Christopher Laurence Examines: Sketching Out Some Truth

Christopher Laurence Examines: Sketching Out Some Truth

I say frequently that it is important for Catholics to be subversive when creating or engaging with popular media. To take a Tolkien-esque approach and make grabbing and keeping the audience’s attention paramount, and have the morals and metaphysics of the Faith Trojan-horsed in, beneath the surface. And I mean it. But, I am making an exception in this one instance for someone who is attempting to make some inroads into an area of popular culture that has become particularly overrun by vileness, spite and the “woke” agenda, and that is comedy. 

Fawaz Yasi is trying. His YouTube channel, “TradCat Skits”, isn’t entirely comedy, and the comedy isn’t gut-busting, but it is original, clean, and aimed at a segment that may frequently take itself too seriously: Traditional Catholics. But Yasi isn’t taking pot-shots; quite the opposite. He’s operating from the inside. Yasi, a cradle Catholic who had a reversion to the Faith and then spent his initial time after returning in the Novus Ordo, says of his inaugural attendance at a Traditional Latin Mass,

“I knew I had found something that had the sense of true worship in its reverence, prayers, and its simplicity.”

Yasi identifies as a Traditional Catholic now. And the position of centrality which the Faith takes in his life is evident in his videos. When I asked Fawaz what form he sees future sketches taking, and whether he had considered working with themes for his videos which were not explicitly Catholic on the surface, he answered, 

“…every skit I have done or plan on creating will have Catholic teaching at its core. But the Faith is very broad so sometimes my skits will be explicitly Catholic and sometimes the skit is based on natural virtue or the natural law.”

It’s certainly hard to fault him for this, as zeal for the Faith is admirable, and we desperately need those who posses it creating and working within the entertainment media. However, I do hope he will consider engaging in some of what I call “Positive Subversion” with his videos in the future. Preaching to the choir can be laudable (sometimes even the choir needs a reminder of what the Church teaches), but as I constantly say, we desperately need people creating work which is entertaining first, especially to those who are outside The Church, to lure them in, and to subconsciously get them pondering and mulling over questions of morality, metaphysics, theology and natural law without even realizing it. Most people who watched the Lord of the Rings films or even read the novels are not consciously cognizant of how much Christological typology, Catholic imagery and morality, fraternal charity and even Mariology it contains. They just see a shiny ring, swords and monsters, “magic”, adventure and epic battles. But, without knowing it, they’re absorbing deep truths of the Faith.

I believe Fawaz Yasi will, in fact, move towards that approach in time, because he gets it. I asked him what, in his opinion, people (and Catholics in particular) get wrong when attempting to engage with the culture. His answer was very encouraging,

“I think there is a lack of creativity. The truth of the Faith should always be told because truth is tied to charity, but I believe at times our approach can sometimes be too academic, which has its place, but at times there needs to be an implicit artistic or creative way of transmitting the Faith that does not compromise the truth. For example, instead of always engaging in a classroom approach to handing down the Faith we need to find other ways to display what a virtuous person looks like in a more creative way.”

Yasi’s current videos — dealing with Modernism, gluttony, the demonic, charity, and living the Faith with joy instead of wearing it like a wet blanket — are worthy of viewing for any Catholic looking for a chuckle and a new perspective on these truths. And keep your eye on Yasi, who has ambitious ideas, as expressed when I questioned him on the future of TradCat Skits;

“I want to create something that shows the sanctification process and how the Saints approached holiness, which I think is the absolute answer to all of our Church and societal problems.“