Bringing the saints alive
According to an article in the Catholic Transcript (newspaper of the Archdiocese of Hartford), EWTN has just filmed a series of “interviews” with 10 Catholic saints. The idea is interesting and if done well can give a human dimension to the saints. The 10 saints chosen are:
Augustine of Hippo, Gemma Galgani, Gregory the Great, Louis de Monfort, Thomas Aquinas, Teresa of Avila, Robert Bellarmine, Catherine of Siena, Irenaeus of Lyons, Jean Vianney.
This gives 3 women and 7 men; 3 from the patristic period, 2 from the middle ages, 2 from the reformation, 1 18th century, 1 19th century and one 19th/20th century. Except for Augustine, all come from Italy, France or Spain.
What do I find wrong with this list? Several things bother me. First, one of these saints is so obscure that I had to look her up: St. Gemma Galgani, an Italian mystic from the early 20th century. There have been many mystics; why her?
Second, the list is heavily biased to South-western Europe. There are no doctors of the Eastern Church, no saints from northern Europe, no saints from the Americas, Africa or the East. (Augustine, culturally, was not African in the modern sense of the word.)
Third, with the exception of Irenaeus, there are no martyrs. Why no witnesses to the faith who gave everything: Edith Stein, Maxamilian Kolbe, Hans Jaggerstatter, Paul Miki, Thomas More?
Fourth, there are no missionaries: where are Francis Xavier, Cyril & Methodius, Patrick?
Fifth, there are no saints who gave everything in service to the poor: Don Bosco, Katherine Drexel, Damian the Leper, Peter Claver.
Would anyone care to justify this list? Who would you choose?
Comments are closed.
Well, I guess this can be done as a kind of modern edition of the medieval plays. If done right, I would chose the following (with two shows having two saints):
St Anthony of Egypt
St Moses the Black
St Macrina
St Augustine and St John Cassian in conversation
St Maximus the Confessor
St Francis of Assisi with St Clare
St Teresa of Avila
Blessed Kateri Tekakwitha
St Seraphim of Sarov
St Edith Stein
The list doesn’t bother me as much as you. And I like pretty much all of the saints that you mention, and I could see the argument that they could be included in a top 10 list. It’s probably a function of the fact that there are so MANY great saints out there that it’s impossible to limit them to 10. So I wouldn’t read too much into the particular 10 that they’ve chosen – it looks like they tried to cover a spectrum of the Church’s history. In fact, if this series is a success, they’ll probably go ahead and do another 10 later. After all, you mention at least 13 yourself, not counting those on EWTN’s list. If you had to narrow down to 10, which would you choose?
First, one of these saints is so obscure that I had to look her up.
I don’t know anything about her either. But that very fact is probably the reason why she was picked in the first place: they wanted another woman saint, one closer in time to us in the modern world, and everyone has heard about Edith Stein already, so why not introduce people to a more obscure saint?
My top 10:
I think Augustine, Aquinas, Catherine of Siena, Teresa of Avila have to be on it — truly giant men and women. Gregory the Great and John Vianney make it too, as the top example of a pope and the top example of a priest. After that, I’m not sure. I really like the idea of a missionary being on there — so probably Francis Xavier, a giant of a missionary. Probably Thomas More, as a martyr and top-notch example for operating in the modern political world. Probably Martin de Porres — an amazing saint, and one from another part of the world and another part of society. And then for my tenth, I would choose one from this past century — so why not Gemma Galgini, since I don’t know anything about her. (If not Gemma, Kolbe and Edith Stein are great options also).
That’s my 10, and I already see that I don’t have a “married” saint or a “parent” saint, which is something I’d want to include also. Oh well.
Kind of hard to pick a list if you have to limit it to ten. One thing that jumped out at me is that 7 out of the 10 are doctors of the Church (one, Louis de Montfort, is a candidate for doctor); and Irenaeus is a Father of the Church. It appears that they are picking those who influenced the development of theology (I don’t know where Jean Vianney and Gemma fit into that.) I would have included Therese of Lisieux, since she also is a doctor of the Church.
My personal list would have been:
Therese of Lisieux
Faustina
Francis of Assisi
Francis de Sales
Frances Cabrini
Juliana Falconieri
Cecilia
Jean de Brebeuf and company
Bernadette
Carmelite martyrs of Compiegne
I’m sure everyone has their own list!
Any or all of the Apostles. Certainly Augustine, Aquinas, Cyprian, Theresa of Avila, Thomas More. St. Francis of Assisi. It’s a big list and an excellent question.
Yes, a married saint would be good. On the original list, the only layperson (neither clergy nor religious) is Catherine of Siena, who never married.
Yet I hope they do a good job on this. When I was young, Steve Allen had a program on public TV (something we may soon no longer have) called “Meeting of Minds.” I was fascinated by it. Allen would “interview” three historical figures, often one a saint — Thomas Aquinis and Thomas More I recall. Actors in full costume played the role and spoke and debated with the other “guests.”
I recall Allen was once asked why he did not continue to the program and he said it was incredible work doing the research needed. I assume the same for EWTN, if they are going to do a decent job here, it will be a major labor. Some of these saints simply have very little (non-legendary) written about them.
I think any list of 10 could be critiqued one way or the other. Given that it is an American production, the lack of any Americans is a touch odd. France, Spain and Italy do weigh heavily in Catholic history, but having all 10 (Augustine was converted in Italy) from three countries is a bit much.
Perhaps if the series is well done we can expect more than 10 later. There are certainly no shortage of interesting saints.
I might put in a commendation for the saints of Canada, the Canadian Jesuit martyrs, our two daisies Marguerite D’Youville and Marguerite Bourgeois and, very recently, Brother Andre of Montreal.
Given the very traditional southern European canon found here, it is a surprise to see neither Francis nor Clare. Gemma does stick out a bit, but that is probably a good reason to include her.
And who wouldn’t like to see an interview with Monica about her wayward son?
Also, no Apostles?
St. Gemma Galgani is hardly an obscure saint, for all that she doesn’t seem to have much of a following in North America.
There’s really not much excuse for the lack of Eastern saints, but it seems very likely that all of the people chosen were chosen because they have writings that are fairly easily accessible (in the sense both that they are easy to understand or at least to put in a paraphrase that’s easy to understand, and that they are easy to find because they are already widely read). Given the format that makes quite a bit of sense: there is plenty of material available on which to base an interview without having to engage in too much imaginative reconstruction. After all, what the first precondition of any such format would be to pick someone with whom one could imaginatively have a substantive conversation without having to make things up to attribute to them. And St. Augustine, St. Gemma, and St. Teresa already make it easier by the fact that they wrote well-known works that discuss parts of their own lives in some detail (St. Catherine and St. Gregory could also be added in a sense, although they don’t do so in as straightforward a way); St. Catherine and St. Gemma also have a body of correspondence that is already fairly widely read; and so forth.
Given the format that makes quite a bit of sense: there is plenty of material available on which to base an interview without having to engage in too much imaginative reconstruction. After all, what the first precondition of any such format would be to pick someone with whom one could imaginatively have a substantive conversation without having to make things up to attribute to them.
Great point, Brandon. The article says that the filming consisted of “intensive one-on-one interviews with the actor/saints; then, at night, they preselected members of the audience to ask a question of the saint before the live audience.”
It makes sense to choose saints who have written significantly — saints who we have a good record of how they thought and how they saw the world.
Kurt,
Despite her close association with the Passionists, St. Gemma was a layperson as well (also unmarried, however).
I appreciate the correction. Thank you!
If I could pick my own ten, just because I’d want to see them, it’d be:
St. Mary Magdalen
St. Paul
St. Gregory of Nyssa
St. Irenaeus of Lyon
St. Ignatius Loyola
St. Catherine of Siena
St. Mary McKillop
St. Marguerite D’Youville
St. Thomas More
St. Augustine with St. Monica
But I’ll probably have a different list tomorrow.
I had overlooked the absence of laity and married persons (though it is true Gemma was lay); on the other hand, the number of married saints is pretty small. Of the few I can think of off-hand, marriage did not seem central to their identity as saints: that is, they did not express their sanctity through their marriage.
I guess we could have Sts Anna and Joachim ;)
How many more can you think of? The list is depressingly small. Indeed, if I remember correctly, JPII actually raised this issue. I think, in the end, it says something about the Church’s ambivalent relationship with sexuality.
It’s entirely possible that it’s due to an ambivalence about sexuality, at least sometimes, but I suspect that a more constant factor is systematic: except in the case of martyrs and confessors (sometimes), canonization processes take a very long time, and what that means is that people actually have to keep the memory of the holiness alive for more than a generation or two. In general families, friends, and neighbors aren’t sufficiently numerous and organized enough to do this; so when we do get married saints, like Sts. Basil and Emilia, it’s because something unusual really fixed them in the memory of a lot of people (in their case, raising a family full of notable saints). And without some sort of special sign even very good marriages aren’t usually well known enough beyond the family circle to make a strong enough impression to be remembered for a century or more. There are other kinds of cases where similar factors seem to be involved — e.g., until the nineteenth century there are surprisingly few non-martyr secular parish priests who are canonized (The Cure D’Ars famously thought that dying a parish priest was a guarantee that one would not be canonized; there had actually been a handful before, like St. Ivo Helory, but remarkably few). And the reverse is certainly a reason why religious orders have had so many.
SS Peter, Mary Magdalene & John the Evangelist
S Brigid of Kildare
SS Benedict & Scholastica
SS Francis & Clare of Assisi
S Philip Neri
S Maura Clarke
I should explain that my choices represent what might be called hinges (cardinals, if you will).
SS Peter, Mary Magdalene & John were all deeply loved by Jesus, but for seemingly very different qualities. It would be interesting to see them interviewed together, to have those qualities interwoven. The Apostolic and Patristic Church was built on those different qualities.
S Brigid represents the hinge of bringing of the Gospel beyond the Classical world, rooting it in completely foreign soil, without the attributes of the established civilisations of Classical Antiquity (be it Roman, Egyptian, Hellenistic or Persian, et cet.).
The two middle pairs, seven centuries apart, would be great joint interviews representing the hinges of western Christianity on either side of the barbarian, Islamic, Viking and Crusade tides.
S Philip Neri represents the hinge of re-evangelisation of formerly Christian lands (Rome itself) in the nascent era of modernity, as Christendom was dying
And Maura Clarke represents the missionary impulse after the death of Christendom and triumphalism, the existential Church that is back to the margins.
I think, in critiquing this list, we need to go back and ask about the pedagogic purpose of this series. Is it simply, “here are some neat saints,” or are the producers trying to accomplish more? And truthfully, I cannot discern any unifying theme behind this selection.
For what it is worth, here is my list. One thread unifying my choices is that these are saints I think we need to emulate today.
St. Paul
St. Martin of Tours
St. Gregory of Nyssa
St. Francis of Assisi
St. Francis Xavier
St. Martin de Porres
St. Juan Diego
St. Paul Miki
St. Damian of Molokai
Oscar Romero
I thought of St Gregory of Nyssa, but then I decided St Macrina would actually be more interesting. I would like to see her version of her dialogues with St Gregory!
And truthfully, I cannot discern any unifying theme behind this selection.
What about the Brandon theory? “Can we create the illusion of an in-depth conversation/interview with this saint because we are fortunate to know the actual words and thoughts of the saint?” Then take saints across the entire history of the Church, and you get a list that looks like EWTN’s.
You can’t really do that with Sts. Juan Diego and Martin of Tours.
And truthfully, I cannot discern any unifying theme behind this selection.
For what it is worth, here is my list. One thread unifying my choices is that these are saints I think we need to emulate today.
Your saint list is a nice one, David. But it’s theme is just as indiscernible as EWTN’s, since your theme amounts to “saints I like”. Which is fine, as that’s the theme of pretty much everyone’s lists.
Brandon’s thesis seems superficially plausible, but ultimately it fails to explain: there are a host of saints that meet the criterion of “lots of written material to build a dialog from” and so some other criteria must have played a role. What were they? Perhaps I am being overly academic, but I have to ask the double question: what are the producers trying to say, and how will their message be received? And I am honestly unable to discern their organizational principles. Maybe it just is “saints we like” and that is fine, but that also means they have missed a chance to say more.
My list, perhaps imperfectly executed (it was late and I had had some wine with dinner), is organized around the themes I mentioned in my critique: these saints are martyrs, missionaries, have a radical option for the poor, and have challenged in a fundamental way the status quo. Maybe I will expand on this in a separate post.
I don’t quite understand your argument here. It is an obvious exaggeration a “host of saints that meet the criterion”; of the saints that have been listed by people here, only a handful of them are even close. A format of this sort is research-intensive: the material must be very accessible (both in terms of being researchable and being able to be put into easily understood form), quite extensive, and relatively easy to adapt to the interview form. Of the other saints who have been suggested here, I only see four who are even plausible candidates on this criteria — Edith Stein, Thomas More, Therese of Lisieux, and Gregory of Nyssa. Edith Stein has the advantage of an autobiographical work, but serious interviewing would require getting into sophisticated issues of Husserlian phenomenology; likewise, most of More’s actual work is polemical, and given how — well, forceful — some of it is, would be difficult to contextualize properly. This is a common problem: Liguori would be an excellent candidate in terms of quantity of writings and importance, for instance, but good luck trying to clarify nineteenth century debates about cases of conscience in a television interview. No matter how important the pedagogical issue, the overwhelming concern in any project like this will actually be feasibility. I rather suspect that the hard task was getting it up to even ten feasible candidates rather than, as you are suggesting, narrowing it down to ten. (Which isn’t to say that there aren’t real candidates that aren’t on the list — St. Gregory of Nyssa or St. Therese or Joan of Arc, and so forth — but it’s entirely possible for names just not to come to mind at the right time, or, if they are named, for people to worry about whether they can pull it off.)
Contrast this with the list: St. Augustine, St. Gemma, and St. Teresa all have extraordinarily popular autobiographical works; St. Gemma has left us a diary; St. Gemma and St. Catherine have a widely read correspondence; St. Louis and the Cure D’Ars are both popular saints whose writings play a role in popular spirituality; St. Louis can be tied directly into a very familiar part of Catholic life, the rosary; St. Gregory is the best known Pope to meet the requirements; St. Thomas is the obvious medieval. The only real surprises on the list are Bellarmine and Irenaeus, and in St. Robert’s case there’s the Galileo tie-in (thus relating to another major feature of modern Catholic life, science-religion interaction) and in St. Irenaeus’s case most of what we know about his life is from comments by St. Irenaeus himself, and link him at one remove from John the Evangelist himself (and I suppose it’s possible, as Pio seems to suggest below, that he was intended as the token Greek).
Were resources infinite and lots of imaginative reconstruction allowed, plenty of saints would be nice to see — St. Moses of Egypt, or St. Cyril of Alexandria, or any number of others. But a project like this is always operating under very sharp constraints — deadlines have to be met, research budgets aren’t indefinitely large, accuracy and quality has to be maintained, audience has to be considered, compromises have to be developed. The interview format itself is very restrictive, as compared to, for instance, a narrated documentary format, which is a format that would be more suitable to most of the saints people have suggested here. In general, in radio and television even very good programming is more to be explained by such constraints than by any elaborate vision; even big Whedon-level names with big budgets and lots of room to maneuver rarely allow themselves the indulgence of doing what they’d really like to do, and rarely succeed when they try.
EWTN wasn’t going for a list of “Top Ten Saints”. They also weren’t going for “Ten Saints Evenly Distributed by Race and Sex”.
This article reminds me of the workers who spent all day in the field, and of the brother of the prodigal son. We’re supposed to rejoice with the angels about the saints in heaven, not tally them according to a quota. The saints are universal, and it’s disrespectful to the universal church to reduce them to provincial statistics.
Would it be so bad if EWTN had a series about the Italian saints of the 1500′s-1600′s? Would that be an offense against the saints of France, or of Asia? There were some great saint in Italy in those years. Would Gregory the Great be angry that he wasn’t included? It would be spiritually beneficial for viewers to learn about the saints of that time and place, not because of where they were but because of who they were.
Would it be wrong if EWTN did a show about saints you’ve never heard of? I don’t know anything about Saint Gemma Galgani. Good for EWTN for teaching people about her.
As for the Apostles, as a practical matter, the writer of a fictional interview with them would be severely limited, considering that the most important events in their lives are largely documented in the Gospels.
No Pinky, none of these choices would have been “so bad,” and if that had been their explicit choice, I probably would not have said anything, or said something very different. But given a seemingly random selection of saints, I believe it is worthwhile (and not offensive to the communion of saints) to point out shortcomings in the selection and to inquire after their methodology.
As for your assertion that “The saints are universal, and it’s disrespectful to the universal church to reduce them to provincial statistics”: I disagree, strongly. Saints are not abstract, ideal images of holiness, they were living human beings embedded in a cultural matrix and they speak to those who find resonance in their own lives with the lives of the saints. To “pick on” one saint at random, St. Begu does not speak to, say, Mexican peasants in any meaningful way. Does this make her less worthy of remembrance? No, of course not. But it does say that one cannot simply present a random collection of saints and expect them to automatically be meaningful to your audience.
David, either learning about the saint is spiritually beneficial or it isn’t. If you think that St. Begu’s life has no benefit for Mexican peasants, you think too little of Mexicans, peasants, and/or the Universal Church. (Really, I know how lazy it is to throw around charges of racism on the internet, and maybe you didn’t mean to belittle anyone with that comment, but I found it awful.) Are you capable of getting something of value from the saint’s life? If so, what puts you so far above Mexican peasants?
The saint you picked is one about whom very little is known. That’s the only barrier to someone gleaning something from her life. It’s not her culture or sex. Every saint manifests the love of the same God in a different way. I’m not a teenage girl, but I find St. Joan of Arc inspiring. Ditto for the priesthood and the Cure d’Ars. We gain something from studying the saints because we have souls, capable of imagination and empathy. I cannot imagine how limited a person’s faith would have to be if he can only understand the saintliness of someone who lives a similar life.
Sorry Pinky, I forget sometimes that I am not talking to my batos. I am Mexican-American and descended from campesinos (on at least on some branches of a complex family tree). So I merely was going to my own ancestors for an extreme example. So I do not think too little of Mexicans or peasants, any mis-communication notwithstanding. And, truthfully, even if a great deal more was known about her, I suspect that I would not get much from the life of St. Begu. My failing perhaps.
Nevertheless, the inculturation of saints detracts not one whit from the universality of the church. Pope John Paul II realized that it enhanced the universality of the Church by showing that holiness was present throughout the people of God: that is one of the reasons he canonized so many saints beloved by various local churches. They are now universally saints, but will hold a special place in the hearts of the communities they are closest to. It takes nothing from them to say that they do not speak to other communities: God chose them to make his love known in a specific time and place.
Even God seems to realize that the saints are inculturated. When the Blessed Mother appeared to Juan Diego, God chose her to be dark-skinned, dressed as an Aztec princess, and surrounded by symbols that spoke to Juan and his compatriots.
One of Tolkien’s goals in writing Lord of the Rings was “the encouragement of good morals in this real world, by the ancient device of exemplifying them in unfamiliar embodiments”. The lives of saints who lived in different cultures can have the same effect. I think you realize that, since you included Kolbe and Patrick on your personal list. (Kolbe may be chronologically close to us, but he led an immeaurably different life.) A few people mentioned Francis of Assisi – there’s a guy who fit in with *no* culture, and is universally loved. Mary may be a warm blanket, but Francis is a snowball in the face. And is Mary any less of a warm blanket for being a 1st century Jew? No, an emphasis on inculturation underestimates the listener and narrows his appreciation of the Faith. Cultural blinders may be common, but they aren’t to be encouraged.
i could not agree more. the selected saints were a bit biased. perhaps some more modern saints would have been better. for example, Dorothy Day, Maxamilian Kolbe, etc.
St. Irenaeus was Greek, although he became a bishop in France.
There’s a good book of “interviews” of 30 saints, blesseds, venerables, and servants of God of the Americas put out by Loyola Press, Saints of the Americas.
I’d choose, presuming we had to choose saints:
•Francis of Assisi and Clare
•Catherine of Siena
•Juan Diego
•Katherine Drexel
•Perpetua and Felicity
•Charles Lwanga
•Francis Xavier
•Martin of Tours
If I could include others the list would be
•Dorothy Day
•Archbishop Oscar Romero
•Blessed Franz Jägerstätter
•Francis and Clare
•Catherine of Siena
•Francis Xavier
•Teresa of Avila
•Thomas More
•Jerzy Popielusko
John, who is Jerzy Popielusko? Why is he on your list?
You must be young (or at least young enough not to recall Solidarity):
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jerzy_Popie%C5%82uszko
Trust me: I am old enough to remember Solidarity. I actually stood around arguing with a Trotskyite whether Solidarity was a “real” trade union and whether Lech Walesa had “class consciousness.” (Those were the days!) However, I completely forgot Jerzy Popielusko. Thanks for calling him to mind.
Now, aside from choosing which saints to feature, there are other issues here.
As far as I can guess this has potential to be great, but it will need some genius. Without great actors and great writing it will be very forgettable. I hope EWTN won’t be satisfied with a mediocre production. They need to get the best possible people on this.
I am surprised that Our Lady and St. Joseph have not been named for, let’s see, Married Couple Saints and being the Top Saints of All time.
There are way too many cool saints in history to make a top 10 list. I hope EWTN continues and expands it because I would love to hear from
1. Mary and Joseph
2. Perpetua and Felicity (especially one of them being the mother of a nursing infant and choosing death over watching her child grow up)
3. St. Sarah because the Desert Fathers revered her and we know so little about her.
4. Monica and Augustine
5. Francis and Clare
6.St. Philomena (a child who chose martyrdom)
7.Oscar Romero and Juan Gerardi (the two martyred Archbishops of the Americas)
8.Dorothy Day and Peter Maurin
9. St. Henriette Delille (the first African-American Saint and the first black woman to integrate the Sisters of Mercy, she also advocated societal change regarding ownership of slaves)
10. All the Teresas (Teresa of Avila, St. Therese of Lisieux and Mother Teresa).
10. also, Theresa Benedicta of the Cross (i.e., Edith Stein)
oops, right. Forgot her.
How would one prepare to portray Mary and Joseph, and particularly to take questions from the audience as Mary or Joseph? Setting aside the Magnificat (which many commentaries speculate was a Jewish-Christian hymn) Mary says almost nothing in the Gospels, and if there are any words at all attributed to Joseph, I can’t think of them.