: Roadmap to Reality, a documentary about Bessed (or Saint depending on when you read this) Carlo Acutis. I don't know much about Carlo, but my priest at my home parish talks about him regularly, mostly because he's a recent young future saint (he was 15 when he died and was born in 1991, he'd only be 2 years older than me) and that inspires people because he wasn't "an old man that devoted his entire life and is like your grandpa" and he isn't "a young martyr from hundreds of years ago." Also, a little about me, I am a millennial online content creator, I've been doing this since the early days of youtube starting not long after my 16th birthday, and for a little while now I've been thinking "we need a patron saint of online creators," because we online evangelists could use someone to help inspire us as we use new media to spread the word of God, who himself/herself used new media to spread the word of God. So when the movie started talking about modern technology and how Carlo is "the influencer of Christ, growing up in a technological world," I got excited because maybe that would mean that we finally have our patron saint of online content creators and this would be about how he used the internet to spread the word of God.
Well...about that....I guess I should start out with my first major criticism of this movie, and that is "who/what it is REALLY about." I wasn't like "taking notes with a stop watch" so I can't be fully sure in my proportions, but this movie spent very little time talking about Carlo, like I'd estimate that less than 50% of it was spent talking about him. I would say that 40% of the movie was about how technology is designed to be addictive and is separating people from the church (a modern idol), 15% is about a school's unplugged pilgrimage to Rome an Assisi and how the teens are handling it, 20% is about the Eucharist and Eucharistic miracles, and 25% of it is about Carlo and his relationship to technology and the Eucharist. Initially, this made me quite frustrated, I came to learn about the first millennial saint, the saint who is 2 years older than me and died 3 years before I had my call to profess my beliefs online and was 1 year younger than when I started my journey in using the internet to spread the good news whenever God calls me to. In terms of what Carlo would want (at least based on what is presented in the movie), it makes sense. Carlo was "obsessed" with the Eucharist (and I say "obsessed" with the upmost respect, like how people say "I'm addicted to Jesus, I'm a Jesus freak"), he wanted his first communion as soon as he possibly could, and went to Eucharistic adoration and daily mass all the time, and his websites were dedicated to the Eucharist and Eucharistic miracles and never wanted it to be about himself. So I get where the directors were coming from with what they did. However, I came here for a movie about Carlo Acutis the first millennial saint who died young and had a lot in common with the youth of today, not a movie about technology addiction and the Eucharist. Like, they showed paintings of him and instead of a halo he has wifi bars, because "he is the modern saint." I want to know that story, because that's what I and my online brothers and sisters in Christ do.
Now I'm not saying it's bad to make a movie about those topics, but it's not what the title was saying it was. Another fathom event my wife and I went to was "Super Man, the Christopher Reeves story," a movie about Christopher Reeves before and after his accident. If that movie was like this one, it would be primarily about dressage and different kinds of paralysis with some mentions of Christopher Reeves and his life with quadriplegia. It would be like if we went to a movie called "Matthew the Evangelist" and it looks like it will be about Saint Matthew but then it's just the gospel according to Matthew. Again, it's not like that's a bad story to tell, but we would be coming to learn about Matthew, not his account of the life of Jesus. It just felt kind of dishonest.
My second major gripe is how the movie portrays technology. Here's the thing, I have lots of problems with technology and what is has done to society. I don't like social media, I generally stay away from facebook and it made my highschool and college years kind of empty because all my friends were terminally online and didn't like to talk IRL. I hate LLM GenAI because it's a solution in need of a problem and is being forced down our throats despite no one wanting it. Like all online content creators I hate the algorithm. There are a lot of ways that technology sucks. On the flip side, I love technology. Right now I'm using the internet to reach potentially billions of people with my opinions and message. I've documented all my major (and sometime minor) life events through blogging and vlogging for 15 years and have enjoyed looking back at my memories and one day know I will be happy to have such a complete account of them. I used to annoy my friends and family with my ramblings because I had to speak my mind, and now I tell strangers online that actually want to hear what I have to say instead of annoying my friends and family. I have made "actual works of art for which I am proud of" and I wouldn't have done that if not for the internet. I have made actual close friends online and have been able to find community with people who I otherwise would never know. My point being is that technology is not inherently good or bad, it's a tool that can be used positively or negatively. This movie though, it focuses on the negative applications, drawing significant attention to social media addiction and how people have religious devotion to science and technology in an absence of religion, how "people wait for hours to see a concert but can't find the determination to go to church," and how people are trying to use technology to achieve some kind of immortality here on earth when instead they should be looking towards living eternally with Jesus, and all that bad stuff. Again, I get where they're coming from, modern technology has caused a lot of problems with society. However, it's condemning a tool, the whole "blame guns for gun violence" thing, and that is the WRONG way to go about this conversation.
This is where I get really scared with that kind of messaging, if you do not accept that smart phones and social media and the like are now part of the world we live in, you are going to lose people faster than you already are. I'm going to give an analogy, instead of modern technology, let's talk about alcohol. Alcohol is not a "wholly positive substance;" people use it to get drunk and make bad decisions like drunk driving or becoming violent, people get addicted to alcohol and it ruins their lives, alcohol is medically classified as a poison and does damage to the body. However, a lot of people like alcohol; beer, wine, and liquor tastes good, after a particularly stressful day alcohol can help with relieving the tension built up during the day, and for people with social anxiety can help relax them in social environments, and a majority of the people who use alcohol do so responsibly without any major problems. Jesus's first miracle wasn't making the blind see, it was turning water into wine. Jesus didn't tell his disciples "drink this milk or cranberry juice, it is my blood," he said "drink this wine, it is my blood." All this to say, there isn't anything inherently wrong with alcohol and even the King of Kings recognized the good it can do. Here's where you run into problems, there are people who like beer and are uncertain about religion, a religion or denomination or evangelist preacher who says "alcohol is evil, nothing good can come from it, it's Jesus or beer" is going to lose that person because "I don't know about Jesus, but if he's against beer that's not for me." However, if one approaches it from a position of "you drink a lot of beer, Jesus liked to drink too but not that much, there can be room in your heart for both the Lord and the fruit of the vine but you'll need to make some room, next time share that beer with Jesus instead of just hogging it for yourself," that's going to be more welcoming and is completely consistent with a legitimate faith journey. A non-drinker is going to say "I don't get what the big deal is, just don't drink and instead focus on Jesus," but then they'll turn around and say "why is my church empty." Now replace what I said with technology, you as an older person are the "non-drinker" who can say "I don't use technology and my life is fine, and you can live without too," but to say "it's incompatible" to someone who already uses technology, it's going to lose people. Like, there was a 4 or so minute part of the movie where a priest said "if Saint Paul had social media, he would be using it to reach people, modern technology can be used for spreading the good news," but that was 4 minutes out of 82 minutes, where at least 40 had to have been spent saying "and this is why modern technology is bad" in some way. The movie really shouldn't have spent so much time on "you're missing the Lord because you spend all your time online" and spent a lot more time on "is Jesus in your instagram story, he wants to be in your instagram story."
If nothing else, this movie inspired me to look into Carlo's story and journey to sainthood and what he did from an online space. We online content creators could use someone whose story is super similar to our own for guidance and intercession. There are plenty of great evangelist saints we can look to as a blueprint for how to spread the message, and patron saints of video production and authorship and such, but right now at the time of writing there isn't a patron saint of online influencers whom we can say a prayer of intercession to and look to see how they did things and what we could learn from them. Carlo seems like he might be that saint for a modern time, but this movie didn't do a very good job at showing us if he is, and unfortunately might scare people away from the faith in it's conversations surrounding modern technology. For now though I'll just continue doing what I do and pray for God to use me to spread his word however he sees fit. This has been Catholiccontriversy, signing off, and may God bless you.
No comments:
Post a Comment