We're Getting Our Asses Kicked Over Here, Guys

A message from a Catholic to Catholics.

Via Matt comes this Times Mag piece which is a true monument. It depicts how Mormons have been stealthily infiltrating Hollywood, on the strength of BYU’s excellent computer animation program.

Really do read the whole thing, but here’s some excerpts:

“Honestly,” says Marilyn Friedman, the former head of outreach at DreamWorks, who visited B.Y.U. frequently, “the first few times I went to Provo, I was like: What am I doing here? I’m a little Jewish girl from back East. But I was just amazed by how absolutely lovely those kids are. They couldn’t be nicer, humbler, more respectful. It’s a pleasure. And when they come here, they stay that way.” Many students are already married with children by the time they graduate; they want to excel at their jobs to give their families stability. Many have served missions abroad, often deposited in third-world countries amid great suffering, and are years older than the typical college student by the time they graduate. “It means there’s a maturity level there,” says Barry Weiss, a longtime animation executive and former senior vice president at Sony.

Strong is 24, a contemplative and steady-seeming senior. He was the producer on “Chasm,” the current project. Having borne the managerial stress of the production all semester, he insisted on carving out some time that night with his wife, who was six months pregnant with their first child.

I kept being reminded that B.Y.U.’s program was only 13 years old: most of the moral emissaries that it has been pouring into the industry are still climbing to the positions from which they’ll be able to truly influence a film’s tone and content. One day, there will be alumni directing and producing, students insisted — it’s an inevitability. “Right now we’re the workhorses,” an alumnus at DreamWorks told me. “But I think our future is bright in terms of being able to shape the industry.”

during his freshman year at B.Y.U., his outlook changed. He saw students who were all striving to be kind and moral people but also having fun and enjoying solid friendships with one another. The uneasy compromises between his principles and his popularity didn’t seem necessary anymore. It was the reverse of the typical coming-of-age-at-college story: he felt liberated enough to experiment, so he experimented with returning to the values he was raised with.

But at B.Y.U., everyone works as a team on a single film because, unlike at art schools, students are too busy with religion courses and other requirements to be full-time filmmakers. Out of necessity, production on each year’s film winds up mirroring the way the industry actually works. B.Y.U. students emerge committed to a specialty and to collaboration

Guys, guys, guys, guys—we are getting our asses KICKED.

We’ve all heard the refrain that now that Christianity is no longer dominant, that’s an opportunity to be counter-cultural and salt of the Earth. So why are we not doing it?

The Mormons are showing us how it’s done. They’re in the world, being diligent, hard-working, and yet so, so counter-cultural. And breeding like hell. (By the way, some of the piece shows how Mormons can be too Mormon. The problem with contemporary culture is not reduced to whether it’s PG, and in art quality and uplifting are not equal.)

Oh, and there’s this

Low taxes and a cheap but well-educated workforce persuaded Goldman [Sachs] to go on a hiring binge in Salt Lake City. The bank now employs 1,300 people here — putting Utah’s capital city on a path to become Goldman’s fourth-largest global operation, behind only New York, New Jersey and London.

Seriously?

Georgetown? Notre Dame? Give me a break. Where’s the Catholic Minerva Project? Where are the thousands of Catholic Montessori schools? (Maria Montessori, by the way, is one of us — a daily communicant and friend to Popes. Montessori values are so resonant with Catholic theology it hurts.) Where’s The Plan to infiltrate Hollywood and take it over? And Silicon Valley? And the New York Times? Forget about the NYT, where’s the Catholic Buzzfeed? Catholic Mayo Clinic?

By the way, Tim Keller is right (no Mormon; no Catholic either) — we won Rome because we took over the cities. And the elites. The word “basilica” refers to the mansions of the rich Christians which housed the community when it was persecuted, because we couldn’t have temples.

Back in the day, this is what we created the Jesuits for. The Pope is saying all the right things. What are we waiting for?

EDIT: Ok, we do get SOME things right.