Friday, August 30, 2024

August 30, 2024: American Catholics: Carlo Acutis

[250 years ago this week, Elizabeth Ann Seton was born in New York City. The first US-born Saint, Seton is one of the most famous individual examples of an American Catholic, so this week I’ll analyze her and other American Catholic histories!]

[NB. I’m stretching the limits of AmericanStudying with today’s blog subject, as he was born in England and lived most of his tragically brief life in Italy. But his maternal great-grandmother was from New York City, and plus my wife thoughtfully suggested this excellent conclusion to the week’s series so I’m going with it!]

On what’s familiar about the young man likely to be the newest Saint, what’s new, and what’s especially complicated.

1)      Saintly Simplifications: I’m quite sure that the childhood stories told about any individual who ended up canonized as a Catholic Saint would read like a fairy tale, but it’s particularly striking to read such saintly simplifications for a kid who lived from 1991 to 2006. My personal favorite such sentence from Acutis’ Wikipedia page is definitely, “Also an animal lover, he became very angry when he encountered young people who trod on lizards.” But a close second, from that same section “Acts of Kindness,” is, “While at the beach, he used an inflatable boat, snorkel, and fins to retrieve rubbish in the ocean.” As the father of two young men who care deeply about both the environment and our animal friends, I don’t doubt that Acutis also had such views and put them into practice at times; but he was also a boy, not a saint, and descriptions or details that lean too hard into the latter make him feel like a constructed persona rather than the real human being he undoubtedly was.

2)      Digital Details: A significant part of Acutis’ real humanity was that he grew up in the internet age, and to my mind the most interesting details of his life and identity reflect those digital contexts. He was apparently both drawn to and skilled at the use of coding and web design programs like Dreamweaver and Java, and despite passing away at the age of 15 he created two full websites: first a page for his parish, Milan’s Santa Maria Segreta; and then, far more fully and tellingly for his future canonization, a site Acutis began in 2004 and launched in October 2006 (just days before his death) that catalogued all of the world’s Eucharistic miracles and Marian apparitions among other Catholic connections. It stands to reason that the “first Millenial Saint” (as Acutis is frequently known) would have such digital details in his biography, but this was clearly a kid who was particularly and meaningfully interested in the possibilities of linking the internet to Catholicism.

3)      Church Controversies: Acutis’ story is an interesting and impressive one, but it is of course far from the most prominent 21st century story about young people and the Catholic Church. I’m hesitant to say too much more than that here, both because this has got to be one of the most fraught subjects I’ve ever included in a post (a competitive list to be sure) and because I know we’re all already quite familiar with that subject. But I can’t conclude a series on American Catholicism without acknowledging this story—which was very much initially uncovered by American reporters, and has featured countless American priests and churches—and I have to admit being at least a little suspicious of the timing of the Vatican’s plans to canonize a teenage boy. Of course canonization will continue to be a thing for the Catholic Church, and of course that process will likely include both modern figures and younger people. But at the very least, we can’t let this inspiring individual draw our attention away from what is unquestionably the more overarching and significant story.

August Recap this weekend,

Ben

PS. What do you think? Catholic histories or contexts you’d highlight?

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