this is my body, given up for you
Have you ever felt like you spend your waking hours in a play? Maybe not a play, more like a piece of performance art. A cycle of actions to commit every day, that you see as normal, trivial even, while everyone else watches you in confusion. You speak a dead language shut up at home, then go out into the world expecting everyone to be fluent, and finding no fellow man, no compatriots, not a single soul who can validate your way of life. Immersed in a culture you are desperate to break free from, that you know is bizarre to its core, yet the only time you feel a sense of familiarity is in its suffocating embrace.
It is strangely comforting to find validation on a TV show for an upbringing that was anything but welcomed in real life. Derry Girls is the only piece of media I have ever consumed that captures the banality of Catholic body horror. In this scene from Season 2, Episode 4, the characters are at a proper Irish Catholic wake. The four girls examine the body, open casket and all, with a mixture of curiosity and acceptance. James, the British punching bag of the group, stares in absolute terror at what he’s seeing. “Ok, can I just check something,” he says, looking for his pulse after the fright of his life. “Everybody else can see the dead body, right?” Like it’s not the most natural sight to see at a funeral. Of course the dead body's there, James. On display for all to witness. Why the hell wouldn’t it be?
James brings me right back to the good old days of ostracization. I moved through my adolescence as a semi-macabre alien, my peers bewildered by my adherence to arcane customs and a backward belief system. Showing up to school at 8 AM with quote-unquote “dirt” on my face, the beginning of the Lenten season visible on my forehead. A knowledge of the Sacraments, an ignorance of mainstream culture, Mass every Sunday no ifs, ands, or buts. You did as you were told, you accepted what was shown to you, and you made no complaints about the situations you were placed in, especially if it was some straight-up freak shit.
Dead bodies are nothing new, personally or historically. My own Derry Girls wake happened years ago, in the middle of my junior year of high school. My grandfather passed away somewhat unexpectedly, so my family made our usual dour pilgrimage up to Michigan. I marveled at the scene, how my grandmother could socialize with her progeny while her husband of god knows how many decades laid in his coffin, skin taut over his face. My littlest cousin bounced around the room while the adults pleaded with him to stop, to show some decorum, to have some respect. What eight year old has any of that? I watched as he repeatedly climbed up the wall like a monkey, his birthright as the baby of the family, and peered down at our grandfather. The only times he stopped moving. Not sad, per se. Just curious and accepting.
But that was not a one-and-done experience. Oh no. Exposure to the dead on display started even earlier, on a trip to (where else) the Vatican. As my family walked into St. Peter’s Basilica, my fourteen-year-old eyes locked onto the two dead popes in the glass cases, laid out under yellow fluorescent lights like museum exhibits. The tour guide explained that these popes had shown signs of incorruption, a Catholic belief in which corpses do not show normal signs of decay, but rather are kept more or less intact. Incorruptibility is one of the major pathways towards canonization, so these popes could have been well on their way to sainthood, public spectacle included. Remarkable. I studied them, contemplated their validity. One of the popes, dead since the 1500s, looked like a prop from an Indiana Jones movie. Yellow skin, cheeks caved in, plaster-like under his red dress. Pretty good-looking for 500 years worth of decomposition, but nothing to write home about. The other pope, dead since the 1940s, had a much better shot. He just looked asleep. Peaceful in his pontifical robes, zucchetto snug on his white-haired head.
It’s funny, these moments coming back to me. I guess I’ve never thought about how insane it all seems. Catholics don’t just bury our dead. We publicize them, eager to find any semblance of everlasting life hewn into rotting flesh. A slight chance of a miracle and we bring the stage lights down, pull out the props, put on a goddamn show. Even in death your body is not, cannot, will not be yours. You are a property of the will of God and the whims of the Church, no matter what you do, no matter how far you run away from it all. Sinners beware. Lapsed ones be silent.
Pessimism is a lie. All these moments really came back to me a few weeks ago with the announcement of Carlos Acutis’ sainthood. The first millennial saint. Like. Ever. Carlos was a devout Catholic and computer whiz, two descriptions I never knew could exist in the same sentence. When he wasn’t cataloging miracles of the Eucharist,1 Carlos helped out the homeless in his neighborhood, defended bullying victims, and called out street harassers catcalling girls. Amongst other angelic acts. He loved video games and animals, and just seemed like a nice, normal, good kid. He passed away in 2006 from leukemia at the age of fifteen, a life devoted to service cut short too soon. Before he died, he asked to be buried in Assisi in Italy, due to his devotion to St. Francis of Assisi (patron saint of animals if your heart hasn’t broken yet). Carlos has had two miracles attributed to him, meeting some more necessary requirements for beatification. His body was exhumed and transferred to a shrine a few years ago, where believers can go and pray through2 him. They look at him in his Nike gym shoes and track jacket and ask him to intercede on their behalf, to open up a direct line to God, whose phone only seems to exist off the hook.
It pains me to see the body of a teenage boy, so dedicated to the most marginalized in his community, laid out for spectacle, fifteen forever, a piece of public evidence for the immortal truth. But it pains me in a deeper way, dare I say a more spiritual way, to know that Carlos has brought healing and inspiration in death as he did in life. The two miracles allegedly occurred because of his transcendental presence: a four year healed from touching his relics, a young woman healed after her mother prayed through him for help. I hurt for him, wherever he is, how much responsibility he must face, so many voices, pleading begging crying, desperate for relief, only knowing to ask him because his body has been removed from his original resting place.
I don’t know. I’m just self-centered, I guess. Blinded by my own issues with our shared faith, I can’t see the forest for Carlos’ trees. It’s clear that this exhibition is exactly what he would’ve wanted: to be used as a vessel for worshippers in their time of need, to help those who seek a remedy, to be a solid presence when someone’s world has caved in above their head. That dedication to humanity is the most beautiful act of service you can find. All because of his Catholic faith, the Catholic faith, in its weirdest and wildest glory.
What is a body? Is it ours? Can we own anything in this transient, fleeting, base world? I’ve sacrificed mine to a silent god, a god whose presence could only be felt in the harshest diatribes of the most stringent believers. Yet after renouncing all that, my body is a void, wondering where to go from here, whether my earthly presence will amount to anything as noble and influential as Carlos’ life and death, or if I will be another nameless faceless, counting down the seconds to my demise, banal and insignificant.
What I’m Reading/Watching
Bottoms, dir. Emma Seligman
SLAYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY LITERALLY AND FIGURATIVELY
Hilarious, crazy, balls-to-the-walls fun. Will be a comfort rewatch until kingdom come.
Happy Hour, Marlowe Granados
Been waiting since its release to get my hands on a copy and my feelings are…mixed? I guess? I love a no-thoughts-just-vibes book, short and sweet, vivacity and all. And this had it in spades! Very light, very fun. Plus, I’m always a sucker for a New York City setting. But the dialogue drove me crazy, too cutesy and ~intellectual~ in the peskiest way. Like I know I suffer from what Torrey Peters calls the “Midwestern inferiority complex,” but every conversation the characters had made me roll my eyes. So highbrow! Much culture! But maybe that was the satire I was missing, blinded by my “aw, shucks” goggles (didn’t feel like it though 🤔). Basically: here for a good time, not a long thought-provoking time lol.
Glitch Feminism, Legacy Russell.
Very disappointing. More regurgitation than anything else. I was expecting a deep dive on the intersection of feminism and technology, but this book turned out to simply use technological language as metaphors to describe feminist ideology. Which, interesting in a stylistic sense! Enjoyed visualizing body politics with this kind of imagery. But Russell spent more time describing artists and quoting writers with actual arguments and creative projects than putting forth a strong thesis of her own. I’d suggest getting into the cited sources section of the book instead- a much better use of your time.
ok, not-so-TLDR on catholic doctrine: catholics believe that the eucharist (bread given out at mass) becomes the literal body of jesus after the priest blesses it, a process called transubstantiation. but it’s not like an imitation of jesus' body. in a metaphorical sense. like. it’s jesus' REAL body. flesh consumed by his followers. over and over and over again. every sunday. the romans persecuted the early catholics for cannibalism, so any miracle that can prove the eucharist is in fact jesus' actual flesh (i.e. starts to bleed out of nowhere) is taken very seriously as an official Miracle. fun!
"through" not "to": saints are used as intermediaries, specific conduits that expedites god's answer to prayers sent up to heaven. but catholicism is still not beating the polytheistic allegations entirely lol it can get a little suspicious