Matt Damon Faith !!better!! -

In the pantomime of celebrity culture, we are accustomed to absolutes. Stars are either outspoken evangelists, tweeting their Bible verses, or fiery atheists, signing letters against organized religion. They are expected to pick a side, to brand their belief system as cleanly as they endorse a fragrance or a fitness app.

That, perhaps, is the heart of Matt Damon’s faith: not a set of propositions, but a posture. A reaching. Damon’s position is made more distinct by the company he keeps. His best friend, Ben Affleck, has had a far more public and tortured relationship with religion. Affleck, who famously wore a “I’m Not Religious” pin on Real Time with Bill Maher , has vacillated between criticism of faith and a strange, defensive pride in his own Irish Catholic roots. But Affleck has also been willing to call himself an atheist. matt damon faith

Damon will not go there.

Contrast that with his role in The Martian . Mark Watney is a botanist and an engineer. He is a man of science. When he is stranded alone on Mars, he does not pray. He does not bargain with God. He “sciences the shit out of it.” And yet, the film is profoundly spiritual. Watney’s faith is not in a deity; it is in human ingenuity, in the crew that turns back for him, in the possibility of problem-solving his way to survival. In the pantomime of celebrity culture, we are

Damon has never hidden this foundation. In interviews, he speaks of going to Mass, of the rhythms of the liturgical calendar, and of the moral grammar that Catholicism instilled in him. He attended Cambridge Rindge and Latin School—a public school, but one where the Catholic ethos of New England still lingered in the air. For a bright, introspective child, Catholicism offered a compelling drama: fall, redemption, sacrifice, and resurrection. That, perhaps, is the heart of Matt Damon’s