Faith & Athletics

The following is a talk on faith and sports delivered by Gracjan Kraszewski in October of 2019 in Moscow, Idaho.

The Idaho Vandals are not good at football. So say the ignorant anyways, those who claim that while yes, needles are sometimes found in the haystack, broken clocks are right twice a day, even a blind squirrel, well, you get the point. The triumphant moments of the 2009 Humanitarian Bowl victory over Bowling Green, or the halcyon days of the 1990s—with the Vandals reaching the #1 national ranking for Division I-AA in October 1993 and winning the ‘Battle of the Palouse’ against the Washington State Cougars in back to back years at the end of the decade—have, unfortunately, often come too far and few between, buried in a twice burnt over dumpster fire of failure punctuated by three consecutive one win seasons between 2012-2014, with scores such as 66-0, 56-6, and 79-7 all too painfully common. When the Vandals were demoted back to the b-level of Division I following the 2017 season and still lose 24-0 to their FCS compatriots, as was the case this past Saturday in Portland, one is tempted to conclude: the Idaho Vandals are simply not good at football.

Alas, I’m here to tell you a different story, a different story about Vandal football and a different story about the relationship between Catholicism and athletics1, to talk about point of view, something I call ‘dual perspective point zero appreciation.’ If you’re thinking I chose this name for its extreme pretension and an ambiguity that might get mistaken for genius by some non-geniuses, you’re right. (At least I didn’t make an acronym out of it though; DuPPZA; sounds too close to the Polish word dupa anyways). But what does it mean? Focus on ‘point zero,’ the active ingredient differentiating the dual perspectives leading to the hoped appreciation. St. Francis of Assisi is the beau ideal of point zero appreciation, what can be called full dependence on God, realization that even our next breath is a gift not a guarantee. St. Francis could truly appreciate the radical beauty of all of God’s creation by assuming this point zero stance, aware that when one considers that even the most mundane realities come from the hand of the Divine Designer how new and lovely they appear.

Fine, ‘dual perspective,’ but what’s then the opposite of point zero? A ‘point one-hundred’ perspective would be unrealistic expectations, petulance, seeing life not as gift but flawed burden because things are supposed to be perfect, all the time, but they happen not to be; starting at and demanding the utmost best all the time, entitlement, pure and simple. A 100 point perspective is why people conclude the Idaho Vandals are not good at football. How dare they not win ten games every season, not win every game? The 100 point perspective expecting everything to be good all the time and immediately is why some, including Mother Teresa, have concluded that the depressed and hyper-medicated Western World’s number one emotion is disappointment.2 But apply point zero appreciation to the Vandals and maybe you’ll be able to enjoy each game for the gift it is, independent of the score, and appreciate the players themselves for who they really are, phenomenal athletes, who, in making it to Division I are playing on the second best level in the world, only behind the NFL (sincere apologies to the CFL), and what a truly remarkable accomplishment that is.

I want to challenge all types of 100 point perspectives concerning athletics in this talk simply because we live in such a sports-obsessed culture. Yet please note, this talk is not about how sports build the values of teamwork and camaraderie; not about how sports help you deal with the ups and downs, the ‘wins and losses,’ of life; not about how sports keep kids away from drugs and bad decisions; not about how exercise is good for your health. It is neither a jeremiad against the sad state of America where sports have become a psuedoreligion taking up the time owed to God on Sunday mornings nor a polemic against a financial reality where teachers and bakers and candlestick makers struggle to make ends meet while the guy wearing a costume carrying an inflated pigskin who can outrun other costume wearing men trying to tackle him to the ground makes enough money to buy a few personal airplanes, summer homes in Europe, and a yacht.

No, this talk about athletics and faith is something truly original, something brand new, never heard of before tonight. Well, actually, Saint Paul kind of said it 2,000 years ago. ‘Do you not know that the runners in the stadium all run in the race, but only one wins the prize? Run so as to win. Every athlete exercises discipline in every way. They do it to win a perishable crown, but we an imperishable one.’3 My talk tonight is subtitled: chasing impossible perfection as preparation for the only perfection that matters. Extrapolating from this and the above scriptural passage it’s obvious I’m arguing that athletics give one the tools necessary for ultimate victory in the spiritual realm. Okay, and true. But even further, I believe athletics, and really athletic training, is uniquely effective in assisting us Catholics in life’s only goal: becoming spiritual athletes for Christ and His Kingdom.

Why uniquely, why more so, than other things? Because the times we live in today are plagued by many maladies, chief among them relativism, disdain for tradition, and an aversion to suffering. To become saints we must conquer these three. We must become convinced of the absolute Truth concerning who Christ is, who the Church, His Mystical Bride, is, and how we are therefore to live, and relativism just won’t do. Neither can we advance in the spiritual life if we disdain all that came before us, if we stand aloof from the treasure trove of wisdom in our capital T tradition, our sacred Deposit of Faith. And, of course, what more can be said concerning suffering than from the lips of the Master himself. ‘Whoever wishes to come after me must deny himself, take up his cross, and follow me.’4

Athletics are an excellent means for combatting relativism, disdain for tradition, and an aversion to suffering. Let’s investigate these three in order. A lot of fields square nicely with relativism. If there are no objective standards to art and poetry today one may indeed rise to the top of his profession undeservedly, faking his way there, and should criticism come he can always respond, ‘well, that’s your truth. And what is truth, anyways? Some collector paid me $20 million for the painting you’re claiming is nonsense. Looks like I am a genius after all.’ But tell someone you can dunk a basketball and then it turns out you cannot dunk a basketball the response ‘well, it’s your truth that I can’t dunk, I believe I can’ is immediately and unquenchably burned like chaff in the face of a cold, hard, and scientifically measurable reality. You can throw a football 60 yards in the air, or you cannot; your team either won the game or they lost the game. Sports often clearly presents life’s ultimate black and white realities, within the confines of a game, that we lack in our gray, lukewarm real life experience. Would that we could apply the lessons learned in the ‘virtual reality’ of the sporting arena to our daily existence.

Any athlete who has ever attempted to become a serious athlete, to become at least half-good in the sport of their choice, knows you cannot become even a little bit good without embracing the time tested techniques and methods of the masters who proceeded you. Ever seen an Olympic lifter with bad technique? Ever seen an elite marathoner who ran with her arms flailing about wildly, one who didn’t understand each and every mechanical tick for shaving off even a few seconds over the 26 mile course? Why do all major league pitchers and hitters arrive at the identical power position before throwing or swinging, regardless of the unique personal set-up beforehand? Is it because all world-class athletes are unimaginative conformists, or worse, communists, bent on stamping out individual expression at every turn? Or, is it because they value the timeless truths of tradition, of the so-called ‘right way’ to do something, knowing novelties and fads will only hurt their performance, and this after wasting their time first?

To speak again on suffering is to, once again, speak briefly. Anyone who honestly doesn’t think that becoming an Olympic athlete or an NFL player or an Alpine Ski World Cup class skier or a PGA Tour golfer—and, I know, golf; is it a sport, is it not?—is extremely demanding and involves daily physical, emotional, and psychological suffering in the form of intense workouts and constantly saying no, to various foods, social experiences, and even sleep schedules, should be accused not simply of misunderstanding sports but life itself. Athletics are indeed an excellent school for overcoming relativism with absolute realities, overcoming disdain for tradition with reverence for the right way to do something, and evolving from a position of once seeing suffering as an uncomfortable obstacle to understanding it as the only path to true happiness and authentic success. And the whole point is this: wouldn’t it be splendid if the tens of millions of young athletes in America who learned these lessons applied them to the higher things of life? Wouldn’t it be great if young athletes understood that the absolutism, traditionalism, and suffering character of their preferred disciplines were but a faint intimation of these holy values as they pertain to the Faith, to the spiritual realities around which hang the questions of their eternal salvation?

The Catholic Church has produced ample commentary supporting the lofty ideal of sports as a way to glorify God and cultivate the necessary discipline so as to advance towards holiness and sainthood. No shortage, unlike us here, tonight, short on time, and so if you’ll allow to me cite examples solely from one source—the late and beloved pontiff St. John Paul the Great, avid lover of, and commentator on, sports—I hope it might serve as an invitation for you to dive deeper into a consideration of this perennially fascinating topic.

Athletics, John Paul told his audience during the 2000 Jubilee of Sports People, ‘is a fitting occasion to give thanks to God for the gift of sport, in which the human person exercises his body, intellect and will, recognizing these abilities as so many gifts of his Creator.’5 Furthermore, the practitioner of sports is ultimately ‘God’s true athlete,’ using the springboard of athletic discipline and achievement to become a ‘strong athlete of Christ, that is, a faithful and courageous witness to his Gospel. But to succeed in this, he must persevere in prayer, be trained in virtue and follow the divine Master in everything.’6

John Paul II on a kayak trip

That which John Paul II said in October of 2000, less than five years before his death, he had been saying from the earliest years of his pontificate. In May of 1979 he told soccer players in Milan that athletic competition fosters, ‘many spiritual goods… offering to society the precious contribution of a healthy morality.’7 Whereas the fallen world so often finds itself torn apart by war and strife, athletes, he told an audience of water-skiers that same year, ‘rend the tissue of social solidarity…bearing a luminous witness of cohesion, peace and union.’8 This because, as his talk was entitled, sport is ‘a school of human virtue.’ The Church has always been interested in sport he told the Italian Sports Federation in December 1979 because ‘she prizes everything that contributes constructively to the harmonious and complete development of man, body and soul.’9 ‘Certainly, the value of the body must be supported and pursued in respect of the hierarchy of the higher moral and spiritual values,’ he continued, affirming ‘the absolute primacy of the spirit, of the soul, created in the likeness of God, reborn to new life by the sacrifice of Jesus Christ, the Incarnate Word, and called to the imperishable wreath, after the happy accomplishment of the earthly competition.’10

When we think of Christianity and athletics what often comes to mind is Tim Tebow and thanking God for championships claimed; sometimes these two together. These are good things, and there are plenty of Catholic athlete exemplars around us today. Like former Major League Baseball player Mike Sweeney who now runs Catholic baseball camps for kids that include recitation of the rosary, Eucharist adoration, and confession.11 Or current Los Angeles Chargers quarterback Phillip Rivers, a Catholic from Bible Belt Alabama who has appeared on the popular EWTN show Life on the Rock and who has nine children with his wife, Tiffany. Or Olympic, multiple gold medal winning gymnast Simone Biles, who always makes sure to have a rosary packed in her gym bag whenever an opportunity for prayer might arise. Or, Father Chase Hilgenbrinck, who, prior to his ordination, was a professional soccer player in South America and reached the pinnacle of the sport in the U.S., Major League Soccer, before retiring at the apex of his career, at twenty-six years old, to follow a higher calling. One can infer the divine providence at work in Hilgenbrinck answering his vocation to the priesthood while a member of the New England Revolution. Here was a young and successful athlete thriving in Boston, the very epicenter of the clergy sex abuse scandal, and he’s going to leave all the glamour behind to become a Catholic priest; now? Here?12

It might be fine, permissible, to end the talk here. Perhaps I’ve convinced you that

sports are something more than scantly-clad women shilling lite beer to face-painted men with single digit IQs shouting to their ex-wife elects to bring out a new round of nachos before halftime. Perhaps I haven’t convinced you and, if so, that’s okay, I’m sure it’s not the first time you’ve been wrong about something. Nonetheless, allow me to return to the earlier point zero versus point one-hundred appreciation perspective paradigm in a consideration of another virtue of athletics: beauty. Does not our favorite online apologist-evangelist—His Excellency the Auxiliary Bishop of Los Angeles, California, USA, Robert Barron—says that’s what it’s all about, beauty?13

Athletics can be a form of high art dedicated to the cultivation and display of beauty. Put me against a wall and force me to define what I believe is the singular, ultimate meaning of sports in a Catholic context and here’s what I’d say: that people will see something beautiful and good in flawed man and in turn glorify Him who is Beauty and Goodness itself. Who doesn’t see the beauty in sports? The 100 point perspective, entitled crowd who thinks the Idaho Vandals are a terrible football team. To them, sports, in their artistic essence, are banal, even boring. Good for being put to pragmatic uses, like winning a long shot bet on the Super Bowl, or as a bludgeon to crush your hated rival into the dust, or for translating 10-2 and a New Year’s Day Bowl into personal, self-esteem index capital because you happen to attend that school; but anything more than this? No.

The Saint Francis, everything is a gift, point zero appreciative people understand the beauty in sports. They marvel at major league pitchers who can throw a baseball more than one-hundred miles per hour (that velocity covers half a football field in one second) and perhaps marvel more at opposing hitters who, but sixty feet away, have two tenths of a second to see and process the ball coming towards them before using another 0.2 seconds to attempt hitting it with a round, wooden bat. They are in awe of decathletes like 2004 Olympic gold medalist Roman Šebrle who has the plyometric explosiveness to jump across a two lane highway; are amazed by the Kenyan distance runner Eliud Kipchoge, the first man to clock a sub two hour marathon, and are impressed to learn an NFL quarterback must mentally process an equivalent amount of information to a wannabe medical school student studying for their MCATs. Now, I don’t want to offend any doctors by implying that NFL quarterbacks have the same mental capacity as orthopedic surgeons, podiatrists and neurologists. Don’t want to offend them because doctors are very important people. And if you don’t believe me, ask any doctor, and they’ll tell you themselves how important they are.14

Sports, once more and for the last time, can help a person overcome relativism, disdain for tradition, and an aversion to suffering. And in being fundamentally about beauty, sports can point us in the direction of the God who is Beauty Himself and whose creation reflects this reality even in the smallest details, available to anyone willing to see all of life as a gift from the point zero appreciation vantage point. But let’s return to ‘against relativism’ one more time and conclude with a reflection on how sports training in light of absolute, inarguable results can help one progress in the spiritual life.

Let’s use the deadlift as an example. Deadlifting is a popular, and according to many, preeminently important strength training exercise. Recently a man named Cailer Woolam—who goes by the YouTube moniker ‘Dr. Deadlift;’ I’m completely serious15—set the world record in this exercise for someone 225 pounds or lighter with a 950 pound lift. Weightlifting fans and experts alike believe he’ll be the first such ‘smaller person’ to deadlift one-thousand pounds, half a ton. Imagine your deadlift is two hundred twenty-five pounds; two plates on each side. That’s great, good work. But knowing what a true elite deadlift is, having no relativistic misconceptions that your 225 is something special, you can grow in strength with your eyes fixed on 950 lbs. as a standard of greatness and perhaps one day get to four, five, even six hundred pounds yourself. And if progressing from a two hundred twenty five pound deadlift to, let’s say, six hundred seventy-five pounds isn’t beauty and progress harmoniously synchronized, I don’t know what more I can say. Nonetheless, I’ll say this: maybe you’re a two hundred twenty five pound deadlifter in your Catholic spirituality but mistakenly think you’re really something. I challenge you to find and learn from the 950 lb. Cailer Woolam Catholics, the great men and women of our Faith tradition like John of the Cross or Teresa of Avila and, doing this, perhaps you’ll triple your ‘spiritual deadlift’ in time as well, progressing on the only path worth trodding, the path of the spiritual athlete for Christ, with happiness and holiness, now and forever, the singular goal.

1 Note: The words ‘athletics’ and ‘sports’ are used interchangeably within this essay.

2 Walker Percy, Lost in the Cosmos (New York: FSG, 1983), 19, 80.

3 1 Corinthians 9:24-25.

4 Matthew 16:24.

5 John Paul II, “Jubilee of Sports People,” October 2000. Sourced online at: http://w2.vatican.va/content/john-paul-ii/en/homilies/2000/documents/hf_jp-ii_hom_20001029_jubilee-sport.html

6 Ibid.

7 John Paul II, “Address to the Doctors and Players of The Italian Soccer Team Milan,” May 12, 1979 in “Blessed John Paul II Speaks to Athletes: Homilies, Messages and Speeches on Sport.” Kevin Lixey, Norbert Muller, Cornelius Schafer, eds, 10.

8 John Paul II, “Sport: A School of Human Virtue” Address to the 23rd Water-Skiing Championship of Europe, Africa and the Mediterranean,” August 31, 1979 in “Blessed John Paul II Speaks to Athletes: Homilies, Messages and Speeches on Sport.” Kevin Lixey, Norbert Muller, Cornelius Schafer, eds, 12.

9 John Paul II, “Sport as Training Ground for Virtue and Instrument of Union Among People: Address to the presidents of the Italian Sports Federation,” December 20, 1979 in “Blessed John Paul II Speaks to Athletes: Homilies, Messages and Speeches on Sport.” Kevin Lixey, Norbert Muller, Cornelius Schafer, eds, 13-14

10 Ibid.

11 Dan Lee, “People of Faith-Mike Sweeney Steps up to the Plate for His Faith,” Northwest Catholic, June 9, 2014. Available online at: https://www.nwcatholic.org/features/nw-stories/people-of-faith-mike-sweeney-steps-up-to-the-plate-for-his-faith.html

12 Mary Rezac, ‘Olympic Star Simone Biles Carries a White Rosary in Her Gym Bag,’ Orange County Catholic, August 9, 2016. https://occatholic.com/olympic-star-simome-biles-carries-a-white-rosary-in-her-gym-bag/; ‘Life on the Rock The 3Fs Fr Mark and Br Paschal with Philip Rivers 07-14-2011,’ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xR_Vxz5nqVw; Kathy Orton, ‘Whatever Happened to…the pro soccer played [sic] who left to become a priest,’ The Washington Post, July 15, 2011.

13 ‘Bishop Barron on Evangelizing Through Beauty.’ February 19, 2013. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bBMOwZFpZX0

14 Reed Albergotti, ‘The World’s Greatest Athlete?’ The Wall Street Journal. June 20, 2008.

15 Cailer Woolam, ‘Dr. Deadlift,’ YouTube Channel. https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCM3hG9mDDKH-TkvkJgybwug