The Dangers of Kayfabe Catholicism

 As the twitter handle implies, I love professional wrestling.  Its not a "guilty pleasure" so much as entertainment I unironically love.  "Kevin, how can you watch something that is fake?" This is a question I am asked at least 4 or 5 times a year as I bury my head in the TV on Wednesday nights.  My answer is always the same:  wrestling is not "fake", anymore than a fight scene in a movie is "fake."  It is a series of choreographed maneuvers done that tell a story.  The really good ones aren't just great exhibitions of athleticism, but stories about the nature of the human spirit itself.

"Kevin, what on earth does a bunch of jacked dudes doing punches and flips have to do with being Catholic online?"  WAY MORE THAN YOU WOULD EVER HAVE GUESSED!  You see, professional wrestling isn't just about two people choreographing combat in a ring.  It is a world where everyone involved does their part to promote a match and the company, and they do so through what is known as kayfabe.

But simply, kayfabe is the "fake" world created in professional wrestling, and is used to help build an authentic experience.  In kayfabe, everyone has a character to play.  Some are the brash and arrogant bad guys, the "heels."  Others are the scrappy underdogs standing for truth and justice, the "babyface."  Sometimes you are somewhere in between, and sometimes, you think you are one thing, but the crowd has decided you are another.  In the end, the crowd is who you are performing for, and you use kayfabe to try and manipulate the crowd into reacting a certain way.  Sometimes you even try to get them to act against their intuition  You know that babyface that has "come from behind" to win in every match for the past decade?  Kayfabe builds an environment, outside of that match, where you think he is always the underdog, despite the scorecard telling a clearly different story.

A downside of kayfabe is that if you aren't careful, you can forget the fact its all a charade.  Some of your biggest names in wrestling historically have been utter narcissists who long ago lost the ability to distinguish between the character they play in the world of professional wrestling, and everyday life.  (This understanding briefly reached the mainstream when Hulk Hogan gave testimony in court and he had clearly lost the ability to tell the difference between Hulk Hogan the character and Terry Bolea, the man who played him.)  In the case of wrestling companies, they become so obsessed with the alternative reality they have created, they begin to think that they can control everything in wrestling, including how the crowd will react, something which has been the death of many promotions when taken too far

I think this has a lot to do with the way a lot of Catholic individuals and communities are online.  We've created a kayfabe where not only is every Catholic a theologian who sits around and reads your favorite philosopher, we've become convinced that these are the marks for being a Catholic.  People develop parts of their persona that stand out, whether it being the insufferable nag, the connected journalist, the sophisticated professional theologian, the pugilist who relishes in combat, whatever the heck a "retrograde" is that we develop rules for, etc.  I hate to be the one to tell you this, but its not real.  Its a Fugazi, a world created for the entertainment of the consumer, who is often asked to donate to those individuals putting on the show.  That patreon or substack ain't gonna fund itself with boring prose!

The purpose of this alternative reality is to promote combat.  Nobody is giving a damn about Massimo Faggioli if he's a boring professor writing about boring church movements unless you are a credentialed academic.  Yet people will pay him good money to tell you about the danger of traditionalists, and how at every step of the way, they must be combated.  By him, preferably.  Give him money, buy his book, put him on your show, and everyone can watch him take it to the trads.  If you can't afford someone who knows what they are talking about and have a more low-brow audience, you book Mark Shea.

The problem is a lot of these individuals have lost perspective of the fact that the online experience is one primarily of entertainment, not of substance or growth in holiness.  In the world we live in, settling things like they do in pro wrestling is absolutely bizarre, where brawls happen throughout stadiums because someone looks the wrong way, or says they are better.  (Think of the Trump era in politics on steroids.)  Most of the stuff that happens online isn't about deepening prayer life, increasing mass attendance, increasing what you get out of mass, or of giving Catholics a sense of ownership in being part of the body of Christ.

If one wants to get really jaded, you could say we've created this kayfabe because for the most part we have no ownership in our role as part of the body of Christ.  Whatever your partisan leanings, it is a popular refrain that the Church doesn't serve us.  Likewise, pro wrestling is at its best when it taps into the spirit of disillusionment and abandonment.  Hence, Hulk Hogan was the American fighting increasingly bigger and nastier foreign foes during a time when Americans wanted to feel patriotic.  Stone Cold Steve Austin beat up his boss on TV (making said boss a billionaire) during an age where middle class america collectively hated their office jobs.  Daniel Bryan's "YES!" chant entered the pop cultural consciousness in the era where people were tired of hearing they didn't fit the corproprate conception of what success was, and they saw a 5'8 scrawny kid in a world full of giants and identified with him.  Only a Church that has failed its members so completely and abysmally is a world where you see truthtellers, radicals, retrogrades, and grifters (sometimes all of these things!) flourish.  They use that kayfabe to help promote their bottom line.

So how does one stop it?  To do that would probably require a structural shift in the Church that is beyond the scope of this article, or our abilities.  Yet to combat it?

- Remember that what happens online is a very small sample of the wider Church
- Remember that what happens online is often deliberately turned up in intensity with the purpose of selling something.
- Understand that everyone is marketing themselves as something
- When it comes to anything that happens in social media, one of the biggest aims is conflict.
- If someone is soliciting funds, be discerning before you click the donate button.  How are they soliciting funds?  How much of it is original work, something of substance, and how much of it is about seeing them feud with others?

There's nothing wrong with enjoying a good clash!  You can learn a lot through them.  Just remember that clash can only tell a glimpse of reality, it should never be your reality.