Casual Saints and The De-Mythologizing of the Church
An artistic representation of Bl. Carlo Acutis is stirring up controversy, but the real problem lies deeper within the modern Catholic mind.
I've been seeing a lot of hot takes about a recently-revealed stained glass image of Blessed Carlo Acutis.
To be honest, I don’t know much about him. I can tell you that he is a contemporary figure on a fast-track to sainthood. A 15-year old Italian boy of real faith and devotion who died of leukemia. What I’ve seen that appears to attract people to him was his normalcy and relatability. He was devout, but also a normal teenage boy. He was gifted when it came to working with computers. He made websites and played video games.
I’ve often thought of how unrelatable the lives of many saints are. I have at times felt pretty depressed at the idea that I could never be like them, because their acts, faith, and devotion were so extraordinary that they felt unattainable for normal people. A project idea I had a couple years ago, but never got very far into, was trying to identify a collection of saints who were the most relatable, the most like us, and present them for consideration and inspir…
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