In today’s digital world, a single photo, a short clip, or even one word can go viral, suddenly reducing the whole story to a meme or a soundbite.
This video explores how Catholic controversies often get stripped of their context and weaponized in online culture wars. From Saturno hats to “Pachamama” statues to blurred letters, the pattern is always the same: appearances matter more than substance, mantras replace meaning, and real listening gets lost.
But as Catholics, we’re called to go deeper than this. Our faith isn’t about memes, buzzwords, or culture war points—it’s about truth, listening, and depth.
In this video Pedro Gabriel explores:
– How memes and mantras distort Catholic conversations;
– How polarization turns the faith into a search for talking points to use against others;
– How this happened during major controversies in the past years, namely: Leo’s Saturno Hat, the “Pachamama”, and Lettergate;
– What Blessed Carlo Acutis can teach us about originality in the digital age.
Pedro Gabriel, MD, is a Catholic layman and physician, born and residing in Portugal. He is a medical oncologist, currently employed in a Portuguese public hospital. A published writer of Catholic novels with a Tolkienite flavor, he is also a parish reader and a former catechist. He seeks to better understand the relationship of God and Man by putting the lens on the frailty of the human condition, be it physical and spiritual. He also wishes to provide a fresh perspective of current Church and World affairs from the point of view of a small western European country, highly secularized but also highly Catholic by tradition.
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