The platypus is no longer the best evidence of God’s sense of humor.
Actor Shia LaBeouf said he converted to Christianity while shooting his upcoming film “Padre Pio” and has become a member of the Roman Catholic Church.
Kidding aside, this is joyous news and still more proof that where sin abounds, grace abounds all the more.
The actor first engaged with the church while living with a monastery of Franciscan Capuchin friars in order to better understand the late mystic St. Padre Pio, whom LaBeouf portrays in the upcoming movie.
Heading into the project, LaBeouf said that he was at the darkest point in his life after a series of public scandals. He was drawn to spirituality and joined a variety of faith groups to find meaning, fighting thoughts of helplessness and suicide.
“I had a gun on the table. I was outta here,” Shia recalled in the nearly 90-minute interview. “I didn’t want to be alive anymore when all this happened. Shame like I had never experienced before — the kind of shame that you forget how to breathe. You don’t know where to go. You can’t go outside and get like, a taco.”
“But I was also in this deep desire to hold on,” he added.
The pleasures of this world just do not suffice to fulfill a man. By the same token, if God were not man’s true final end, temporal goods could fulfill us.
He continued, “I know now that God was using my ego to draw me to Him. Drawing me away from worldly desires. It was all happening simultaneously. But there would have been no impetus for me to get in my car, drive up [to the monastery] if I didn’t think, ‘Oh, I’m gonna save my career.'”
While researching and performing the role, however, LaBeouf said he felt “tricked” by God.
This interview gives you the sense of Shia as an earnest and highly expressive man of unexpected depth. He doesn’t come off as your typical Hollywood airhead.
At the same time, he gained infamy during the early days of the Trump phenomenon as an especially fanatical Death Cultist. Which goes to show that it’s better to be hot or cold than lukewarm.
LaBeouf described talking through his feelings and learning about the Christian understanding of sin and forgiveness as key to pulling him out of a dark time in his life.
That makes sense. One of the Death Cult’s worst evils is banishing the concept of mercy from the popular consciousness. Sure, it lets its adherents indulge all the deadly sins without judgment. But its condemnations for violations of its own boutique pieties are ruthless. To the Cult, an apology is an admission of reprobation, not an occasion to extend forgiveness.
The Cult shows you what they fear by what they mock. A frequent call and response among Cultists entails mocking Christian forgiveness with the hypothetical of a rapist repenting on his deathbed and so meriting entry into Heaven with his victim. St. Maria Goretti testifies to the perversion of their thinking.
It’s no wonder that the more self-aware Cultists find the Christian doctrine of remission of sins so compelling. Emphasizing Christ’s offer of absolution for one’s past transgressions seems like a good method of evangelizing to the Death Cult.
“It was seeing other people who have sinned beyond anything I could ever conceptualize also being found in Christ that made me feel like, ‘Oh, that gives me hope,'” LaBeouf told the bishop. “I started hearing experiences of other depraved people who had found their way in this, and it made me feel like I had permission.”
LaBeouf plays the titular character in “Padre Pio,” a film helmed by Abel Ferrara exploring the life of the Franciscan Capuchin mystic.
No one who still draws breath is beyond saving. LaBeouf’s conversion story is an important reminder that even the most fervent enemies of the Church can have Road to Damascus moments.
We should pray for the same for all our enemies.
Read the whole article here.
And watch Bishop Barron’s interview with Shia.
I’ve been asked if the Padre Pio movie will be any good, or just another Hollywood skinsuit.
The director, Abel Ferrara, is a lifelong Catholic known for operating outside the Hollywood system. He’s already made a movie about the Blessed Virgin Mary, so this isn’t his first time tackling religious subjects.
We’ll have to wait and see.
Meanwhile, for a horror-adventure grounded in Catholic theology, read my debut novel.
