This summer, American history lies on the examining table. Each Founding Father, famous activist, and each new death in a newspaper receives scrutiny: hero or villain? Narratives shape our fundamental concept of our nation, our government, and ourselves, and, in this moment, many people try to understand if their perception of these things has been honest or biased in some way over the course of their formative years.
A villain is a person who intentionally hurts one or more individuals or a community to a great degree. This violence and intentionality in evil link a villain’s reputation with mortal sin in such a way that, while we always pray for and hope in God’s mercy, the public view of this person is one of condemnation.
A hero is a person who stepped out from the crowd and helped an individual or society in a remarkable way at a crucial moment. Their essential action usually required courage and selflessness.
But what happens if our heroes, upon closer examination, should not be emulated in all aspects of their lives? Is our public acclaim of them misleading or even harmful?
Two insights from a Catholic worldview illuminate this discussion.
First of all, we believe that life is messy, and we all need forgiveness. St. Paul explains in Romans that even though God has given all men a sense of natural law in their hearts, “All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God” (Rom 3:23). I think the average person has the intellectual capacity to say, “This man or woman did three great things and had one major flaw,” without feeling pressured to condone the failing. Heroes are not perfect. I believe we can maintain intellectual honesty while applauding the good an imperfect hero achieved, especially when that good required personal sacrifice.
Children, in particular, need heroes to emulate. If we allow the story of sin to control the narrative of history, then we deny the power any person has to participate in the saving action of Christ that propels us toward the good and chases darkness into oblivion through the surprising actions of grace.
Secondly, when we look for untainted heroes to venerate, I think our desire reveals a third category of lives recognized by the Catholic Church: those of the saints.
A saint is generally a person who lived a life of heroic virtue and progressed towards an intimate union with God that informed their actions. Even saints can have a flawed or sinful start to their journey, but the trajectory of their lives shows a clear orientation towards God and a continual turning toward the good. Sometimes, a saint was well known in his or her time and participated meaningfully in the socio-political sphere. A saint may also be seen as a hero. More often, a saint lived a humble and obscure life to everyone except those in his or her immediate acquaintance. Either way, the ripple effects of a holy life can turn the tides of history for generations.
As a side note, some people are neither known for their essential orientation towards good or evil, but they do become a symbol of a movement or of a type of person within history. They are a simple icon, and the smaller details of their biographies are somewhat unimportant to the annals of history compared to their symbolic value.
Our fellow citizens look at the broken elements of our society and cry out that the heroes or icons of the past did not do enough to secure the future of America. Rather than relabeling them as villains, perhaps we need to recognize our great longing and need for saints. When we can admit our common human failings, we can see that one person’s efforts can never address every problem of a particular age. Within the context of virtue and humility, we worry less about the perfection of a hero and see these individuals and their skills as instruments in God’s hands for achieving some tangible good in the world. We don’t conflate saints and heroes, so our sense of history is less swayed by the winds of popular opinion.
We need saints to show us how to act. They demonstrate how to handle complicated moral decisions during times of social upheaval. Saints struggled to live an integrated life where their love of God touched every aspect of their decision-making. The lives of the saints demonstrate the huge variety of responses a moral person might make to a particular crisis. Some saints prayed, some founded new movements and religious orders, some engaged politically, some invested in their families or local communities, some embraced martyrdom.
As a history enthusiast and a former literature teacher, I love that these famous lives garner more attention than they have for decades. But I worry the conversation is too limited, and I think Catholics have a missing piece of the puzzle which can bring perspective to an examination that threatens to drive us apart more than it brings us together.
Kelly Henson is a Catholic writer and speaker who explores the art of integrating faith into daily life. She and her family are parishioners of Our Lady of Grace Parish in Greensboro. She blogs at www.kellyjhenson.com.