In the film, Philomena
(2013), the audience is confronted with the spectacle of unjustifiable cruelty committed
under religious auspices. Philomena is this victim, and she must struggle to
come to terms with her past ordeal as a young mother at an Abbey as she goes on
a search for her son in America. Her traveling companion, Martin, is a
journalist writing the story from his perspective as an ex-Catholic. Philomena
defends her faith against Martin’s sarcasm even as she comes to terms with just
how cruel the nuns had been to her. In the end, she and Martin confront the
nuns. The question is how, by which I mean, from what direction? The answer has
value in demonstrating how outwardly religious hypocrites can be put in their
place.
In the true story, pregnant girls were taken to an Abbey.
The woman had to pay the Abbey 100 pounds to leave after having given birth.
Not having such money, the women had to remain for at least four years, working
seven days a week to repay the Abbey. The woman could see their children only
an hour a day. The nuns sold them to Americans, and had the girls sign away any
rights to know of their respective children’s whereabouts. The girls willingly
signed, the nuns having convinced them that they did not deserve the pleasure
of seeing their kids on account of the dire sinfulness of having had sex
outside of marriage. Even into adulthood, the women did not realize that a
contract with a minor is unenforceable, as is a contract made under pressure.
In a flashback, with one of the younger sisters screeching
for a physician as Philomena is about to give birth, the older nun in the room
replies, “It’s in God’s hands now. The pain is her penance.” Later on, Philomena
stands crying, looking out from a courtyard—clutching at metal bars—as a rich
American couple drove her boy away, an old nun stands out in front, waving
goodbye to the car and ignoring Philomena’s arduous cries, as if the pain of
separation were part of the penance. Meanwhile, the Abbey profited from such
sales, as well as from the work of the young mothers.
“I think what they did to you was evil,” Philomena’s
daughter Jane remarks after hearing her mother recount the events.
“No, no, I don’t like that word,” Philomena replies,
rebuffing Jane’s judgment.
“No, no. Evil’s good,” Martin, the journalist, says as he is
still writing, “story-wise, I mean.” Yet later, in confronting one of the old
nuns who had kept Philomena’s son from finding her, Martin would admit that he
just couldn’t forgive the nuns. For not only had they refused the son visiting
from America any information on Philomena even though he was dying of AIDs, the
nuns had also burned the records listing the adoptive parents while
conveniently retaining the contracts that the young women had signed. When
Philomena approached the nuns later in life for information on her son, they
lied to her, saying they would try and trace his location—knowingly giving her
false hope.
While it is easy to find much evil in such cruelty and
lying, the evil in the anger that keeps forgiveness at bay is much less
transparent. That Philomena would forgive the sisters is anticipated in her
response to Martin. “Some of the nuns were very nice,” she said as she put her
hand on Martin’s wrist. Perhaps believing that her mother was letting the nuns
get away with too much (she was, after all, too gullible in respect to them), Jane
informs Martin that the nuns had refused to give her mother any painkillers in
what was a breech birth—the nuns having decided that the pain was penance.
Rather than enabling the nuns, Martin confronts one of the
culprits, Hildegarde, who is then an old lady. As he does so, the priest in the
room tells Martin, “I think your whole manner is absolutely disgusting.” In protecting
the other “religious,” the old priest presumes the nuns to be innocent and
Martin to be culpable. “I’ll tell you what is disgusting,“ Martin replies, “lying
to a dying man.” It is up to Martin to get at the truth—to train a light where
the “religious” conveniently refuse to look. Looking directly into the old
nun’s eyes, Martin asks her, “When you knew [Philomena and her son] were
looking for each other, why did you keep them apart? You could have given him a
few precious moments with his mother before he passed away, but you chose not
to. That’s disgusting. . . . Not very Christian,
now is it?” The old woman could not let that one go! Martin had just called her
a hypocrite concerning the domain that was ostensibly most important to
Hildegarde.
“I have kept my vow of chastity, my whole life,” the old nun replied. “Self-denial and mortification of
the flesh, that’s what brings us closer to God.” Those girls have nobody to
blame but themselves and their own carnal
incontinence.” These last two words are riveted with anger and resentment
that spew out like darts of spit. So sure of her knowledge of God, Hildegarde
doubtlessly assumed she could not be wrong. No other ways exist. The girls had
sinned such that they are unredeemable. Such is the mind of God, rather than a
mere mortal. Yet there was Hildegarde, standing vicariously for us all in our
various religious convictions. God wants
this. That guy is going to hell. I’m here to save you. That’s just an opinion
you have there.
Hildegarde is assuming, problematically, that the vow taken
by every monk and nun in a Catholic religious order implies that a layperson
having sex outside of marriage evinces carnal incontinence. The sister is forgetting
that different standards pertain to religious orders and the laity. To
understand this, a little history is necessary. Part of the price Christianity
paid for being legalized then favored by Rome was the infusion of nominal
Christians who were going alone to get along, rather than out of any
specifically Christian or even religious fervor. The monasticism of the fourth
and fifth centuries came as a reaction against the lower standards of
discipleship being acceptable to the Church. Based on a bifurcation or split of
Jesus’s ethical preaching into those that are necessary for salvation and
others that are oriented to perfection, only the religious orders oriented
themselves to both.[1]
The laity, including the young women under Hildegarde’s care, are thus not
duty-bound to comply with the more exacting measures geared to religious
perfection. Hence the nun’s association of sex outside of marriage with breaking
a religious vow is erroneous from a
Catholic standpoint. Put another way, Hildegarde and the other sisters have
been too exacting on the girls—even punishing them for not measuring up!
Concerning the presumed value of self-denial, Nietzsche
argues that making oneself weak voluntarily is to reduce the strength a person
needs to overcome the hegemony of one’s most intractable urge. Hence Hildegarde
cannot overcome her hatred, or even her sense of omniscience. Furthermore, the
place of penance in Christianity as it has come down to us may be exaggerated. The
Renaissance scholar Lorenzo Valla has pointed out that “the summons with which
the preaching of Jesus began did not say, as medieval misreading had supposed, ‘Do
penance [Poenitentiam agite],’ but ‘Repent,’
that is, ‘Turn your mind around.’”[2]
Hildegarde is quite resolute in respect to holding her mind firm where it is,
putting insufferable penance above all else in her religion.
Martin, rather than the victim herself, demands an apology
from the old nun, but none would be forthcoming from such a cold heart. In
fact, the nun goes on to say that Philomena’s suffering, and that of the other
mothers, “was atonement for their sins”—for having had sex once. At this, Martin
has heard enough. “One of the mothers was 14 years-old!” Rejecting Martin’s
criticism, the nun announces, “The Lord Jesus Christ will be my judge, not the
likes of you.” Not only did the old woman know
this, she also doubtlessly knew how
He would judge her. Cruelty, in other words, defends itself with assumed
omniscience, or self-idolatry.
Interestingly, it is not Martin’s anger at the Church that
succeeds in stopping the old nun in her tracks; rather, her stupefied quandary
comes from a surprising, and indeed very ironic direction—from her own
religion, as evinced in Philomena’s instantiation of Jesus’s basic preachment
to forgive one another. Taking the initiative, Philomena looks down at the nun
in a wheelchair and calmly yet with active determination says, “Sister
Hildegarde, I want you to know that I forgive you.” Suddenly it is Philomena
who exhibits religious perfection, and the sister is like a layperson—and a nominal
Christian at that. I don’t see an expression of “how dare you;” rather,
Hildegarde may actually look a bit vulnerable—at least the anger is gone
(likely replaced by astonishment).
As the nun sits in her wheelchair stunned, looking up at the
inferior laywoman now somehow in unfamiliar territory above, Martin misses the
subtle spiritual dynamic entirely at first; he assumes that Philomena has unilaterally
disarmed in letting the old woman get away with all her past atrocities. Philomena
meets this criticism that she would let such words suffice by arguing that
forgiveness is not just words, “That’s hard; that’s hard for me.” Forgiving
cruelty that refuses even to apologize is indeed hard, for the injury from the
emotional abuse stings long after the infliction and forgiveness is unmerited.
Yet in the long scheme of things, anger is harder, and mortifies the injury as
if poking at the wound.
“I don’t want to hate people. I don’t want to be like you,”
Philomena adds—with Hildegarde obviously witnessing the push-back against the
secularized critic. Indirectly, this enhances the credibility, and thus force,
of the forgiveness.
“I’m angry,” Martin admits. I would be too.
“Well, it must be exhausting.” With this, Philomena asks a
younger nun to escort her to her son’s grave. As a viewer, I find myself
reflecting on how exhausting even righteous causes against injustices are.
As Martin then leaves the room, he looks back at the old
woman and says almost in a defeatist tone, “Well, I couldn’t forgive you.” Owing
to Hildegarde’s hatred even years after having refused the dying son his wish,
Martin’s line even now resonates with me, even as I side with Philomena.
Interestingly, before leaving the building, Martin buys
Philomena a small Heart-of-Jesus plastic statue. In this gesture, Martin
acknowledges his newly found respect for the true religious standpoint, which is far more valuable and powerful
than either his anti-religion banter or Hildegarde’s brand of Catholicism. Generally speaking, the best critique of so-called
religious practice, sentiment, or belief is from religion’s own unearthed and forgotten
spirit, rather than from an extrinsic or exogenous standpoint. Philomena represents the former whereas
Martin instantiates the latter. In the end, although Martin still refuses to
forgive the nuns (and Catholicism more generally)—and indeed they are not
worthy of it—yet he does pivot 180 degrees regarding Philomena’s faith, going
from sarcastic put-downs to pro-active respect. Like Francis of Assisi,
Philomena is one who I suspect Jesus would resolutely say, “She is one of mine.”
I suspect that Hildegarde came away from her encounter with
Philomena feeling less sure of herself with respect to Jesus Christ being her
judge; perhaps she would fare better under Martin’s wrath. Lest we be too harsh
on the old gal, I suspect that the human brain itself contains an over-reaching
proclivity when it comes to what we assume we know for sure concerning
religious matters. None of us are immune, and yet the inexorable denial in this
brain sickness tells each one of us that we are.
1. Jaroslav
Pelikan, Jesus Through the Centuries: His
Place in the History of Culture (Harper and Row: New York, 1987), p. 114.
2. Ibid.,
p. 153.See Valla’s text, Annotations on
the New Testament.
