Why Catholics Venerate the Saints


Not so very long ago, back when I was a fundamentalist, two uneducated Tennessee mountaineers taught me the Catholic doctrine of the Veneration of Saints.

The first of these encounters happened when I was ten years old. My parents took me to the Smoky Mountain resort town of Gatlinburg, famous in 17 states for caramel apples, Elvis shrines, haunted houses, and, best of all, wax museums.

One of these museums was a bit out of the ordinary, and my favorite. It was called The American Historical Wax Museum; a quaint, immaculately tidy little “Mom & Pop” operation snuggled into a faux-colonial façade along the city’s main drag. Mom & Pop were quite real, by the way, though I’ve long since forgotten their names. Mom was a seamstress, who made many of the costumes used in the exhibit herself. Pop was a decorated veteran of WWII—and the vibrant, living faith of American Nationalism seemed to course through his veins like sanctifying grace.

A Private Devotion

One didn’t get the impression that his museum netted Pop much profit; it was more in the nature of a private devotion apparently. Contrary to standard wax museum practice, for instance, there wasn’t a single figure of Marilyn Monroe or Charles Manson in the place. Instead, its hallowed halls echoed with the angelic sounds of a hushed choir, singing “Red River Valley,” “The Battle Hymn of the Republic” or “Shenandoah.” And instead of movie stars or murderers, the carefully lighted wax tableaux featured scenes like “Washington Crossing the Delaware” and “Lee Surrenders to Grant at Appomattox Court House.” In response, as I recall, the public stayed away in droves; but Mom & Pop seemed to count it all joy.

In particular, it was the climactic scene here that affected me for life. Visitors were ushered solemnly into a “Hall of Tennessee Heroes.” After filing respectfully past wax statues of people like Andrew Jackson, Andrew Johnson, and James K. Polk, you ultimately entered a large dimly lit theatre that slowly came to life through the use of dramatic lighting and music. Before long, you saw that the scene being depicted was the death of the greatest local hero of them all, Davy Crockett, at the hands of Santa Ana’s army in the battle of the Alamo. Sprawled backward over the barricades, clutching the flag of Texas independence in one hand, his buckskin outfit splashed with blood, Davy is magnificent in defeat. A Mexican soldier is in the very act of piercing his breast with a cold bayonet; a soft radiance falls on his face from above like a halo. His eyes, lifted up to heaven in an ecstasy of resignation, are eloquent with their unspoken message: “Father, into Thy hands I commend my spirit.”

Though I knew nothing of this at the time, it was a scene straight out of what is commonly called “bad Catholic art.” Just as corny, just as overwrought, just as sublime. And just as capable of wrenching sensitive little boys onto strange, unpredictable paths in life.

Sergeant York

The second of these lessons in human sanctity happened a few years later, when I first discovered (and fell in love with) Howard Hawks’ 1941 movie classic Sergeant York. Alvin C. York, as you may remember, was the true-life American hero of World War I and a Congressional Medal of Honor recipient. Born in the remote valley of the three forks of the Wolf River, near Pall Mall, Tennessee, Alvin (played by Gary Cooper in the film) entered adulthood in the 1910’s as a hard-working, hard-drinking, two-fisted mountain wild man. Sentenced by fate to his culture’s underclass (who, ironically, live on the top—on the worthless rocky hillsides left over when the gentry claimed the fertile valleys below) Alvin wrestles with God as Jacob wrestled with the angel. Resisting the witness of the village parson (Walter Brennan), ignoring the prayers and entreaties of his saintly mother (Margaret Wycherly), York will pay Jehovah back for His unfairness by making a success of himself without divine help, by sheer backbreaking human effort. We watch as he comes tantalizingly close, within sight of his goal, and then, at the last moment, is swindled out of his place in the sun by one of the very bottomlanders he so bitterly envies.

The next scene is dark, apocalyptic, with all the horror and human realism of an Old Testament Bible story. Alvin has murder in his eyes as he drinks himself to the point of violent action. Nothing his friends can do or say will stop him; he shakes them off and strides out into a howling storm, intent on bloody vengeance — and his own damnation. Yet halfway down this road to Damascus there is a flash of blinding light and the peal of thunder. A bolt of lightning blasts his dripping mule off its feet, sends Alvin himself flying into the mud, deaf with the voice of God. When he can think again, he rises, looks around, and finds his rifle — the instrument he would have used to slay his brother — lying red hot on the ground, twisted and curled like one of Uri Geller’s spoons.

Now, instead of hunting down his victim Alvin stumbles through the rain to the nearby church, where an evening prayer meeting is in session. He enters, hat in hand, and kneels repentant at the altar, before the congregation and before God, with the lightning still crackling across the firmament. His mother looks on in speechless wonder, then lifts her hands heavenward in wordless praise — the hillbilly reincarnation of St. Monica. The whole assembly erupts into rejoicing; Brennan’s wild-eyed Pastor Pyle calls for a new hymn, That Old Time Religion — the closest fundamentalism ever gets to a litany of the saints:

“It was good for the prophet Dan’l…

“It was tried in the fiery furnace…

“It was good for Paul and Silas…

“It’s good enough for me.”

You couldn’t help but think that the name of Alvin C. York himself had now been added that litany — I certainly did, at any rate, though what little I knew of Catholicism I hated.

At this point in the story the parallels to St. Augustine become even more trenchant, for York becomes a Bible teacher, an ardent lover of Christ, and, in his own homespun way, something of a Christian philosopher. With the advent of the draft in 1918 we watch him wrestle valiantly with the age-old problems of Christian pacifism, non-resistance, and the concept of a “just war.”

Finally, after triumphing gloriously over his enemies, both literal and metaphorical, the humble, hallowed Alvin C. York receives his Medal of Honor. And the scene plays like a coronation — no, like a beatification. Yes, I watched the movie as a convinced Southern Baptist, committed to the proposition that any veneration offered to a mere human was the rankest blasphemy. And yet I couldn’t help myself. As the wreath was lowered onto Sgt. York’s shoulders I heard (and still hear whenever I watch it) a silent voice from above:

“Well done, thou good and faithful servant: thou hast been faithful over a few things, I will make thee ruler over many things: enter thou into the joy of thy Lord.”

First Pilgrimage

It sounds silly, I suppose, getting so worked up about a cheesy wax museum and a corny black & white movie. But for me, these things were like signal flares in the night, offering brief glimpses into an unexplored world of religious emotion that my current faith simply wasn’t addressing at all.

Later, when I was old enough to drive, I made a secret pilgrimage to Sgt. York’s burial place. Though still an anti-Catholic Evangelical, something seemed to compel me; on a hot summer day in the mid-1980s I got into my car alone and made the long trip up to Pall Mall, Tennessee. And when I did, I found that not even the United States Government could restrain itself: the resting place of Sgt. York’s relics is now marked with an eternal flame; the inchoate prayer of a spiritually stunted people, the votive light of a nation whose hearts are purer than their philosophy.

Today, as a full-fledged, saint-invoking, Romanist “idolater,” I understand what it is that was happening to me back then. The saints (even ersatz saints like these) mirror, in ways that nothing else can, the One who is the source of all sanctity, the fountain of all holiness. Yes, it’s true, in one sense, that God alone is worthy of praise, and He’s jealous of His worship and willing to share it with no one. But God wants to be worshipped in something, for something — in the power of His might and for the works of His mighty Hand.

Alvin York, for example, had been quite a project, and I think God is rather proud of what He accomplished in that particular case. He wants us to see that, too, and to praise Him for His artistry; just as He wants to be praised for the masterpiece that is the Moon, for the Pleiades and Orion. And even in the death of Davy Crockett (whose true-life exploits my mature judgment now holds far more suspect than York’s) I had seen God’s glory in the beauty of martyrdom, in the willingness to surrender one’s own life that some other created thing might live.

As an Evangelical I had been told that God alone is holy, that His holiness is, in the words of a prominent Protestant theologian, “an incommunicable attribute.” But the joyful Catholic truth is just the opposite. God is striving every day, through the agency of His Holy Spirit, to make us all truly holy — and by golly, sometimes He succeeds! Thus the saints become the perfect mirror of God’s own excellence.

Conversion of the Saints

There is one last point I’d like to make about this mystery found in the wax museum. It’s a rather sad one, I’m afraid, and a point I regret to bring forward. But the truth is that I still have to go to the wax museum to experience this particular mystery. The Catholic churches in my diocese have, for the most part, been stripped of all their saints, and without any Henry VIII to blame for the outrage. Those few that remain have been rendered abstractly, in an inhuman, aggressively symbolic style. And most of the church buildings they decorate could easily pass for the Protestant Pavilion at the 1964 New York World’s Fair.

Don’t get me wrong. I do think that Catholic art should be good art. When the saints do finally go marching back into our churches, let them be rendered with skill, with subtlety, and with good taste. But let them not forget to speak to the heart, about primary things like virtue, heroism, self-sacrifice — the things a ten-year old understands. For unless we all become like little children again we will in no wise see the kingdom of God.

At any rate, as soon as I finish this column I’m leaving for the weekend on a trip back up to Gatlinburg. I think I will take some candles and incense with me.

And I’ll pray in the wax museum until the manager calls the cops.

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Rod Bennett is the author of Four Witnesses; The Early Church in Her Own Words widely considered to be a modern classic of Catholic apologetics. His other works include: The Apostasy that Wasn't; The Extraordinary Story of the Unbreakable Early Church and Chesterton's America; A Distributist History of the United States. His articles have appeared in Our Sunday Visitor, Rutherford Magazine, and Catholic Exchange; and he has been a frequent guest on EWTN television and Catholic Answers radio. Rod lives with his wife and two children on the 200-year old family homeplace in the Great Smoky Mountains of East Tennessee.

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