People leave the Catholic Church for all sorts of reasons, none of them sufficient but some of them better than others.
I can understand if someone concludes that certain Catholic teachings are wrong and that, in conscience, he must cease to be a Catholic. There are former Catholics who left because they decided that the Real Presence isn’t real or that popes don’t have a special role or that women ought to be ordained. I can understand their decision while thinking them wrong in their reasoning.
Such people leave to escape the Catholic creed. Others leave to escape the Catholic code. These are the more numerous: people who decide the Catholic Church isn’t for them because the Church teaches a morality to which they don’t wish to conform. I can understand their reason for leaving too, but I struggle to work up any respect for it.
Then there are reasons that defy categorization, such as the reason given by Mark Judge, who on May 13 announced his renunciation of the Church in his column at Real Clear Religion. The title was “Why I Left the Catholic Church.” Here is the opening:
“In the end it was art that did it—or rather, the lack of art.
“I’m not angry, like so many other ex-Catholics. I don’t have a problem with the Catholic Church’s position on sexual morality. I didn’t have a bad experience with a priest or resent any nuns that taught me.
“In the end, I left the Catholic Church because as an artist I could no longer hold out hope that there would be a place for me in the Church. The Catholic Church, which gave the world the Sistine Chapel, Dante, and the genius filmmaker Robert Bresson, has lost interest in supporting artists.”
Judge, 51, came to my attention because for several years he has been working on a screenplay for a movie about Whittaker Chambers (1901–1961), the one-time Soviet spy who, after renouncing Communism, became the foreign affairs editor at Time. When he testified before Congress in 1948, the result was the famous Hiss-Chambers Case. A few years later Chambers wrote his magnificent autobiography,Witness.
My long-time interest in Chambers led me to make note of Mark Judge. He has come to my attention only occasionally, usually when reporting progress (or lack of progress) on his screenplay.
Now Judge has earned a flutter of notoriety not as the writer of a screenplay but as the writer of a strange cri de coeur. He has abandoned the Catholic Church because, he says, the Church has abandoned artists.
“After graduating from college in the 1980s, I dedicated myself to serving the Church through the arts. Being from a family of accomplished artists—one brother is a curator, the other an award-winning actor—I knew that things would not happen overnight.
"There were steps that led to success—a produced off-Broadway play, a novel that sells a few copies but paves the way for more, a Catholic fanzine that celebrates the best pop music. Such foundational steps should produce a Thomas Merton, or Fulton Sheen.
“What I was not prepared for is how negative, obstructionist, and soul-crushing the Church has become when it comes to art. I have asked prominent Catholic scholars and theologians why the Catholic Church has no foundation, think tank, fellowship, or even website for the study of popular culture. . . . Surely something, perhaps a single fellowship at a Catholic think tank, might not be a bad idea?
“In reply came only silence—or worse, contradictory and incoherent arguments.”
The way I read this, Judge got ticked off because no one in the Church offered to subsidize him. He could have been a Thomas Merton or a Fulton Sheen. Like Marlon Brando, he “coulda been a contender.” But there was no offer of a think-tank fellowship, nothing from a school or a non-profit. His art has been left languishing.
And what is his art?
It’s hard to tell. He lists himself as “journalist and filmmaker.”
He has written three books, each of which has sold poorly. His articles have appeared in such venues as The New York Times, The Washington Post, and the Daily Caller. His most regular audience seems to be for his weekly column at Real Clear Religion.
What about his filmmaking?
The not-yet-produced film about Chambers doesn’t count. Maybe he means his videos. He has produced many. Nearly five hundred of them, all short, appear at YouTube.
The most recent hundred or so feature pretty young women posing against exterior walls or on bridges or on outcroppings of rock or in bedrooms. Some of the models are bundled up. Most are in varying states of undress. In Judge's videos there is much cheesecake.
Is this the kind of stuff the Catholic Church should subsidize? I realize that Michelangelo and Masaccio and other Renaissance artists had patrons—whether popes or nobility—for whom they painted figures not just in undress but in no-dress. Think of the Vatican’s Sistine Chapel and Florence’s Brancacci Chapel.
But I have trouble drawing a parallel between those religious images and a video (“Liberty Island Swag”) featuring a scantily clad model standing under the water of a running shower. That may be art of a sort, but I’m at a loss to understand why it should be underwritten by the Church.
I don’t know how good a screenwriter Mark Judge may be. Maybe that’s where he’ll find success. I hope so, because I’d like to see a well-done documentary or drama about Whittaker Chambers. From glancing at a few of his videos, I have to say I don’t think Judge's future is as a cinematographer, nor should it be as a former Catholic.
As I said, I don’t think there ever is a sufficient reason to leave the Catholic Church, but some reasons make more sense than do others. To me, Judge’s reason makes no sense at all. It seems to be less a reason than a display of pique.