On Catholic Celebrity

I have a lot of thoughts on public personas, marketing, and cult of personality, especially in the Catholic sphere. I won't really touch on those thoughts directly here, outside of saying that the rule should be that if we are happy to benefit, especially economically, from the easy "brand recognition" of Catholicism, then we need to make sure, for the sake of our souls and the souls of those we reach, we are also willing to suffer the consequences of its truth. If we check our hearts honestly and find ourselves wanting in that area, then a lot of re-evaluating is due.

I've been active as a singer-songwriter for many years and in many capacities as a professional in the entertainment industry. When I was first releasing music, I was confused about how to be a Catholic and a musician, and found myself resistant to being known in that way. I really just wanted to do my thing and let the chips fall. But our inner worlds are complicated, especially when we are young and trying to cultivate noble desires and thus impressionable, and it ended up being many years of trying to figure that part of things out before coming to a place of more clarity and peace with my regular work.

When I decided to move forward more formally with CASSIA & MYRRH, I felt that same resistance, which conditioned the whole approach to the project's materials which have largely not featured me, except where it seemed necessary.

I don't want to be a Catholic celebrity. I don't want to be a role model.

And I don't mean I simply don't want these; I mean I actively want to not be these things, if I can manage still being faithful to getting the work out I feel called to do.

There is something inherently worldly about the desire for celebrity. Of course, many of the saints were and are famous; it's not intrinsically opposed to the good to gain notoriety for one's work or especially for holiness, if God seems to will it. Jesus Himself, aside from being the God of history and famous the world over to this day, experienced real "celebrity" in His time of mission. This likely contributed as one of the natural causes of His ultimate cruel crucifixion. Envy is an ugly, murderous monster.

But to desire it, in this world? Or to see it immediately as an indicator of God's approbation? As Christians, it's odd, and unfitting, and disproportionate to our understanding of reality. We are citizens of Heaven; we live on an eternal timeline, based in eternal truths and virtues. Our entire concept of what is "good" is so different from the world's—and not just different, but infinitely larger, greater, more beautiful.

Like the prudent servant in the Gospels, we can have a sense of "touché" toward those of the world who seek the world and manage to gain the world in some impressive capacity. We can have the same sense even for a Christian who seeks legitimate worldly goods at the world’s scale: within a world-sized system, so long as we don’t compromise, we can even glorify God by thriving and showing the heights of human ability and accomplishment.

But to desire anything close to "Catholic famous" is bizarre and disordered. Our celebrities are the saints, and our metric for success is only holiness, and these things are more often than not correlated with things the world despises—littleness, humility, lack of education, various impoverishments, simplicity, suffering, sickness, hiddenness. John the Baptist eating locusts; St. Therese coughing up blood in an obscure convent; St. John Fisher, wasting away cold and hungry and alone in the cell before a cruel execution; St. André Bessette quietly managing the monastery door; countless Carthusian monks who refuse to even mark their graves, rendering posthumous canonization impossible.

We should only want to fulfill our mission, and only want a degree of notoriety that is commensurate with that mission, no more and no less.

What I always crave to see but can't find much of in what we often celebrate in the modern church is the old monk, quiet, worn, and weathered from a life of battles with both the world and the underworld, radiating the glory of God gently but perceptibly to those with eyes to see.

I am nothing like the monk I imagine.

I am nothing like the sisters whose contemplative life I periodically spend a day or two in to try to clean off the smog of the world and my own selfishness, distraction, pettiness, distress, and sin.

In the end, my life proved out the wisdom of my revulsion to being some kind of Catholic idol. I suffered a severe health crash in my mid twenties, as well as the resurfacing of a lot of childhood trauma and pain. Ultimately, I went through a crisis of faith that threatened to lead me out of the faith and away from the God I desperately loved. I can't imagine having had to navigate that in public, or the damage I may have caused as a result.

I also can't imagine ever thinking it's wise to desire many eyes on my life as some kind of example. I know little about myself except my weakness.

We often forget that gifts, whether natural or supernatural, are not really connected directly with holiness, faith, and virtue. Sometimes they can be a fruit of these things: it takes virtue, for example, to stick through the difficulties of a project to completion, or to cultivate a skill; supernatural gifts are sometimes linked with a prayer life that prepares us for them or even directly asks for them.

But often, these things are simply just gifts. Innate, or poured out on us without regard for our worthiness.

I am so grateful for the chance to sing and share through CASSIA & MYRRH. I am especially grateful to offer a gentle onboard to learning Gregorian chant. I am touched and honored that so many share how they are blessed and healed through my voice. I am grateful that there is some kind of gift given to me that God seems to want to use to hearten many people struggling with discouragement and despair.

But I also live with myself every day and know that beyond some kind of gift, the truest sense of who I am is just a sinner, a poor pilgrim walking with you to God, getting up every day like a little child in need of Him for every little thing. My only hope is to be fully faithful to the mission He has for me, in this music project and in everything.

It is good to seek only Jesus and the saints, and those truly close to them—and hold everything and everyone else as loosely as we can, with our eyes fixed firmly on Heaven: