Why the Met Gala is a good thing for Catholicism

Thursday, May 10th, 2018

Last night’s Met gala at the Metropolitan Museum of Art presented us with several Joans of Arc in chainmail dresses; a crusader or two; a plethora of angels; a few cardinals (only one genuine!); a mother of sorrows and many other Marys; and lots of men in their “Sunday best” suits.

And one pope: that being Rihanna, of course.

As part of the .00000001 percent of the population who interned at Vogue magazine while attending divinity school and now works in Catholic media, this year’s Met Gala felt meant for me.

I watched the red carpet unfold on social media from my couch, decked out in a floor-length black velvet dress emblazoned with stained-glass crosses (why not?), gasping at Chadwick Boseman’s pristine, white-and-gold messianic cape, and admiring Cardi B, a welcome vision of a pregnant Mary, Queen of Heaven.

But the most exciting part of the Met Gala for the “Heavenly Bodies: Fashion and the Catholic Imagination” exhibition was not that it aligned with my own, admittedly niche, interests.

What was thrilling was to watch so many other people—Catholic and non-Catholic, believers and nonbelievers—engage with the faith and, more broadly, religion with such zeal.

Such a theme would have been unthinkable in the early 2000s, when New Atheism reared its head and Catholicism was primarily discussed in relation to the sexual abuse crisis.

If nothing else, the theme of this year’s exhibition and gala shows a willingness to engage with religion that is healthy and promising in a climate where polarization is rife.

Rihanna

Of course, not all engagement is high quality.

When the exhibition was announced, some Catholics worried about being made fun of or of having their traditions trivialized.

At the gala, Anne Hathaway’s afterthought crown of thorns (or “spikey halo”!) and Sarah Jessica Parker’s kitschy headpiece—a confounding replica of a Neapolitan nativity scene—might fall into this camp.

But Catholics, while entitled to offense, should not complain about cultural appropriation in the same way that other groups might because they are so well-represented in popular culture.

The stakes would be much higher, for example, if the “Islamic imagination” were taken as the exhibition and gala’s theme.

For every shallow engagement with the faith that a Catholic must endure, there is an abundance of better examples (“The Young Pope,” “Lady Bird”) to look to, and the consequence of misrepresentations are less dire.

The exhibition of garments and vestments on display at the Met (from May 10 to Oct. 8) anticipated critiques of blasphemy and insensitivity.

Andrew Bolton, who curated the exhibition and coordinated the loan of approximately 40 ecclesiastical masterworks from the Sistine Chapel sacristy, was very deferential in his choices of garment and staging, and achieved a stunning feat. Continue reading