By DONALD DeMARCO
Clare Boothe Luce (1903-1987) was truly a Renaissance woman. She won a seat in Congress and held an ambassadorship. She was the managing editor of Vanity Fair. As an author, her writings extended from drama and screen scenarios to fiction, journalism, and war reportage. As a pro-life stalwart, she wrote for The Human Life Review.
She is best known for her hit play, The Women, which was made into a movie and featured an all-female cast. On the religious front, she converted to Catholicism (which was assisted by the Venerable Fulton J. Sheen).
She was not without a sense of humor. Once asked, “If a woman wants to be powerful, should she run for Congress, be an ambassador…marry a rich man….Just what should she do.” Her instant answer was: “All of them.” Yet she remained devoted to the vast majority of non-celebrities, included the unborn. Her interest was not in advancing secular feminist, but in honoring femininity.
In the Introduction to her 1952 book, Saints for Now (which has been republished by Ignatius Press), she made the following assessment of the world around her: “We live in an intellectual climate of ambiguity, of multiple and conflicting ‘truths,’ of exclusive and warring ‘freedoms.’ In a world where truth is relative, where one man’s ‘truth’ is another man’s ‘lie,’ and his definition of ‘freedom’ is his neighbor’s definition of ‘slavery,’. . . . Advertising, publicity, propaganda — the sophisticated tools of irrationalism — supersede fact, persuasion and logic, the tools of reason.”
Chesterton’s bon mot comes to mind: “When civilization wants a library catalogue or the solar system discovered, or any trifle of that kind, it uses up its specialists. But when it wishes anything done that is really SERIOUS it collects 12 of the ordinary men standing about. The same thing was done, if I remember right, by the founder of Christianity.”
The saint has always been more important to society than the specialist. Clare Boothe Luce may have been a celebrity, but she understood the superior importance of the saintly. Mother Teresa and Pope John Paul II were celebrities by accident. Their primary concern was serving Christ and loving their neighbors.
Did Luce have a crystal ball that revealed the cultural atmosphere of 2023? Or was her analysis of the world of her time accurate? In agreeing with the latter hypothesis, we may conclude that in 71 years the cultural situation has not improved. In fact, to be honest, things have gotten much worse. The only realistic remedy for 1952 as well as for the present moment is the presence of saints.
We may dispense with the nonsense of political utopias. Our salvation is not in politics. It is in the selfless, heroic actions of a saintly life. “Saints for now” is saints for always. Things grow worse because people persist in placing their hope in political strategies. But there never was a politician who held the Keys to the Kingdom.
We must not think of saints of the past as dead and buried. They are alive and are capable of coming to our rescue. Catholic churches are replete with images of saints. We should not see them as merely representing fine art, but as reminders that they can be of help. We should join the communion of saints. We should do more than admire them; we should imitate them.
According to the Catholic Catechism, “Exactly as Christian communion among our fellow pilgrims brings us closer to Christ, so our communion with the saints joins us to Christ, from whom as from its fountain and head issues all grace, and the life of the People of God itself (n. 957). All Saints Day, on November 1, reminds us that the saints of the past are still present in the sense that they can be powerful intercessors on our behalf.
Politicians solicit our vote, saints solicit our prayers. Where have politicians brought us over the last 71 years? Where, but to a culture that is more desperate than the one Clare Boothe Luce described in 1952. Luce was not a prophet but an astute observer of what culture is like when it abandons the sacred. The return of the sacred comes through the actions of saints. If we as individuals fail to achieve he status of a saint, at least we can live saintly lives.
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