Britney Spears is (apparently) Catholic now

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Britney’s swimming the Tiber

Britney Spears no longer anagrams to Presbyterians because she’s a Catholic now, joining other famous Catholic divas, like Lady Gaga and… Sister Janet Mead?

She’s now deleted the post, so there are some - like the Catholic newsletter The Pillar - who are doubting that it’s for real:

... any headline containing the words “Britney Spears” will get clicks, and for most media outlets, clicks = revenue, regardless of the facts … Still another reason the story gained attention is because of a tendency among Catholics to look for signs of secular approval as a kind of affirmation of the normalcy, or legitimacy, of the faith.

But since then, to my huge delight and amusement, she posted the following to Instagram.

Maybe she’s just watching the sumptuous and esoteric 2016 TV mini series The Young Pope and is just posting through it.

Or perhaps she read this impassioned article advocating for Britney in the National Catholic Register which claims the 1968 encyclical Humanae Vitae predicted her terrible situation, so she took herself off to church to find out what it’s all about.

Regardless, online Catholics are jazzed. And you know what? So am I. Good for her.

The Catholic Metaverse

We’ve had the Facebook Metaverse, but the National Catholic Reporter asks: Are you ready for the Catholic Metaverse?

This is kind of an expansion on my earlier article about Facebook partnering with faith groups, but it’s also about how COVID-19 has changed our relationship to places of worship in general.

Phyllis Zagano at the NCR writes:

Community is increasingly disconnected from both online and in-person parochial life. While once the parish church was the one down the block, where the Friday potluck suppers helped cement social interaction, now the "parish" is virtual. Community is in a Catholic Metaverse created through social media in which you can participate anonymously. Or not.

She points out that Christianity is an embodied religion - it’s not just about believing certain things, it’s also about physically gathering and physically receiving physical sacraments.

Also, if you can worship literally anywhere in the world, it potentially represents a transfer of power away from Rome and to the parishioners themselves.

I don’t think everything she writes about will necessarily come to pass, but give it a read if you’re interested in what the post-COVID church might look like.

Leftcath girlboss Mary

Who’s got the difinitive take of Mary as a revolutionary figure? I see it everywhere.

The trads are mad about this gamer saint

Okay, I know he isn’t recognised as a saint (yet), but the closest this newsletter has to a patron is definitely Blessed Carlo Acutis. If his cause progresses, Carlo is on track to be the Catholic Church’s first millennial saint. Also I think about this tweet a lot and it helped inspire the name of this newsletter:

Anyway, some rad trads are extremely mad about this stained glass window depicting the Blessed in sneakers. The discourse inspired a Catholic artist on my timeline to make some more art of him, which is nice.

By the way, Carlo’s website listing eucharistic miracles is still online, which causes me to ask: Is it perhaps the first digital relic?

If you want more info about Carlo and the guy who is the current patron saint of the internet, give this a gander.

I don’t even need the drinks

The internet is for witchcraft

One of the great internet religion stories of 2020 was “baby witches hex the moon” - a gorgeous online artefact that demonstrates how digital communities can cultivate new religious practices. Click the tweet and read the whole thread it’s a window into an alien world.

If you don’t feel like reading the whole thread, or if it's too bamboozling, The Cut did a good explainer.

But as I mentioned in the TikTok section of last week’s edition, it’s a continuation of behaviour we’ve been seeing since the earliest message boards. This fascinating article from Vice is about how one of those boards has become a digital grimoire, still in use today.

The internet was engineered to connect people with niche interests, including witches. Even though there still aren’t really that many witches around, they log on and connect into ever-larger networks.

Once they reach the critical mass to become A Thing, curious people might choose to participate. Then, some of them might choose to violate the fundamental rules of that community and curse the moon.

This NYT article from 2019 claims witchiness has never been more popular - Harry Potter might have a lot to do with that, but I think the internet did too.

The wages of sin are a lot of unmowed lawns

John Piper’s seashells

I wasn’t going to write about this but the posts are such deep cuts I can’t help myself.

Basically, a recent episode of The Rise and Fall of Mars Hill featured a sermon illustration used by evangelical heavyweight John Piper in the year 2000. He tells a story about a couple who retires early to collect seashells in Florida, and the moral is the American dream is fake and means living for yourself instead of for God.

I won’t retell the whole story - the episode is here (the illustration starts around the 30 minute mark).

What do you have to show for your life after you die? Hopefully not just a bunch of shells! It was a powerful image and is credited with launching the “young, restless, Reformed” New Calvinists, and John Piper has been associated with seashells and conservative evangelicalism ever since. This breakdown by The Gospel Coalition is very comprehensive.

So a lot of people were reminded about this influential sermon and started shellposting again. I did not actually know about this before last week, but my effort is below. By the way, John Piper’s son has become a prominent New Atheist exvangelical on TikTok. So it goes.

A few more things

• Watch this outtake from the ABC’s excellent Ms Represented of former Immigration Minister Amanda Vanstone describing banning X-rated pornography.
• I bet there’s a whole school of theology about this.
• Sometimes you think you’ve seen it all, and then you see Buddha Trump on wish.com
• A meme I made about Protestants

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If you have a tip or a post I should see, especially about a religion you don’t hear about all that often, please email me: rohansalmond@gmail.com. Also, follow me on Twitter: @RJSalmond.

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