Christopher Laurence Examines – Why Bother?

Christopher Laurence Examines – Why Bother?

  The modern creative landscape is an anfractuous maze of tin-can walls, adrift on an unmoored barge in a raging tempest, where one’s morality has a frighteningly tenuous perch in a crow’s nest of worm-rotted, creaking wood. It is with great frequency that I find myself lamenting the lack of well-intentioned, talented, traditional Catholics being involved in the arts and media, but I’ve come to realize I largely can’t blame them. What motivation is there for someone to endeavor to create something truly beautiful for a society that no longer recognizes beauty? Let’s imagine Shakespeare had not been born in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, England, in 1564; but rather in Piscataway, New Jersey, in 1997. Let us assume he commenced along the same creative trajectory, and composed the same works for the theater. They would be utterly rejected upon making their first appearance in our modern culture. If anyone gave them any attention at all it would be to lavish scorn upon them. Sold-out performances filled with the common people as well as aristocrats, and meeting with raucous approval? Ridiculous. World-wide, near-universal and popular acclaim? Absurd. How long before Shakespeare considered himself talentless, a failure, and took to writing for late-night talk shows, or “learning to code”? There is no telling.

  So, in the same regard, how do we compel those among us with a creative proclivity, talent gifted from the Almighty, and a proper understanding of morality firmly affixed in their spirits, to enter “once more into the breach”, and bare their soul in the form of their creations, composed and born of their sweat, tears and the blood of their hearts? Honestly, I don’t know. The month in which I write this has been delegated by the demoniacs at the heads of every mega-corporation and their lapdogs in government as “Pride month”. Now it is those who reject pride as the sin of satan who are in turn rejected in society; made into pariahs. In this we witness the epitome of our debased culture and popular media, all moving as one great, writhing, rainbow-colored leviathan, dragging its bow-legged haunches across everything held dear by sensible people, and placing its glitter-spattered boot on the necks of any who dare resist state-enforced faggotry, and the dissemination of the most base of degeneracy upon our children. Nary a film will be green-lit, nor a Netflix pilot picked up, nor one single cell of a cartoon animated, without the presence of a gay and/or “transgender” character, if not several, among the main cast. This is only the clearest representation of the sickness of immorality and indifference which comprises the great, greasy underbelly of Western popular media. This ordure has spread, stinking of rot, into every corner of what I am reluctant to even refer to as “culture”.

  And so, in the face of all this, it is almost beyond the pale to entreat anyone to pour themselves into work which will be rejected outright by the predominant pedophiles, sodomites, atheists, anti-moralists, Catholic-haters and Freemasons who control the arts and media, and who cling to this earthly power with their clawed hands, while having both feet firmly in hell (whether they realize it or not). It seems impossible to make a living creating anything authentically true and beautiful. Of course, if one is willing to grift and placate, you can indeed acquire your forty pieces of silver – and many times over. But how does one write a grift of a poem? Paint a placating work of beautiful art? These things are in fundamental opposition.

  The climate for those of us attempting to tell the truth and simultaneously entertain, or to create without conforming to the debauched sensibilities of what “sells”, is dire indeed. I wish I could perform some sure-fire bit of legerdemain which would sneak Catholic-permeated artistic works into the mainstream, under the noses of the masters of this world, where they would be appreciated by those who are waiting for their arrival. Alas, I cannot. I wish there were some moneyed underground of moralists I could direct you to, who would take you on, dear creator, as a protege, never again to worry about being unable to feed your baby without compromising your principles, or questioning whether the talent you posses truly came from God, and if He meant you to use it.

  I can only tell you that I worry in the same way. I also am afraid at times; when I haven’t slept, and I’m holding my three-month old baby girl, feeding her a bottle while her mother heads off to work for what while hopefully be one of the last times, as we have committed ourselves to doing everything in our power, and with God’s grace, to enable her to be able to stay home with our child. I believe God has led me along, bit by bit (at a slow pace, so that I might be able to mentally and spiritually keep up), and brought me to this place where I can write these words for you to read, and where I can speak so you can hear. In my moments of spiritual lucidity I have full trust in His providence. I’ve promised Him, through the intercession of His Immaculate Mother, to keep doing my best, marching forward, taking the opportunities He has shown me, with the meager gifts He has given me, unless He turns me around and points me elsewhere. And that is what I ask of you, also. If you have ability, creativity, talent, no matter how exiguous it may appear to you, God will make use of it if you let Him. People are hungering for the taste brought by the good salt; squinting in the darkness at the horizon, searching for the lamplight; longing for the city on the hill, within whose walls there is refuge. We can be these things, we must. If He has given us talent, it is imperative that we not waste it, but use it for His glory, to be always at odds with the world which hates Him, and to trust Him to take care of us in turn.

“And he that had received the five talents coming, brought other five talents, saying:

Lord, thou didst deliver to me five talents, behold I have gained other five over and

above. His lord said to him: Well done, good and faithful servant, because thou hast

been faithful over a few things, I will place thee over many things: enter thou into the

joy of thy lord. And he also that had received the two talents came and said: Lord, thou

deliveredst two talents to me: behold I have gained other two. His lord said to him: Well

done, good and faithful servant: because thou hast been faithful over a few things, I will

place thee over many things: enter thou into the joy of thy lord.” -Matthew 25:20–23