Young filmmaker says the Church needs to convey the beauty of faith to his peers

By John Shaughnessy

As a young adult who tries to make his Catholic faith the foundation of his family, friendships and work, Branden Stanley considers the questions seriously—and then shares an intriguing answer.

The questions: What advice would you give to your fellow young adults about trying to live their faith in this world? And what can the Church be doing to help young adults in this regard?

“I can’t say I have all the answers there, but honestly for me, this generation is not looking for surface-level things. They’re looking for a deepness and a vibrance in their faith lives,” said Stanley, a filmmaker who focuses his work on how the beauty and depth of the Catholic faith can transform lives.

“For me, that meant finding vibrant liturgies, finding parishes that aren’t just interested in people going to church on Sundays and then leaving afterward without talking to anyone. It meant having our faith permeate every element of our life. It makes a difference if you approach it from that way, and not just have it be a surface-level thing that you just practice on Sundays.”

At 32, Stanley sees a correlation between that approach and the preference in technology that more and more young people are embracing today.

“There’s a reason why young people are going back toward record players and film cameras in an age where there is so much digital stuff around,” says Stanley, executive vice president of Spirit Juice Studios in the Chicago area. “We can take pictures on our phones. We can listen to music on our phones, but people are going back toward record players and film cameras because they want the experience. They want to feel something deeper.”

Providing and sharing that deeper faith experience for young adults is the challenge for the Church, he says.

“If we can find ways as a Church, find ways of bringing that richness that we have in our Catholic heritage—the richness of the liturgy, the richness of our traditions—and build that back into our everyday lives, that will do a tremendous job of reinvigorating the youth and the young people. Because so many places have watered down our faith to something we just practice on Sunday or that we do because we have to, so we don’t go to hell.

“There’s so much beauty and so much intricacy and so much history there that I think young people and young adults are yearning for, and they may not even know they exist within the Church. So, the more we can do to build that up and present it to them, I think the better off we will be.”

That belief guides his approach to the films and visual media presentations that are at the heart of Spirit Juice productions.

“A big thing for me is beauty,” he says. “I had a great opportunity a couple of months ago to travel to France and film some of the Gothic cathedrals around Paris and some of the neighboring cities. One of the things that struck me is how the Church has traditionally led in art and architecture—and really beauty across the board.

“And I feel like these days maybe we haven’t forgotten that, but we’ve made it play second fiddle to some of the other transcendentals. We need to talk about truth, goodness and beauty. As a Church, as Catholics, we have this rich history of creating the best and giving glory to God through giving everything we have. And we’ve moved away from that.”

Stanley believes the Church today too often falls into two camps—camps that each don’t do enough to convey the truth, goodness and beauty of the Catholic faith.

“One camp says, ‘Hey, this is the epitome of the faith so we should just share it like that.’ The other camp says, ‘Hey, we need to meet people where they are.’ I think both camps can fall short a little bit.

“In just showing off the beauty of the Church and going straight at it, the first camp can sometimes miss people who don’t appreciate that yet or understand it in the right way. And the people who only go toward meeting people where they are can sometimes fail to challenge individuals—to say, ‘Yeah, this is where you are, but it’s not where you should be. Let’s move higher and closer to a better understanding of our faith and a better understanding of Christ.’ ”

Stanley believes the best approach connects both camps, which he views as following the approach that Christ shared with people during his time on Earth.

“Christ would meet with sinners and say, ‘Repent and sin no more,’ ” Stanley says. “There’s value in both. We’re either going to miss out on people because we’re not meeting them in their brokenness or we’re going to not challenge people enough and leave them where they are.” †

 

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