3 Catholic “Influencers” That Prove Christ Is For Everyone

by Catholic Events & Culture, History of the Church, Leadership, March, Testimonies

Isn’t it exciting when you discover that not only do you enjoy someone’s work, but they are Catholic, too? That’s how it felt when I read Timothy Larsen’s chapter on E. E. Evans-Pritchard in The Slain God: Anthropologists and the Christian Faith. It was like finding a long, lost family member on a genealogy site!

These three souls—Hilaire Belloc, Flannery O’Connor, and E. E. Evans-Pritchar—are not canonized saints, but they are relatable, faithful, and quite funny. They are odd enough to remind us that the faith is not only for one type of person. Christ is for every personality, culture, and field in academia.

These three Catholics are tongue-in-cheek experts!

3 Catholic “Influencers” That Prove Christ Is For Everyone

HILAIRE BELLOC: “When I am dead, I hope it may be said: ‘His sins were scarlet, but his books were read.’”

HILAIRE BELLOC: “When I am dead, I hope it may be said: ‘His sins were scarlet, but his books were read.’”

Joseph Hilaire Pierre Rene Belloc was a French-English writer, historian, orator, sailor, and political activist. He lived from 1870 to 1853. His faith led him in all these matters, while he wrote anything from letters to (often comic) poems and satires.

Among his friends was G. K. Chesterton. George Bernard Shaw called the pair the “Chesterbelloc.” He is considered one of the Big Four of Edwardian Letters, and often debated the other three, H. G. Wells, Shaw, and Chesterton. Those are big names—talk about “iron sharpening iron”!

In his personal life he experienced a dramatic courtship of Elodie, involving a failed religious vocation, international travel, illness, fainting, and finally a marriage. They were blessed with five children. Elodie died shortly after their fifth child was born from what some say was cancer, and Hilaire wore mourning clothes for forty years after until his own death.

In his professional life, he wrote over 150 works. He failed to become a fellowship of All Souls College, perhaps because he brought a statue of Mother Mary to his interview and proudly displayed it.

While a politician, he was heckled as a papist—that’s supposed to be an insult to Catholics. Nevertheless, he won election into Parliament with this response:

“Gentlemen, I am a Catholic. As far as possible, I go to Mass every day. This [taking a rosary out of his pocket] is a rosary. As far as possible, I kneel down and tell these beads every day. If you reject me on account of my religion, I shall thank God that He has spared me the indignity of being your representative.”

FLANNERY O’CONNOR: “The stories are hard, but they are hard, because there is nothing harder or less sentimental than Christian realism.”

Photo credit: https://www.who2.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/flanneryoconnor.jpg

In 2023, a movie called Wild Cats was released as a biographical drama film on American novelist Flannery O’Connor—but most of us never heard of her!

She lived from 1925 to 1964, spending most of her 39 years in Georgia. She suffered from lupus like her father, raised peafowl which is why she is often associated with peacock feathers, and never backed down from her style of writing. She appeared on television to help her chicken walk backwards. That was when she was six years old, and she later said, “Everything since has been an anticlimax.” Not only that, but she once sewed an outfit for her duck and brought it to high school with her!

She was a Catholic writer, who published short stories, novels, and essays. She also wrote hundreds of book reviews—all in light of her faith. Her prayer journal reveals her relationship with God. The latter movie reflects her works’ gothic and dark themes, which often shock characters into an encounter with the Holy Spirit. But, not in the way you might think… Violence often leads them into moments of grace.

Her unique sense of humor focused on grace and never shied away from making readers face their humanity in all its most difficult ways—sexuality, crime, sin, racism. Flannery wrote what was in the reality around her, without rose-colored glasses.

Her daily routine included Mass and writing early in the morning, and then she rested and read the rest of the day. While the movie Wildcat creatively presents her journey to publication, there is also a documentary from PBS, which explores how lupus influenced her writing.

EE EVANS-PRITCHARD: “I have no regrets. Bad Catholic though I be, I would rather be a bad one than not one at all.”

Photo credit: http://antropolosgoderua.blogspot.com/2012/05/estruturalismo-de-evans-pritchard_30.html

We’ve listed a politician-satirist, a shocking writer, and now a war-vet anthropologist—who was knighted. Sir Edward Evan Evans-Pritchard lived from 1902 until 1973 in England and Africa. He is unchallenged as the ultimate anthropologist—and he is a self-described “bad Catholic.”

Rather than leave the faith as other infamous anthropologists before him, Sir Edward converted to Catholicism from Anglicanism. J. R. R. Tolkien—yes, the hobbits and elves guy—encouraged Sir Evans to attend their local parish, but Evans-Pritchard kept to mostly Christmas and Easter liturgies with Dominicans at Blackfriars. Still, he was sincere in his faith, which could have only been bolstered if he frequented the sacraments.

As a renowned anthropologist, he defended the cultures he researched (and lived among for months if not a whole year) as rational human societies. This defense can easily be seen as a defense of universal human dignity. Earlier anthropologists ranked ‘primitive’ societies far below their own ‘civilized’ ones, commenting about the evolution of humans and the irrationality of religious beliefs. Sir Evans was, in his refusal to conform to that ideology, a rebel.

When explaining the confusion Sir Evan’s conversion caused in academia, Timothy Larsen writes: “It is generally agreed as best practice among anthropologists that tales of sinfulness, however improbably, should be accepted piously on faith, whilst saintliness demands rigorous scientific proof” (The Slain God, page 93).

Why was he a “bad Catholic”? Well, his life—like our own lives—are not all sunshine and butterflies. Sir Evan’s wife Ioma, whom he loved dearly, committed suicide. He never remarried. He likely suffered from PTSD and guilt from battle during his time in the military. Towards the end of his life, he was plagued with alcoholism, war memories, and heartbreak.

He was an incredible intellectual and honest Catholic, who looked forward to heaven “where he would be able to ask Ioma to forgive him for anything he had done wrong that had made her life harder” (Larsen, The Slain God, 119).

These three were not the typical “church people” type, but it just shows that there is no “type” excluded from the Kingdom of God. We are all called in our unique ways—careers included—to serve God, even if we’re a quirky writer, a sarcastic politician, or an adventurous anthropologist.

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