Back in college, I took a sociology of fashion class. I remember the professor telling us that fashion adapts to the emotional needs of the time. In difficult years, designers tried to lift people’s spirits with cheerful colors and enticing styling. She explained that the entertainment industry worked the same way. The 1940’s musicals, for instance, were written to cheer up a war-burdened population. 

I think of that lecture over and over when I wander through the mall and see clothing stores filled with black, gray and navy clothing and furniture stores with nothing but brown, beige, and black. I can’t understand why film makers seem to be obsessed with making movies dominated with brutal violence and end-of-the-world catastrophes. Looking at the film posters we see exhausted, threatened characters pointing guns or cowering. It doesn’t seem like any of this was designed to lift our spirits in this challenging political, economic, and war-weary climate.

Last fall I took a writing class on Enders Island, CT, with Sarah Cortez. She educated us on the need for Catholics to speak and write expressing our Catholic world view.

Authors writing with a Catholic world view doesn’t mean writing about their First Communion or Catholic school antics. Catholic, Dana Gioia, an award-winning poet & critic explains that good Catholic writers, “tend to see humanity struggling in a fallen world. They combine a longing for grace and redemption with a deep sense of human imperfection and sin. Evil exists, but the physical world is not evil. Nature is sacramental, shimmering with signs of sacred things. Indeed, all reality is mysteriously charged with the invisible presence of God. Catholics also perceive suffering as redemptive.” That may be a mouthful, but it summarizes well the way we should view the world as Catholics. And the kind of writing that can reinforce our faith and give us hope.

This summer let us choose hopeful entertainment, selecting authors and filmmakers that write with spirit, so that by the end of the book or movie our minds, hearts, and bodies are filled with life-affirming peace and joy.

Scripture: Read Sirach 1:11-13. What stands out?

Call to Action: Sarah Cortez is coming to St. Lawrence! Join us for her Joy of Catholic Literature session on Monday night July 29th to hear a selection of uplifting, wholesome, and thought-provoking great Catholic writings. See the bulletin ad to register.