Wake Up Dead Man: A Plea to Modern Christianity

 I was raised Catholic. I was practically inundated with it in my youth. I went to Catholic school all the way through High School. It is fair to say that the teachings of Christ were at the very center of the formative years in my life. As I grew, I became more and more disillusioned with the way that the Church, both global and local, sought to follow the teachings of Christ. The way that worldly concerns often outweigh the the needs of the spirit or the soul.

I no longer consider myself a Catholic or a Christian, in fact I no longer believe in a higher power of any kind, but to say that I have not tried to live by the teachings of Christ would be a lie. I have tried to live by the highest ideal that the gospel's extolled: empathy. But the Catholic Church historically has never been a vessel for empathy, but rather, in the Americas especially, for colonization and the demonization of the non-white peoples that inhabit this land and of other religions. A force for divisiveness and not love and unity. Those problems, and others, have only been exacerbated by the advent of the digital age and the struggles that lie therein. 

Wake Up Dead Man challenges the church, asking them if they are truly followers of Christ or if they have allowed secular concerns to overtake the religious and moral teachings of their purported lord and savior. 

Through Father Jud Duplenticy we are shown a crumbling church, not physically but spiritually. A church infected by some of the worst sins, sins that beget countless others; pride and greed. The true corruptors of the virtuous. 

Pride by Monsignor Jefferson Wicks in the power he holds over his dwindling parishioners, pride in those parishioners in their lofty positions as acolytes of Wicks, pride by Martha Delecroix in her sacred mission. And a greed underlying all of that. Greed for wealth, yes. But also for more power and greater influence. For more than their due.

Fr. Jud, both despite and because of his youthful inexperience, is a stand-in for Christ. Not the deified Christ but the one who was fully man. Who was on earth and as flawed as any other, despite his celestial parentage. Anger, doubt, and shame assault Fr. Jud and yet his Faith never waivers. His faith in himself? Quite possibly. In other people? Almost certainly. But in the end, Fr. Jud is representative of not just the best hopes of what clergy can be but of what humanity can be. And in the end, that might be why he is portrayed as a saint. 

Fr. Jud, Patron Saint of This...

...not This.

An example we all can follow. Even if we don't believe.

JK

(apologies for the poor quality of the images but Netflix guards things with an iron grip, and firewall)