The Scarlet and the Black

In the film, The Scarlet and the Black (1983), Gregory Peck and Christopher Plummer face off as Monsignor Hugh O’Flaherty and Col. Herbert Kapper at the end of the film when the Nazi head of police in Rome abruptly changes his tune in challenging the Catholic priest no longer by threats, but by appealing to the priest’s faith of humble compassion applied even to one’s enemies so O’Flaherty will extend mercy to Kapper’s wife and children, who would otherwise fall into the hands of the Allied troops advancing into Rome. Before that dialogue, O’Flaherty and Pope Pius XII subtly debate whether the pope had been right in compromising with Hitler in order to keep the Catholic Church intact in Nazi Germany. The film can thus be viewed in light of the potential of the medium of film to convey and even thrash out contending theological ideas.

Before the Nazi head of the SS in Rome faces off against the monsignor oddly in order to ask him a favor, that priest walks with the pope though a cellar hallway packed with rare documents and other treasures safe below the war, which the pope calls “the inhumanity of man.” The pope’s message is that the Church must go on, even in such times of war. “Conquers may come and go, but the eternal Church must remain,” the pope says as a way into his claim, “My greatest single duty is to preserve the continuity of the centuries, the heritage and existence of the Holy Church.” It is as though that goal were an end in itself, and therein lies that pope’s vulnerability. “I have been condemned by many for not speaking out against the Nazis, for making a concordat with Hitler, which guaranteed the life of the Church in Germany.” Speaking out against the Nazis could have turned enough Germans against the dictator that a coup may have been more likely. Also, making a deal with a man who is arguably caught up in evil is problematic from a Christian standpoint. The pope himself admits to the monsignor, presumably in referring to speaking out against the Nazis, “Perhaps I could have done more.” Determined to keep the church doors open in the Reich, the pope could be saying that he could perhaps have spoken out more without jeopardizing the Catholic churches in Germany, or that not having spoken out enough may not be enough to keep the churches open there. “I’ve learned that Hitler’s drawn up plans to invade us and to create a puppet Papacy in Lichtenstein under his control,” the pope informs the priest whose active involvement in hiding escaped Allied P.O.W.s and downed airmen could tip Hitler’s decision in favor of invading and closing the Vatican. “Any activities that give the Nazis an excuse to invade our territory must be avoided at all costs. All such activities must cease,” the pope says. The clear message to the monsignor is to immediately back away from hiding the 4,000 men in and around Rome.

One of the pope’s assumptions is that “the essence of statesmanship is compromise.” Even in politics, this claim can be disputed, for not all political differences can be reconciled; sometimes, a clear choice must be made wherein one option is chosen and the other is rejected. In religious terms, the relevant question is stated by the monsignor: “What is our duty when we come face to face with evil?” The pope instinctively answers, “We must fight it.” The implication is that compromising with Hitler’s regime was a mistake from a religious standpoint even if it worked politically. The monsignor closes the loop by asking the pope, “If we must fight, how can we compromise with it?” The pope answers with, “In the abstract, we cannot. In practical terms, it is sometimes necessary to proceed slowly and with caution.” But the monsignor’s question on how to deal with evil face to face is not in the abstract; it is an applied question. Also, in compromising with Hitler and not speaking out, the pope was not proceeding slowly; rather, his conduct was static rather than dynamic in order to keep the churches open in Germany. So, the pope’s answer doesn’t really work. The monsignor picks up yet another problem with the answer in asking, “But isn’t that the same as saying, it depends on the circumstances?” Sometimes it is necessary, the pope claimed. But any necessity bearing on political expediency would of course be extrinsic to religion, rather than from the nature of evil manifesting differently. What about “doing what is right, come hell or high water, and God will give you the upper hand?” This is the monsignor’s position. “Sanctus simplicitus, for some it is easier than others,” the pope replies. Holding to divine simplicity in the face of evil, the pope is saying, has not been easy for himself. It can be tempting to apply situational ethics instead of maintaining a religious true north. So, the monsignor asks, “Is it ever right to see innocent people in mortal danger and turn your back on them?” The priest informs the pope that 4,000 men in hiding are under his care, and the pope is visibly astonished at the number. “Do what you think is best, considering what I have said, and with God guiding your decision,” the pope advises. The monsignor’s questions have had an effect, as the pope has shifted from telling the priest to cease all such involvement so the Nazis will not invade the Vatican and set up a puppet Papacy. It is indeed a judgment call; even if compromising with evil is abhorrent to religious tastes, the pope was not wrong to see to it that the Catholics in Germany could still have Masses to attend in order to be spiritually fed liturgically, especially when the Allied bombing of German cities was underway. To say that the pope’s responsibility is only or even primarily to the institution whereas the monsignor’s is to God would be unfair; both men are trying to do what is right even though they favor different strategies. This commonality does not apply later in the film when Kapper has one of men fetch the monsignor from his bedroom for a private, informal meeting at the Roman Colosseum in the middle of the night. That dialogue between the antagonist and the protagonist represents evil pitting against holiness.

The sheer arrogance of evil is on display when Col. Kapper, who wants his wife and kids to be sneaked out of Rome to safety in Switzerland by means of the monsignor’s network, admits upon seeing the priest, “nothing would give me greater pleasure” than to shoot him. The monsignor is unfazed. “Well,” he says back, “when it comes down to it, a bullet is your answer to just about everything.” It’s “the only argument you’ve got.” Rather than deny this, Kapper replies, “I had my orders. I’m a soldier. I do my duty.” It is interesting that the head of the Nazi police in Rome views himself as having been a soldier in a war. The priest scoffs, “You can’t hide behind that, Kapper. Don’t debase the word duty.” Conflating municipal police with an army on a battlefield, Kapper replies that in a war, his duty includes “whatever it takes.” The duty to do anything a person likes lacks any constraint, and his thus not a duty. The priest misses this point, and instead goes after the defense of the duty to follow orders. “And you think that absolves you of any responsibility?” “Yes!” Kapper snaps back. “What is important is the Reich, not Rome.” At this point, the monsignor could have pointed out that Kapper was not following orders when he lied to the Jewish leaders that by paying him in cash and gold, the SS in Rome would leave the Jews alone. Just as Eichmann was not under orders to march Jews out of Hungary to an infamous concentration camp in Poland, in the film, no one ordered Kapper to trick the Jews. So, following orders doesn’t hold up as a defense, and neither does duty, for Kapper sought to enrich the Reich and likely even himself by giving the Jews to have an incentive to collect money and gold.

Regarding the importance of the Reich, the monsignor asks rhetorically, “How many murderous dictators have talked that kind of rubbish?” Regarding Rome, he says, “The Church is still here,” whereas in a few years, “a few broken stones” will be all that is “left of your Third Reich.” Because Kapper knows that the Nazis’ pull-out from Rome likely means that the Reich will likely fall, he does not dispute the priest’s prediction. Rather, he tries to treat both men as equivalent in being subject to superiors. The oddness of insulting the priest while wanting to ask for a favor comes up again when Kapper tells the monsignor, “You crawl to your pulpit, obey his orders, just as I obey mine.” Kapper is referring to orders from the pope, rather than God. The monsignor conflates the two in replying, “You compare obedience to Hitler with the faith a priest owes to his Church? You think that’s the same? In the name of God!” The priest’s reply can be criticized because faith to the Church is distinct from following orders from another person, including the pope even though the Papacy is believed by Catholics to hold a special position in relation to Christ (so it could legitimately be asked, by the way, whether Jesus would have compromised with Hitler as the pope did or stand on principle against the evil). Nevertheless, the monsignor is right to object to Kapper’s claim that following orders from a pope is normatively or in religious terms equivalent to following orders from Hitler. The monsignor is so utterly disgusted by the comparison as if both men were simply following orders that he begins to walk away before Kapper says, “Wait!” It is only then that, for a bit, Kapper’s tone softens; he must now ask for the priest’s help.

Picking up on Kapper’s reason for the informal meeting in the middle of the night, the monsignor asks, “What is it you want from me, Kapper?” The latter replies, “They say you [priests] can’t pass a beggar or a lame dog, but that you see yourself with some sort of obligation to look after anyone in trouble. You help British and American prisoners, Jews, Arabs, refugees, anybody. It’s part of your faith. Is that right?” “Well, I wouldn’t deny it,” the priest answers. “That’s why I became a priest.” Kapper has been told that the faith is one of “brotherly love and forgiveness.” Forgiveness “is the other half of what you believe, true?” “True,” the monsignor admits. “Well, I’m glad of it,” Kapper says almost warmly, “because I have three more for your mercy wagon.” Yet again, the odd strategy of insulting the person even while asking him for a favor is evident. Kapper notes that if the Partisans get a whole of his wife and children, they would be killed. Sounding like he is demanding mercy for his family, the SS man says, “I want them out of Rome and safe; that’s what I want from you, priest.” Again, this is not the politest way of asking for a favor. Astonished, the monsignor asks, “You’re asking me to save your family?” Kapper tries to manipulate the priest. “If you really believe what you preach, you’ll do it.” Still astonished, the monsignor says, “You expect me to help you after what you’ve done? You think it comes automatically, just because you want it?” Even the Nazi realizes that he has no right to ask for mercy for himself. “I’m not talking about myself,” he says. Even so, the priest is astonished. “You turned this city into a concentration camp. You’ve tortured and butchered my friends. You violated every principle of God and man! I can’t believe it, after all you’ve done, you want mercy?” Again, not denying the accusations, Kapper replies, “I told you, for my family.” But “they’re just part of you,” the monsignor replies. “Part of what you stand for. They’ve taken whatever they could get without a thought for the suffering all around them. And now, you demand that they be saved? I’ll see you in hell first!” The priest knows that Kapper is correct about the Christian faith, that Jesus says in the Gospels, forgive seven times seven, including enemies, so in refusing Kapper’s “demand,” the priest is willing in the moment to go to hell rather than help the Nazi’s family. Picking up on this, Kapper says to himself of the monsignor, “No, you’re no different from anyone else. All your talk means nothing. Charity, forgiveness, mercy? It’s all lies. . . . There’s no God. No humanity.”

So, when Kapper is caught and is informed while being interrogated that someone, perhaps with a network, has gotten the Nazi’s wife and children to safety in Switzerland, the hardened SS man is surprised. Although the film does not include the man’s eventual conversion, the beginning of his turning away from the Nazi ideology to the Christian faith begins when he realizes that the monsignor has not even taken credit for the act of mercy, which implies unconditional forgiveness for Kapper’s family even though they benefitted financially while other people suffered greatly.

That neither brotherly love nor forgiveness of one’s detractors is conditional is clear from the Gospels. Even when demanded by an enemy who has not turned from evil, God’s love can reach into the dark, for otherwise how will God vanquish evil in the end? Is this not the ultimate telos of faith in the three Abrahamic religions? As much as evil deserves to be punished, and of course can be subject to divine wrath, for “Vengeance is Mine, sayeth the Lord,” it is up to us to pour love as humane, humble compassion where doing so is hardly convenient. To say that helping Col. Kapper’s wife and children is not convenient for Monsignor O’Flaherty is a gross understatement; after all, the monsignor risked being captured by Kapper’s SS men when he went, disguised in a Nazi uniform, to visit his friend, Fr. Vittorio, who was in jail and severely ill from having been recently tortured. The neighbor-love evinced in risking one’s own life to compassionately minister to a friend’s humane needs, as well as in hiding P.O.W’s who could otherwise be captured and killed by the Nazis instantiates the presence of divine love, but what many Christians do not realize is that an even richer presence of theological love lies in compassionately serving the humane needs of enemies and even people whom one dislikes or is disliked by oneself. What the monsignor does for Kapper’s wife and children, and thus really for the SS police chief himself by extension, dwarfs the religious significance, from a Christian standpoint, of hiding 4,000 men from the Nazis and ministering to Vittorio. In short, “love thy enemies” goes beyond “neighbor-love” in realizing the kingdom of God within. Compassion for one’s friends, one’s neighbors, and finally one’s enemies can be seen along a trajectory of decreasing self-interest.

As the film winds up, the penultimate scene centers on a brief dialogue between the pope and the monsignor. “No need to rise,” the pope says as he enters the room. “In this imperfect world,” he tells the monsignor, “you may never receive the honor that is due to you. But I wanted you to know that in my heart, I honor you.” Because the world would not honor the monsignor for getting Kapper’s family to safety, the pope must be referring to the monsignor’s role in running the informal network that hid thousands of men from the Nazis in and around Rome. Referring back to the discussion in the cellar, the pope said, “I talked to you once of the treasures of the Church. Perhaps I deceived myself. The real treasures of the Church, what makes it imperishable, is that every once in a while, someone comes to it, my son, like you.” That the pope is referring to the treasures in the cellar, which symbolize the value in protecting the institution from the Nazis, is another indication that the pope is referring to the monsignor’s role in hiding enemies of the Nazi state with whom he sympathizes rather than to the monsignor humbly acting in compassion, in unconditional forgiveness, by moving Kapper’s family to safety in Switzerland. It follows that the pope has more reason than he realizes to honor the monsignor. At an esoteric level of distinctively Christian faith, the monsignor, in using his free will to decide to have his network get Col. Kapper's family safely to Switzerland, Monsignor acted out of strength rather than weakness, and could feel the presence of the divine nature more deeply than from helping Vittorio and all of the men in hiding. In honoring the priest on the basis of the neighbor-love that the priest took risks to manifest in compassion to Vittorio and the 4,000 Allied soldiers in hiding, the pope can been understood as taking the Christian faith only so far. 

Spotlight

The medium of film can treat organizational, societal, and global ethical problems either from one standpoint, which is appropriate if the assignment of blame for immoral conduct is clear (e.g., the Nazis), or by presenting both sides of an argument so to prompt the viewers to think about the ethically complex problem. This second approach is useful if it is not clear whether a character or a given conduct is unethical. When it is obvious which characters or actions are unethical, a film can still stimulate ethical reasoning and judgment by drawing attention to unethical systems as distinct from individuals and their respective conduct in the film. The film, Spotlight (2015), which is a true story, takes the position that Roman Catholic priests who molested and raped children in the Boston Archdiocese in Massachusetts behaved ethically. The dramatic tension in the film is set up when the chief editor of the Boston Globe, Liev Schreiber, tells the paper’s investigative “spotlight” managers that the story will not go to press until the system that enabled Cardinal Law and others to cover up many child-rapist priests by transferring them to other parishes is investigated. “We’re going after the system,” Liev says in keeping the story under wraps until the entire informal system that has enabled the rapists to continue to lead parishes.  

Harkening to the informal system extending beyond the Catholic Church to include Boston itself, Mitchell Garabedian, a lawyer defends adults who have been abused by priests, says “If it takes a village to raise a child, it takes a village to abuse one.”  To the elite in Boston, the mantra is “Enjoy the party.” A village not only acts to protect its norms, whether ethical or unethical, but also to exclude people who are less interested in protecting unethical norms and ensuring conduct than in uncovering the truth. Walter (Robby) Robinson is not so subtly told he could find himself looking for a job in another city if he digs too deep. The systemic corruption in the film goes beyond Cardinal Law, and Liev resists the temptation to make the story solely or principally about the sordid Cardinal Law.

The Roman Catholic Church itself, including its officials in the Vatican, is portrayed in the film as grossly negligent and unethical for refusing to defrock pedophile priests. At the beginning of the film, a priest is whisked away in car so the matter can be handled “in house.” The lack of an institutional process by which the Church hierarchy is able to hold its occupants and the rank and file priests to account is a systemic corruption. So too, the clerical tradition of celibacy is portrayed in the film as toxic. A psychiatrist states that only 50% of Catholic priests are celibate. Six percent of all priests are raping kids. So he estimates that Robby’s investigation will uncover 90 priests. They are spotted because whereas typically priests are moved around every 10 to 12 years, the child-rapists are moved around every 2 or 3 years. Such movements stick out. That a psychiatrist is speaking is itself a hint that long-term celibacy in young and even middle-aged men is so unnatural that pathological outbursts from the repression of such an engrained instinct, which by the way is created by God, can be expected. The psychiatrist reports that the typical Catholic priest has “stunted psycho-sexual” development that is equivalent to that of a 12 year-old. Such stunting is very difficult to detect because it is kept behind the intentional distance between the clergy and the laity. The film could have included not only a psychiatrist, but also a theologian, who could be made to tell the journalists that a church tradition is hardly dogma, and thus can easily be changed. The theologian could ask rhetorically whether repressing a natural, God-given impulse that is so engrained in the human being and plays the important role of the propagation of the species can be sacrificed without violating God’s work as the Creator. In other words, turning human nature against itself can be reckoned as a sin.

Therefore, the systemic culpability goes beyond Fr. Talbott, who was at Boston College when he molested a hockey player and is mentioned in the film. An investigative journalist in the film is convinced that the president of the college must have known, and this implicates the system at that college. Similarly, a journalist says that Cardinal Law knew about Fr. Geogan, another pedophile priest. The Cardinal even ignored a letter. The Vatican’s system is implicated because, as the viewers of the film are informed just before the credits, the Cardinal resigned in shame in December, 2002 only to be reassigned by the Pope to the highest ranking Roman Catholic churches in the world, the Baslica si Santa Maria Maggiore in Rome. The viewers also learn that in 2002, the year after the initial investigation, the Spotlight investigation exposed 249 Roman Catholic priests and brothers in the Boston Archdiocese. As shown in the film, the Spotlight unit at the Boston Globe instituted a help-line for victims on the day that the story broke.

Therefore, rather than explore nuances pro and con on the ethics of priests molesting children and the Catholic hierarchy and even Catholics in Boston, the film argues that besides Cardinal Law and the 93 pedophile priests who had been molesting children, more than one system had been corrupted to the point that the rapists could be transferred every 2 or 3 years from parish to parish rather than defrocked and reported to local law enforcement.

Catholic viewers of the film could reasonably be expected to consider going over to the Episcopal, Lutheran, or Orthodox denominations—essentially voting against a corrupt ecclesiastical system with their feet. In the film, however, Richard, an adult Catholic who as a child was raped repeatedly by a priest, tells one or two of the “spotlight” journalists that he goes to Mass regularly because he “separates the eternal.” God is omnipresent, however, so the eternal is not in fact separate. Richard probably means that he separates his ethical judgment on the conduct of the priest and the Church’s hierarchy from his soul’s yearning for spiritual nourishment in the Mass. He could have cited the real, transubstantiated presence in the Eucharist of the Catholic Mass as being important in his sense of the divine presence in him in the taking of Communion. Historically, as a result of Donatist controversy, the liturgical validity and efficacy of a priest consecrating the Body and Blood of Christ is not negatively impacted by an unethical character or behavior.

Nevertheless, I don’t think any of the victims in the film who left the Catholic Church did so because they thought that the real presence of Christ in the Body and Bread was being compromised by the rapist priests. Rather, such victims would likely make the simple point that sexually molesting a child is not consistent with Christianity, so in protecting the culprits, the Roman Catholic Church had strayed from being Christian, particularly in terms of what Jesus preaches and exemplifies on love and compassion in the Gospels. Nothing quite offends people like hypocrisy, especially in the domain either of ethics or religion. Nothing in Christian theology justifies the unethical sexual molestation of children. It is not like the divine command to Abraham to sacrifice Isaac, which is valid for Abraham even though in ethical terms to everyone else the act is one of unethical (attempted) murder.

The question may boil down to whether a Catholic should give up (or seek in another denomination of Christianity) ritual-conveyed real divine presence because of systemic violation, both in the Church hierarchy and by too many parish priests, of compassion and love that are valued, preached, and demonstrated by Jesus in the Gospels. Perhaps the underlying tension is between the claims that sanctification comes principally by regularly ingesting the Body and Blood of Christ in the Mass or by acting in compassion and love to meet the humane needs of even a person’s detractors and enemies. A Catholic can devoutly feel divine presence in the Eucharist and yet not act towards other people in compassion and love. To be sure, a ritualized sensitivity to the presence of divinity should go hand in hand with valuing and acting in compassion to others, but the linkage may be loose, such that to enter the Kingdom of God that Jesus says in the Gospels lies within a person may require standing up against a corrupt system that has played a role in rapes by priests. Put another way, the divine presence that is being compassionate even the worst of people may trump that which is felt in taking Communion if the two are in tension. To paraphrase Paul by drawing on 1 Corinthians 13:2, it can be affirmed that faith that the presence of divinity is felt inside in taking Communion may be so great as to move mountains, but if there is not love, “I am nothing.” The faith is for naught. 

So, without questioning the efficacy and validity of the consecration in the Mass by priests who, enabled by the Church hierarchy, have been or are materially injurious to the most vulnerable (i.e., children) by molesting them, it can also be affirmed not only that love and compassion are requisite to the kingdom of God being within a person, but also that people, and even their enabling religious organizations, who or that act antipodally to love and compassion are not in that kingdom. The Catholic Church’s mishandling of celibacy, pedophile priests, and the cover-ups brazenly committed by officials in the hierarchy demonstrate the need to place Jesus’ preaching and example of compassionate love in the Gospels above liturgical divine-presence when they conflict. 

Therefore, I contend that even a devout Catholic can legitimately prioritize avoiding any religious organization wherein non-supervisory employees (i.e., priests) and their superiors (i.e., bishops) serially violate Jesus' preachments on compassionate love by acting violently antipodally and with impunity within the organization. Because compassionate love is distinctly theological as the Way into the kingdom of God, "voting with one's feet" (and wallet) even though that means giving up the valid liturgical divine presence in the Catholic Eucharist is not done for ethical reasons, for doing so would be to prioritize ethics above theology in the religious domain. This is not to say that priests and their accomplices are not subject to ethical judgment; the problem is in allowing such judgment to supercede, or eclipse, religious experience, which is valid even if unethical priests play a role in the ritual that stimulates the distinctly religious experience.  

To be sure, the pews in Catholic churches have not been empty, so a significant proportion of Catholics have not been willing to give up a regular experience of the liturgical divine presence even though the Church has failed so miserably, which is itself highly unethical, to expunge pedophile priests who have raped children. In prioritizing focusing experiencially by means of ritual on the image of God within over acting on principle ethically by going to another Christian denomination, those Catholics are correct in prioritizing religous experience over ethics in the religious domain unless other denominations can provide liturgical religious experience too. However, in overlooking Jesus' theological principles of how to enter the kingdom of God, which is latent within a person's soul, such Catholics can be criticized on religious grounds for continuing to go to Mass to partake in divine presence liturgically even though the Church officials have gotten away with having severely violated the Way of compassionate love into the kingdom of God within. 

For purposes of keeping the related though distinct ethical and religious domains from overreaching onto each other, it is very important to distinguish acting on behalf of Jesus' theological concept of compassionate love even and especially to one's detractors by rejecting religious hypocrites from acting on the ethical principle that molesting children is wrong. The Catholics who continued to attend Mass even amid the disclosures of so many priestly child-rapists and accomplices among bishops and even Cardinals committed misordered theological concupscience by putting experiencing liturgical divine presence above standing for Jesus' notion of compassionate love that is difficult rather than convenient. Nevertheless, those Catholics acted validly on religious grounds in not prioritizing acting on ethical principle over experiencing the liturgical divine presence, even though secular ethicists would strenuously object. Spotlight adopts the stance of such ethicists, so the implication that Catholics should leave the Church on such grounds misses the distinctly religious rationale for doing so. That the latter is overlooked so often, rather than just in the film, is a good reason for the Catholic Church, and Christianity more generally, to emphasize Jesus' preachments on compassionate love even to one's detractors (and rude people!) as the Way into the kingdom of God over the liturgical experience of divine presence. Had the filmmakers of Spotlight had this point in mind, the film could have potentially challenged the main direction that Christianity has taken from the outset. This is the idea. 

The Apocalypse

In the film, The Apocalypse (2002), the Apostle John is a prisoner at an island-prison because he is a Christian. He is having visions of heaven in the last of days and Valerio, another prisoner is dutifully writing what John dictates so various church congregations can know of John’s revelations. He is esteemed so much by other Christians that he feels pressure to steer them to God’s truth. Too much esteem, I submit, is being directed to John, as he is, as he admits, only a human being, though he does get caught up in his own direct access to God, as in being able to know the will of God. This is a temptation for any religionist, especially religious leaders. Although subtly, the film conveys John’s over-reaches though without having another character explicitly refer to them as such.

In one of his visions, John hears the question, who is worthy to open the scroll of the meaning of mankind to God. That is, why did God create our species? What does God intend for us in creating us? The answer that John receives is that God wants people to turn back to God to praise God and feel God’s love. Who is worthy to break the seven seals on the scroll? Only the innocent lamb who gave himself to be sacrificed for humanity. “Look,” an angel tells John during a vision, “the Messiah has triumphed, and so he will open the scroll.” Indeed, as John points out, the core of the Christian faith is that God will be victorious over evil at the end of time. In the meantime, John believes God is calling him to lead people to God’s kingdom.

Other Christians in the movie think John’s significance is more than merely preaching on how God’s truth can lead people to God’s kingdom. Gaius, the leader of a congregation, says, “We must wait until his letters show us God’s will.” This implies that John has a special access to God in virtue of having visions and being the last person alive who witnessed Jesus’s crucifixion and resurrection. Irene implores John to come with her to escape from the prison. “We need you so badly. You’re the only witness to the resurrection of our Lord. They will listen to you. You will save us.” It is highly significant that in praying, John says, “I am only human,” and he replies to Irene, “Only the Lord can save us. But now he wants me here to deny my own name and testify to his.” John believes that Jesus is keeping John at the prison. It is God’s will. But is it? Even John finally admits to Irene that he could be wrong. After all, John feels that he should help Christians who are lost. So, after John tells her, “I have to stay. The Lord has spoken to me,” and Irene begs John in the name of Jesus to escape to save her and the other Christians, he suddenly realizes that he, a mere mortal, could be mistaken, so he joins her. As it turns out, the Lord has not spoken to John; his place is with the struggling Christians rather than in prison. In fact, John is very mistaken.

John’s sudden realization should be a wake-up call for any Christians who are so utterly convinced that they know the will of God in their lives. It is not as if everything that happens is God’s will; such a belief ignores the impact of free-will, which in turn is necessary to avoid the conclusion that God is responsible for evil. Historically, the Jansenists, for whom Augustine’s later works rather than the early book of free will are important, believed that the Fall damaged free-will rather severely such that no good whatsoever can come from us. In the film, John voices this theology in stating, “my strength is not from me; it comes from the Lord. But to stave off the self-love that manifests as selfishness, is it necessary to deny having any strength of one’s own? Augustine holds that self-love of that of oneself that is in the image of God has positive religious value. Must even such self-love be denied in order for the sin of selfish self-love to be expunged from a person’s nature? Augustine clearly thought that self-love is not necessarily a sin. Even Jonathan Edwards argues that self-esteem is a neutral self-love in religious terms.

Therefore, John deserves some credit for giving food and drink to an old man and Valerius, respectively, when they are mistreated by Roman guards in the prison. Acting thusly in line with Jesus’s preachments and example, John does not risk incurring the sin of self-love. Ironically, in believing that he knows God’s will for him, that sin can find enough pride to grow on. John’s compassionate acts matter in a religious sense, in terms of him entering the kingdom of God. So, John is mistaken again when he states, “He who believes shall have eternal life.” Without love put in action, even faith that moves mountains is for naught. John is correct, therefore, in stating as a Christian that “God is love, and whosoever lives in love lives in God, and God in him.” John is hit by the Roman head of the prison and put in a cage for days for having wiped the back of a violent, nasty prisoner whom a guard has just whipped.  John uses his free will in compassion to an undesirable and thus not only believes that God is love, but actively chooses to participate in loving acts that are inconvenient. It is subtle, but very important, that the other prisoners and Roman guards are taken back as if in awe when John is compassionate in actions to the weak, old, and even nasty. This awe is not owning to John’s salvific personhood, as though he has direct access to knowing God’s will and can save Christians who feel lost.

In short, John’s strength is not wholly due to God; free-will was not so warped in the Fall that Christians do not deserve some credit for choosing to act in line with Jesus’s teachings on how to enter the kingdom of God that is within, rather than just at the end of time. The film could do more to emphasize that John’s compassionate acts instantiate the presence of the kingdom of God within him, and this would not be the case were John not able to exercise enough of his free-will in choosing to act rather than just believe consistent with the type of inconvenient love preached by Jesus in the Gospels.

The Count of Monte Cristo

“Vengeance is mine, saith the Lord” is a Biblical saying that is perhaps as well known as it is typically ignored in the midst of passion. Even the advice that revenge is better served up as a cold dish rather than immediately when the grill is still hot is difficult to heed. The 1975 film, The Count of Monte-Cristo, can be likened to a “how-to” recipe book on how to exact revenge against multiple people, one after the other until the sense dawns on the avenger that one’s one life has been utterly consumed by the desire and then feels empty once the deserved suffering has been sufficiently inflicted. It is admittedly very difficult to walk away from a grievous injustice if the agent of the harm is allowed to evade suffering that is deserved. In the film, however, Abbé Faria, a Christian priest who has been unjustly held in an island prison for fifteen years, nonetheless urges Edmond Dantes, whose prison cell is connected to Faria’s tunnel, to resist the temptation to ruin the lives of the four men who had unjustly imprisoned Edmund, including De Villefort, Danglars, and General Fernand Mondego. In the end, Dantes, as the Count of Monte-Crisco, pays dearly for having gone down the road of vengeance. Even if the suffering inflicted on the unjust is deserved ethically, distinctly religious implications should be considered lest avengers are left existentially empty rather than as one might expect, finally at peace. The Christian notion of the Kingdom of God is prominent in this distinctly religious regard.

Edmund Dantes is a fervent believer of the religious significance of vengeance. It is, he says, a “holy remedy . . . an eye for an eye.” He also insists, “Revenge is a sweet thing to live for, or die for.” So Abbé Faria tells Dantes while both are in prison, “Vengeance belongs to the Lord, Edmund. Turn away from such unholy thoughts before they destroy you.” Nietzsche points out that ascribing vengeance to God carries with it the collateral damage of a contradiction being in a deity that incorporates a vice while still being omnibenevolent. That conception of God is discredited, and thus tot, or “dead,” precisely because of the contradiction, but could it not be argued that God is being benevolent to the victims of unjust harm by subjecting the culprits to harm? Even so, inflicting any harm, even if ethically deserved, can be said to exclude the peace that come with forgiveness even and especially enemies.

The distinctly religious question in the film is whether exacting revenge is a “holy remedy” justified by the committing of an injustice in the first place, or an unholy thought because revenge involves the intentional infliction of harm. The first claim is belied by the obfuscation of “holy,” a distinctly religious idea, with “injustice,” a distinctly ethical idea. Whereas inflicting harm can be justified ethically as deserved given the harm from an injustice, holiness itself can be said to exclude any infliction of harm. Instead, forgiveness goes with the holy. In fact, Jesus Christ’s conception of the Father’s kingdom can be said to be filled with compassion in the face of the pain of the human needs of a person’s enemies and even detractors. That revenge could ruin the life of an avenger may factor into a utilitarian-based cost-benefit analysis of whether to exact revenge, but any such negative consequence is not why a person seeking a taste of the holy via the Kingdom of God as described by Jesus in the Gospels would not engage in vengeance.

In the film while Abbé Faria and Dantes are digging a tunnel so they could escape, Faria gives Dantes the map to a treasure so Edmond could do good deeds rather than seek revenge. Faria’s strategy fails because although Edmund finds the treasure and promises himself that he would do good things with it, he actually uses his wealth and self-donned title of the Count of Monte-Crisco to take revenge on “four unjust, selfish men.” In fact, after the dual with the son of Mercedes, his former fiancée, Dantes says, “Providence again! I am the emissary of God. I’ve been spared to carry out his will.” In addition to engaging in the vice of vengeance, Edmund is guilty of the sin of presuming to know the will of God with the pride of claiming to be God’s emissary. It is interesting, therefore, that Edmund does not find peace after he has exquisitely vanquished the four men. This point is apparent in the final scene, when Edmund is trying to convince Mercedes to return to him rather than to move to Africa to be near her son. The religious existential toll that the series of vengeful strategies have taken on Edmund Dantes is finally revealed; the Abbé was right all along.

In trying to justify to Mercedes the vengeance taken on her husband, General Mondego, Edmund lies, “That was simple justice. Believe me, it gave me no joy.” It did in fact give him a feeling of satisfaction, which, by the way, if different than peace. Mercedes does not take the bait; instead, she replies, “Avenging angels may not ask forgiveness of their victims.” Even if the unjust deserve ethically to suffer, avengers would find asking for such forgiveness to be humiliating because of the suffering that they have undergone unjustly. Edmund replies, “I am no longer an instrument of God. I’ve been plunged back into nothingness. I’m searching for something lost. My soul; my self.” Unfortunately, she does not point out that he has been no such instrument and it is impious for him to hold onto that belief. Making this point would develop the distinctively religious element of the film. She could even say that even if her husband and the three other unjust men deserved to be punished for having inflicted severe suffering—ten years in prison!—on Edmund even though he was innocent, he should have transcended the ethical domain to act in a pious distinctively religious manner by forgiving the four culprits. That films shirk back from developing such theological and philosophical dialogue does not mean that the medium is not capable of doing so to get viewers thinking (but not to indoctrinate them).  Teasing out tension between the ethical and religious domains is a worthy task of the medium of film. In this film, however, Mercedes simply replies that he would never find the man he had been before being imprisoned. “That person died,” she laments. She tells him that she hopes he will find peace, but she does point out to him that he will not find peace because he has engaged himself so fully in exacting revenge, for satisfaction is not the same as peace.

I submit that presuming to know God’s will as if any human being could be omniscient (all-knowing), which is a divine attribute, and to being an instrument of God as if on a holy mission are sins, whereas vengeance is an ethical vice. That God demands that human beings leave the vice to God does not mean that the vice itself is thereby religious rather than ethical in nature. Moreover, that religion and ethics are related does not mean that the former reduces to the latter, or that the latter is itself religious. I contend that it is because vengeance involves the infliction of harm and that is exogenous to being in the presence of holiness that God urges us not to seek revenge. Put another way, that vice is antithetical to the humane compassion to an enemy in trouble and thus to Jesus’s conception in the Gospels of the Kingdom of God. An eye for an eye carried on and on, and the whole world would be blind because none of us act completely in line with what is just; only God is just from the standpoint of omniscience, omnibenevolence, and omnipotence. It is from this standpoint, that we should all give each other some leeway at least, that the Creator-Creature distinction is vital to keep in mind instead of merely applying the ethical principle of justice by which avengers legitimately claim that the unjust deserve to be punished. Religion and ethics are distinct domains even though they interrelate. Edmund Dantes may have a point that the four men deserve to suffer for having inflicted suffering on him, but he himself is left empty ironically from having presumed to have been on a holy mission even though inflicting harm is antithetical to forgiveness. Interestingly the name Dantes is very close to Dante, a philosopher and poet who wrote in the Renaissance on the rings of hell. Being plunged back into nothingness, in search of one’s self, and even one’s very soul, seems like a good description of what being in the state of hell must be like.

The Reader

The film, The Reader (2008), captures a frame of mind that may be so frequently overlooked when it is observed because it is so bizarre in its impact on reasoning that it difficult to explain, let alone grasp for what it is. The phenomenon is not of artifice; rather, it is a natural vulnerability of the human mind, or brain, due to its susceptibility to ideology that is highly unethical in its content, including a circumscribed and even warped mental framework and very unethical prescriptions for conduct. The ideology at issue in the film is that of the Nazi Party in Germany from 1933 to 1945.  The truism that absolute power corrupts absolutely does not fully account for the cognitive warping that is evinced by Hanna Schmidt during her trial in the film.

The plot centers around a sexual-relationship between Hanna Schmitz and Michael Berg during a summer more than a decade after the end of Nazi Germany. Because Michael is only 15 years old when Hanna, a middle-aged adult, seduces him sexually and gets him to read stories to her, she starts off the film as being culpable criminally, assuming that sexual intercourse with a minor is illegal in the film. To be sure, not even astute viewers would predict that her seduction of a minor means that she had worked as a Nazi SS guard at a concentration camp from 1943 until the death-march from Hungary in 1944, especially because Michael willingly returned to her apartment several times to read to her and have sex with her. As the film goes on, viewers quickly realize that her sexual crime is dwarfed by her crimes as a guard in Nazi Germany.

A portion of professor Rohl’s lecture in his law-school class in which Michael is enrolled as a law student years after his summer of sex is a useful way to contextualize Hanna’s Nazi crimes. Rohl begins by noting that out of the 9,000 people who worked at Auschwitz, only 19 have been convicted, and they were convicted according to law rather than morality. “The question was not, was it wrong, but was it legal, and not by our laws, no, by the laws at the time” and “intent must be proved.” One student observes that the law is narrower than is holding people to the dictates of morality. Professor Rohl readily agrees. To be convicted, Hanna and the other five guards with whom she worked must be found to have violated the relevant laws of Nazi Germany. So just following orders, which count as laws, is a viable defense.

In his trial in 1961 in Jerusalem, Adolf Eichmann was convicted precisely because he had violated Himmer’s order not to march Hungarian “enemies of the state” to Auschwitz. Eichmann violated the laws of Nazi Germany knowing that people would die as a result, so he could be convicted and even sentenced to death.  The film, The Reader, refutes Israel’s claim that former Nazis could not get an unbiased trial in West Germany. Both the Israelis and the Germans could be expected to hold biases regarding the Germans who were, or worked for, the Nazis, yet in the film as well as in Eichmann’s historical trial in 1961, jurisprudence passes the test in maintaining its narrow, and thus rigorous standards even against biases one way or the other.

In the trial in the film, Hanna admits to having been one of six female guards who selected 60 prisoners each month to be sent from their camp to Auschwitz even though the guards (and the prisoners) knew that the 60 people sent would be killed. Unlike the other women on trial, Hanna is honest in her testimony. Answering the chief judge’s question on why she selected 10 prisoners each month to be killed at Auschwitz, she answered, “but there were new arrivals arriving all the time, so the old ones had to make room for the new ones. We couldn’t keep everyone. There wasn’t room.” In Hanna having been oriented to the flow of prisoners being optimal, Hanna Arendt’s description of the Eichmann trial as showcasing the “banality of evil” in the bureaucracy of the Nazis applies here too. In the film, the chief judge is astonished at Hanna’s lapse concerning the obvious ethical problem: “But you knew you were selecting people to be killed.” Hanna replies, “What would you have done? Should I have never signed up at Siemens?” meaning to be hired by the SS. Hanna’s answers are themselves worthy of reflection, for they evince an absolute indifference to the plight of the chosen prisoners. In fact, she puts space-limitations at her camp above, as if justifying, the (necessary) plight. It is not as if she seems to have been wallowing in the power she had at the camp; she seems to have viewed herself as a manager working as if a hotel manager oriented to managing vacancies so no one arriving would be turned away, as if that were ethically more objectionable than sending prisoners to their death at the death camp in Poland.

Any such managerial excuse is belied when the judge turns to Hanna’s role in the march of all of the prisoners to Auschwitz when the camp in Hungary was closed. Hanna and the five other SS guards with whom she worked locked the doors of a church where prisoners were sleeping one night on the journey even though the guards knew that that church was on fire from a bombing raid. The chief judge asks Hanna, “Why did you not open the doors? In the written report, which you all signed, you claim you didn’t know about the fire until after it had happened. But that isn’t true, is it? . . . Why did you not open the doors?” Hanna quickly responds in a way that suggests that she thinks the judge has just asked a stupid question. “Obviously,” she says defiantly. “For the obvious reason. We couldn’t. We were guards. Our job was to guard the prisoners. We couldn’t just let them escape.” Her judgment that keeping the 300 people in the church, in which case they would all, except for one girl, die, was better than letting them out even if they would try to escape evinces something more than a warped moral compass. To be sure, letting prisoners escape is ethically preferrable to keeping them from evading death, but her reasoning too is flawed. The job of guarding prisoners does not in itself include playing a role in their respective deaths.

The judge next wants to assess whether Hanna and the other five guards feared for their lives should the prisoners have escaped from the burning building. “And if they escaped,” he asked Hanna, “you’d be charged? You’d be executed?” Hanna, hardly a defense attorney, answers emphatically, “No! If we’d opened the doors there would have been chaos. How could we have restored order? . . . and if they had all come out, we couldn’t just let them escape! We couldn’t! We were responsible for them!” That being responsible for prisoners could include deciding to let them die when they could be saved is, I submit, not just a moral lapse as if contributing to the death of 300 were morally better than letting them escape. Perhaps equally of concern, her reasoning—her cognition—was infected as if with computer malware. This can be more easily grasped from following statement, which is similar to what Hanna answers: We let the prisoners die because we were responsible for them! Her premise that the guards’ responsibility as guards is only to forestall escape—meaning that the responsibility of the guards was to the Nazi regime rather for the prisoners—even if that responsibility meant forcing the prisoners to be burnt alive is unsound and narrow; hence it may be the product of brain-washing.

It is not that being willingly enveloped by a political ideology spares a person from culpability. So, the judge tells Hanna, “So you did know what was happening. You did know, you made a choice. You let them die, rather than risk letting them escape.” She was neither forced nor insane; she knew what she was doing in keeping 300 people in a burning church. Hanna’s problematic mentality goes beyond the ethically problematic hierarchy of escape as being worse than being burned live. Even though she had obviously been “supercharged” into focusing narrowly in her job on escape being the worst thing possible, she was once again indifferent to the severity of the plight of other people. Both the narrowness and the sociopathic indifference were part of Nazi culture. In fact, the strong preference for order and aversion to chaos has arguably remained a salient part of German culture even though the Nazis’ ideology has been refuted. In the film, the judge does not question Hanna on her aversion to chaos or the high value she puts on order. This lapse is odd, considering that the judge may be guilty of scapegoating Hanna with a life sentence while giving the other five guards only four and a half years in prison. The other five guards contributed to the scapegoating, but the judge seemed not to realize this point.

Even though Hanna has answered the judge’s questions with an amazing forthrightness, the judge does not believe her when she denies that she wrote the report on the church fire. He even ignores her valid point that it doesn’t matter who wrote the report because all six women signed it. None of the six opened the church doors as the building burned, and there was no evidence that Hanna was in charge of the other guards. He should have relied more on Hanna’s testimony regarding the other defendants rather than say that it is easy to spread the crime to include other culprits. Furthermore, that Hanna does not give the convenient answer that she feared that the SS would execute her for letting the prisoners escape and that she answers honestly goes to her integrity, when supports my claim that she had been indoctrinated by the Nazis when she was hired to believe that the lives of the prisoners do not matter, especially as against them being able to escape (even from a burning building).

Lest it be concluded that only Nazi ideology could be so severely warping in terms of morality and reasoning, the claim of the Israeli army late in 2025 that a 3 year-old Gaza resident had to be shot because the child walking from a tent to an Israeli tank nearby was a security threat. So too, the claim by officials in the Israeli government, including Israel’s president, that all residents of Gaza were culpable of the attack inside Israel proper by Hamas is warped, both morally and cognitively. Israeli soldiers playing the game of who can shoot the most kids in Gaza, soldiers raping 6 year-old boys (and doubtlessly numerous Gaza women) in the name of security, and the Israeli government’s presumptuous and erroneous accusation of collective responsibility of everyone in Gaza for the attack carried out by a political group such that more than a million people were intentionally subjected to starvation, no medical care, and even homelessness all evince the toxic mental imprint of a sordid ideology of hatred every bit as sordid as the Nazi ideology had been. Shooting babies who had not even been born in 2024 demonstrates the utter irrationality in the statements of some senior government officials that all of the residents of Gaza deserve to suffer—that not even death is good enough for them. I contend that this last part renders the mass atrocities a holocaust rather than just a genocide. Subjecting over a million people to severe deprivation and thus horrid suffering, and killing over 60,000-75,000 residents outright through 2025 mean that the statements were not merely rhetoric. That the deaths of less than 1,500 Israelis in the attack in Israel in 2023—an attack of utter frustration contextualized by decades of being subjugated and occupied by an enemy state—could justify so many more deaths and the starvation of many, many more people in Gaza demonstrates not just severely flawed ethical judgment, but also corrupted reasoning as if such an imbalance could possibly be justified even in terms of state security. Were the Israeli officials intellectually honest, they would simply admit that they were simply unleashing their hatred of a “subhuman” people who are like dogs. Similarly, Nazi propaganda films portrayed Jews as rats infecting Europe. It is perhaps out of a global sense of guilt about the first holocaust that the unbalanced Israeli application of collective “justice” did not trigger a coalition of the willing among nations to rid Gaza military of the Israeli army, and that the equivalence of the Netanyahu and Hitler administrations has not been recognized and acknowledged. Ideology can indeed warp moral judgment and even cognition/reasoning as well as perception of world events.

That susceptibility of the human mind can operate “beneath the radar,” especially in regard to the severity of the depravity. The judge in the film tells the court that Hanna is in another class of criminality even from the five other guards. I submit that he is wrong about the five other guards, for they are just as culpable criminally because none of them were willing to open the church doors and thus were fine with 300 people being burned to death. Nevertheless, the judge aptly perceives Hanna’s “reasoning” as partial at best and her values as deeply problematic morally. They were our responsibility; we couldn’t just let them escape, so we decided that they would have to die. The 300 prisoners in the church did not have to die; they died because the six SS guards chose not to open the doors. It is conceivable that those guards could have opened the doors and maintained order while minimizing escapes by surrounding an open space and shooting the first person trying to flee.

Contemporary implications of the film include the point that the recognition of the subjectivity-based warping of the human mind by ideology means that the world needs more than the impotent UN and International Criminal Court (ICC) to hold back aggressive regimes such as those of the Nazis and the Israelis. Although not so ideological, the foray into Ukraine by President Putin of Russia based in part on a vision of a resurrected Russian empire (not the USSR) also deserved to be turned back by more than an imagined coalition of the willing in Europe. To the extent that the Russian officials viewed the Ukrainians as subhuman, thus justifying women being raped by Russian soldiers and children being sent deep into Russia, the ideological culprit at work in the Nazi government in the twentieth century and the Israeli government in the 2020s can be detected yet again. The vulnerability of the human mind is thus no accident, but is intrinsic. Therefore, the admixture of human hatred with political (and religious) ideology comes with a such steep toll that the ongoing system of international relations based on absolute national sovereignty can be deemed to be wholly inadequate. International means with military-enforcement power have been needed at least since the 1930s to restrain toxic regimes from inflicting severe harm on people presumed ideologically to be subhuman. 

The underlying problem is not merely humans being drunk with power; even though absolute power corrupts absolutely, and thus institutional checks and balances are advisable both within a government and between every government and the international community institutionalized in an organization or government with real enforcement power, the subjective human mind is too vulnerable to being brain-washed by ideology and this itself is a problem especially because the warped mind is typically impervious to correction both morally and in regard to its own faulty reasoning. In the film, there is no indication whatsoever when Hanna is imprisoned for 20 years that she comes to grips with how wrong she has been ethically and how flawed her reasoning was in her choice not to open the church door. During the trial, the limits of her ideologically-constrained reason are clear when she draws a blank and asks the judge, “What would you have done? Should I not have signed up at Siemens?” The significant imprint of a flawed ideology can readily be inferred. The system of international relations can and should be informed by just this inference that the film astutely provides.

Shadows in the Sun

Challenging the dichotomy between reading a book and watching a movie, a film can include writing lessons within a narrative that is oriented to a romance and the business of a publishing house signing a writer for a second book. In the film, Shadows in the Sun (2005), Jeremy, a young employee of a major publisher, is sent by his brass, business-minded boss, Andrew Benton, to sign Weldon Parish, who lives hundreds of miles away from London and has retired from writing due to his fear of failure. In resisting Jeremy’s efforts to manipulate him to sign, Parish agrees to talk shop with the young writer. Although by no means a major part of the film, Weldon’s brief lessons and exercises can be of use to viewers. Film can indeed serve the cause of writing rather than merely draw readers away from books to the screen. In fact, astute viewers can critique the brief lessons and thus actively make use of film for intellectual and vocational purposes. Going through the lessons and exercises in the film can illustrate such an active engagement.

The first lesson occurs when Weldon and Jeremy are looking out at a beautiful sunset over an impressive landscape. Weldon suggests that Jeremy think of words as colors, and the paper as the canvas. The accomplished, elder writer demonstrates how words can be utilized as such, by describing the sunset in the following words: “The sunset, slowly, (is) igniting the sky in fiery shades of red and orange; in the distance, dark clouds rolled over the horizon, riding the summer winds. Soon day will give way to night, and with it will come the silence that washes over everything.” Besides the problematic grammatical lapses, which I submit are problematic even if done for stylistic purposes, Weldon goes off topic when he slides into describing the night, which obviously does not include the sunset. Regarding the sunset itself, the clouds are arguably not dark. If he is overstating the darkness here, perhaps the shadows in his published book, Shadow Dancers, are also overstated. On a macro or “meta” level, perhaps the film’s title, Shadows in the Sun, overstates the salience of the metaphor of shadow in the film. Weldon misses completely the beautiful colored reflection of the sky on the fields below. Those colors are as vibrant as the orange and yellow part of the sky nearest to the sliver of sun. In fact, the colors in the sky and on the fields make for a rustic overall hue. In hurrying into the night, the writer’s “painting” of the sunset in words falls short.

The inattentiveness to detail is all the more significant because of what Weldon teaches Jeremy on the importance of drawing on one’s own experiences in writing. “If you’re writing a fight scene,” Weldon explains, “it helps if you have been in a fight.” Weldon then asks Jeremy to describe being hit in the stomach. Not impressed, Weldon proceeds to punch his de facto apprentice so Jeremy can experience being hit in stomach. Sure enough, Jeremy is then able to flush out the details that he had missed for lack of experience, like snot coming out of one’s nose and the watering of one’s eyes. The film’s screenwriter could have had Jeremy subsequently ask Weldon whether a writer should be bound by one’s experience; Weldon himself mentions the role of imagination in writing.

The lessons then move beyond technique to what makes a writer great. Such a writer finds that part of oneself that has something to say. “You know when you’ve found it,” Weldon says. Jeremy has not found it in himself, so he is dissatisfied with his writing. Weldon tries another way of making his point. “Art is not something you choose to do; it’s something that chooses you.” Good writing comes out of an irresistible urge to say or express something in particular; both the urge and the content lies within, so the challenge is to find or realize it. Even if experience does not limit what a writer can write about in detail, that which a writer is passionate about is limited, it does not come from the will, as if a writer could choose that which must be written. In writing short essays, I try to restrict myself to points I feel strongly about expressing; I resist writing just to keep the essays coming.

Knowing that Jeremy has fallen in love with Isabella, who is one of Weldon’s daughters, Weldon asks Jeremy to describe her face. The point is to try to put in words that which one is passionate about. Jeremy makes the following attempt: “Sunlight frames her body in a golden glow of honey light while the wind dances gently through the long strands of her hair. Her face is strong, proud, with eyes that don’t easily give away their secrets. It’s a face that doesn’t call out, but softly beckons.” Although Weldon is impressed, this coloring with words can be critiqued. First of all, Isabella is framed by grass rather than any “glow of honey light”—this description of light may itself be overdone. Sunlight does not frame her body; rather, green grass does. Furthermore, her hair is not long, and she has it in a pony tail so it is not dancing with the wind. As for her strong, proud face, her broad jaw bones do give that impression. As for eyes not giving away their secrets, her facial expressions vividly and straightforwardly show her disproval of the mischief of her father and Jeremy and then her affection for both men, obviously different in kind. In fact, her blue eyes sparkle such that they fill out her marvelous smile, but Jeremy misses this rather obvious point. As for a face that does not call out, I must confess that don’t know what a face that calls out looks like; I’m equally at a loss with regard to a face that softly beckons; usually people beckon with their arms and hands. So maybe it is for the best that I don’t write novels.

My point is that potential and even actual writers can learn how to write better from Weldon’s mini-lessons and exercises in the film by interiorizing these and going on to critique them. The medium of non-documentary, fictional film can be actively engaging for viewers both intellectually in terms of added knowledge and vocationally in terms of improved work-product.

The Physician

In the 11^th century, Christians were not welcome in Persia, so in the film, The Physician (2013), Rob Cole, a Christian, pretends to be Jewish in order to travel from Western Europe to study at the medical school of Ibn Sina, a famous physician in Isfahan. He eventually reveals his religion as that of “the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit” when he is on trial before the local imam. The Jews there doubtlessly feel used and betrayed. As interesting as interreligious controversy can be, I contend that the nature of Cole’s crime is more significant from the standpoint of religion itself. In short, the film illustrates what bad effects are likely to come from committing a category mistake with respect to religion and another domain. Whether conflating distinct domains or erasing the boundary between them, category mistakes had diminished the credibility of religion as being over-reaching by the time that the film was made. As for the matter of interreligious differences, the sheer pettiness by which the three Abrahamic religions that share the same deity have made mole hills into untraversable mountains is hardly worthy of attention, whereas that which makes religion as a domain of phenomena unique and thus distinct from other, even related domains, is in need of further work. The film could have done more in this regard.

Rob Cole’s crime is the desecration of a human corpse by dissecting it. It may be that dissection does not count as desecration because the study is done systematically and for the beneficial outcome of progress in medical science, but this argument is not even presented to the imam in the film. Even though the old man agreed to the procedure just before he died in Ibn Sina’s hospital (and medical school), and Cole’s purpose was to save lives by discovering human organs, the imam sentences not only Rob, but also Ibn Sina to be executed for having “violated Allah.” Presumably the Muslim, Christian, and Jewish deity is against progress in the science of medicine such that sickness is not so often a death-sentence. Holding to a dogma nonetheless demonstrates one of the fallibilities of the human mind when it enters the domain of religion. It is not as if Cole’s dissection and study would cause death and destruction—two things that are typically associated with evil. In fact, Rob, with Ibn’s assistance, which alone is an interesting role reversal, successfully operates on Shah Ala ad Daula, the king of Isfahan, using the knowledge obtained during the dissection of the corpse. That operation in turn enables the Shah to survive the next day, when his presence is needed as his army sets out to fight a radical Islam-only invading force to which the local imam is allied. That force is against the presence of the Jews in the city, and would certainly against the Shah pardoning Cole and Sina. In short, the Shah was too secular and tolerant for the imam and the related invading king.

The “religious” rationale for finding Cole in violation of Allah’s law should be treated as more problematic in the film. Cole, Sina, or even the Shah could engage with the imam during or after the “trial” on the validity in religious terms of the injunction against medical science advancing by study of human internal-organs, for what is scientific—and thus of that domain—is being claimed by the domain of religion. Hence it is assumed by everyone in the film except for the medical student and his teacher that religion can legitimately override medicine even in the domain of medicine.  I contend that this overreaching is invalid—it is akin to an invading army taking over a city—because religion’s coverage should fit within its borders. In other words, religion has primary jurisdiction over that which is distinctly religious. The overall domain of a religious deity holds sway within the religious domain, just like a king’s authority only extends throughout his kingdom even if he claims to be ruler of the world. Kings of other kingdoms could rightly object to the latter claim by insisting that another king’s authority extends only to the borders of that king’s realm. This does not invalidate the meaning of “ruler of the world” within that realm, just as “God is omnipresent and omnipotent” has meaning in the religious domain even though science and other domains, including metaphysics, psychology, and history, do not yield to the authority that is in the religious realm. Paradoxically, by overreaching, the credibility of that authority is diminished even within the religious domain. In the film, the validity of Cole’s dissection of a willing corpse is stronger than that of the religious decree against “desecrating” human corpses regardless of any benefits from it in other domains. The egocentric over-reaching of religion can be likened to a bully, who, once made transparent, is typically viewed as less than credible.

The gap between whether Cole (and Sina) should be applauded or punished is so large that they can be said to manifest from different social realities. Cole and Sina heal the Shah as a result of Cole’s dissection and his teaching thereof to a very enthusiastic Sina, yet the local imam ignores or dismisses the value of this progress and its benefit—perhaps not just for religious reasons as he is politically against the ruling Shah. Cole utterly dismisses the validity of the Imam’s ruling and sentencing on the basis of Cole and Sina having offended or violated Allah. Whereas Cole and Sina may have been religious, the narrow, and one-sided ruling makes sure that even if the two men survive, they would never be fully religious again. Running a hospital as a physician back in London at the end of the film, Rob Cole surely looks at religion itself more skeptically than he did before hearing the imam’s narrow ruling.

The upshot is that confining the authority and validity of religion to its own domain so it does not over-reach with the presumption of legitimately being able to overrule the innate authorities in other domains in those domains is a good thing. This does not mean that the distinctly religious belief that a deity is sovereign without limitation is rendered invalid in the religious domain. Likewise, claims that everything is political and religion is really just psychology (e.g., Freud) or a function of means of production (e.g., Marx) are valid only in the domains of psychology and economic philosophy, respectively. Religionists are not the only guilty party in terms of over-extending the authority of their domain onto others even over the authorities in those domains. Within a given domain, I contend that the substance and criteria of the domain is worthy of respect in itself rather than as a subsidiary of another domain’s substance and criteria. Disrespect in this respect may even contribute towards a mental habit that thwarts interreligious dialogue and peace. Even respect between people may be diminished.

In the film, Hope Gap (2019), Grace attempts to use the Roman Catholic Church’s religious injunction of legal divorce to undercut the validity of her separated husband’s request for a divorce. Edward’s request is unhinged from any reality, Grace insists (as if by even her faith she is omniscient with respect to realities). That she has been contemplating suicide suggests that she may be the person untethered from a viable reality. From the standpoint of a legal system of a country, the religious dictate of one party of a marital separation should not be allowed to overrule a law that permits divorce even if the counterparty (Edward) is religious. In the office of a lawyer, the substance and criteria of the law should prevail, just as the substance and criteria of distinctly religious meaning should prevail in the office of a priest, imam, minister, or rabbi. Those four functionaries have much more in common, being in and of the same domain, than they may realize. In fact, they could help each other to resist the power-aggrandizing temptation to overreach their religious authority in usurping the authority of authorities in other domains. Then the substance and unique criteria of the religious domain of human experience would be more respected. At the very least, humility and self-discipline—“coloring within the lines”—naturally earns respect.

Lest this critique be misconstrued as secular in nature, the upshot is that the stuff “within the lines” of the religious domain (i.e., distinctly religious phenomena, such as religious meaning that does not depend on history or science, as is not reducible to ethics or psychology) deserves to be uncovered from underneath the weeds that have hitherto been allowed to grow and even thrive from seeds that have drifted over from other gardens. In the film, the imam may not even understand what desecration means in a religious sense, and yet he is quick to interlard a religious belief as if it deserved to be decisive and thus hegemonic in the political and (related) jurisprudential domains. Similarly, I wonder whether people who deem themselves capable of accusing others of committing abominations as if the word itself warrants death know that the word only means “disliked by God.” This is distinct from “hated by God,” of which evil unequivocally qualifies. To be sure, in the religious domain, such activities that are disliked by the deity are not recommended, for the actual point is likely to obey God, but the commonly held dire connotations of the word as if dislike were equivalent to hate misses the mark and yet precisely such “making mole hills into mountains” has given rise to much suffering and harm historically. The sheer presumptuous of ignorance and what it feels entitled to, is, I suppose, hated rather than merely disliked from the perspective of the very condition of existence, or Creation, even when that condition or ultimacy is personified as a deity with divine attributes even if they anthropomorphic in appearance. Film has amazing potential as a medium through which such thoughts can be projected and put in dialogue with some depth and extent beyond what is typically done by filmmakers who want to hurry a plot as if skipping a stone quickly on the surface of a lake.

Hope Gap

Organized or institutional religion as the Roman Catholic Church is in the background in the 2019 European film, Hope Gap. Even with such names as Grace and Angela, religious connotations are present. In fact, the film can be interpreted, at least in part, as a critique on religion in general and Catholicism in particular. The medium of film can indeed play a vital role in critiquing sacred cows from the vantagepoint of an oblique angle or a safe distance.

Before turning to how religion is portrayed and critiqued, I turn briefly to the film’s narrative, or plot, which centers around Edward leaving Grace, his wife of 29 years, for Angela, the parent of one of Edward’s students. Edward has had enough of Grace’s violence and rigidity, but he is gracious enough to explain to her as he is leaving that they are very different people. Although the early years of their marriage had been good, he leaves her convinced that he had picked the wrong woman for him. So, Edward moves out to live with Angela, while the product of the marriage, Jamie, is left to care for his mother, Grace, whose hope that Edward might someday return must inevitably fade because he is in love with another woman. Unfortunately, Edward and Grace both use their son rather than confront each other directly to work out differences in the marital separation. Fearing that Grace might commit suicide, Jamie is the good son and draws her out of her hopeless shell by means of poetry rather than his mother’s religious faith.

That faith comes across as dogmatic and rigid, rather than as open like spirit. When Jamie first visits, Grace is not at all tolerant of his atheism or agnosticism—that we invent God to deal with life, which is miserable and unfair. Believing in God cannot be forced, according to Grace; she knows she cannot tell her son to believe in God.  Interestingly, she totally agrees with Edward’s claim that you feel love; you don’t tell love, so you can’t tell God to another person. “God is a conviction,” Edward says. He has faith, for instance, that his love for Angela is not illusory. The core teaching of Paul and Augustine that God itself is love is the foundation of Edward’s religious faith, and yet he has no interest in going to Mass. Rather, his faith in love is lived out as he moves from a woman whom he does not love to one whom he does love.

The irony is that Grace goes to Mass regularly and yet the way she treats Edward is not out of love. For instance, she has a history of violence against him (but not vice versa), she orders him around, and she even explicitly rejects and forbids him his “reality” that includes divorce. To her, marriage is a life-long sacrament. To commit a loveless, even possibly abusive marriage to such a rigid standard fails to take into account the human condition. Not even Angela is an angel, for she tells Grace that she has taken Edward because then only one person, rather than the three, would be unhappy.

Another way of viewing Grace’s need to dominate even to the point of arbitrating between “realities” to her own advantage is by looking at her efforts to manipulate Jamie for information on how she might contact Edward even though he is refusing to have any contact with Grace, as well as her decision to drive to Angela’s house and even enter it without even knocking at the door to confront Edward (and Angela) anyway. Her lack of basic respect for Edward belies her claim to love him, and it makes a shame of her attempt to foist her notion of the sacrament of marriage as applicable to their marriage. Her highhandedness even shows in her complaint about there being too many requests for mercy in the Mass. Obviously, she doesn’t believe that her religious faith warrants any mercy from God, even though of all of the main characters in the film, she is arguably farthest from God as inconvenient love even to one’s detractors and enemies.

To be sure, Edward’s notion of religious faith in God as felt as a conviction rather than to be imposed on other people is not perfect. Implying that Grace is weak, in that she will not accept the fact that their marriage has been over for a long time and it is best to split up, he voice-overs a poem that includes, “by abandoning the weak, the strong survive. It may seem brutal, but what the point of everyone being dead.” Abandoning Grace is what he needed to do to stay alive, whether literally or in terms of being able to love. It is ironic that Grace complains of too many references the need for mercy in the Catholic Mass, and yet Edward could stand to be more merciful to people who are vulnerable. His offer of friendship to Grace made as she is leaving Angela’s house comes off as fake or naïve.

The poem that Jamie reads to his mother at the end of the film is better. Strength and resilience are exactly what Grace needs to hear, and Jamie even provides her with a website by which she can post poems for other suffering or grieving people. It is through poetry, rather than her Catholic faith, that she finds solace. As she finds through poetry and volunteering at a secular charity that she is not alone in struggling and suffering, both Edward’s survival of the strong (by abandoning the weak) philosophy and Grace’s own rigid, imposing religious faith and church attendance recede into the background. Unless a religious organization can provide a place for the living, such that spiritual natures can ascend rather than being tied down by rules that should not be applied uniformly to human complexity, parishioners will look elsewhere even for spiritual food, whether that comes in the form of a dutiful, loving son, poetry, or something else that provides hope out of severe loss and suffering.

Suffering as a means of spiritual progress should not be applied to people who already grievously in emotional pain. Sacraments should be applied where liberating rather than felt as painful, destructive chains. The distinctly Christian kind of love that can be applied to Grace and Edward has to do with the compassion and mercy that each of them could extend to the other while they are separating. Such love does not necessitate that Edward drop or sacrifice his personal boundaries, and it does not give Grace license to violate them even in the name of compassion. Nor would mercy justify Edward in violating Grace’s need for emotional (and physical) space at the end of the film.

The Master

In The Master (2012), Lancaster Dodd tells Freddie Quell, the man whom Lancaster wants to cure of alcoholism and mental illness, “I am a writer, a doctor, a nuclear physicist, a theoretical philosopher, but above all I am a man.” Given Lancaster’s presumption of infallibility concerning knowing that every human soul has been reincarnated even for trillions of years, the end of the line would more fittingly be, “I am a man above all (others).” With regard to being a physician, Lancaster comes up short because he underestimates the medical severity of Freddie’s alcoholism and his likely psychotic mental illness. Upon being released from jail, Lancaster should realize that Freddie’s rage and temper-tantrum in his jail cell evince mental illness of such severity that it is lunacy to suppose that the patient can be cured by walking back and forth in a room between a wall and a window and being sure to touch both, and by saying “Doris” over and over again in a dyad with Lancaster’s new son-in-law. In fact, Lancaster actually encourages Freddie’s alcoholism by asking that Freddie continue to make his “potion,” which contains paint-thinner filtered through bread. It is not Lancaster, but his wife, Peggy, who puts a stop to the “booze.” From her sanity, both that of Freddie and Lancaster can be questioned. That Lancaster is the Master of a religious cult, or “movement,” renders his mental state particularly problematic.

Lancaster is perhaps at his best as a writer; he is at his best in his second book, in which he subtly but importantly switches the question used in his hypnotic method to imagine your past lives from recall them. In being a religious leader claiming even to know that he and Freddie had worked together in a European army running supplies in a past life, Lancaster demonstrates the danger that can beset the human mind when it ventures into the domain of religion, wherein certainty is posited for that which only belief, and thus faith, can reach. That anyone would even believe that the embodied souls alive have had past lives for trillions of years even though the species has been around for only 1.8 million years demonstrates just how alluring, and thus mentally powerful charismatic leadership can be. That Freddie and Lancaster’s new son-in-law went to the hotel room of a man who had just been critical of Lancaster’s claim at a gathering at a private home and physically beat up the man testifies to just how dangerous charisma, or “gifts of the spirit,” can be.

In the 20^th century alone, Adolf Hitler, who led Nazi Germany, had incredible charisma, such that the Germans continued to follow him blindly, albeit with severe consequences if they objected outwardly to Hitler’s autocratic regime. At the same time, U.S. President Franklin Roosevelt also had tremendous charisma, with millions of Americans tuning in to hear his Fireside Chats on the radio. Decades later, John F. Kennedy had Camelot-tinged charisma, and still later Ronald Reagan, a former actor, could deliver lines dripping with charisma. In the domain of religion, the Bible warns of false-prophets, whose charisma, like that of Jim Jones, who secretly served poisoned drinks to his followers because he deemed that the world was about to end, enabled the atrocity. That a religious leader can be so wrong yet still have devoted followers is portrayed in the film, whose A-list of actors gives it its emotional depth, which, by the way, is typically felt by followers of charismatic leaders.

At its core, the film is a picture of the human mind’s vulnerability when we enter the domain of religion. Unfortunately, this vulnerability tends to be invisible to the collective unconscious of humanity. In making such a blind spot transparent, raising it to the level of consciousness, the medium of film can serve a very important function for our species, and even contribute to its religious and political development, both of which have been retarded and thus kept from progressing. The mind’s innate susceptibility to religious lunacy as primped up as truth as if on stilts and thus untouchable can be grasped just by examining the substance of Lancaster’s teachings without the entrapment of narrative and charismatic characterization.

The first glimpse of Lancaster’s perspective comes when he officiates his daughter’s wedding on a boat: “as long as you hold these bodies, in this life, you may kiss the bride.” Lancaster goes on to give an utterly nonsensical speech at the reception, yet everyone in the room applauds. As a critic later says (before being beaten up), “Good science allows for more than one opinion. Otherwise, you merely have the will of one man, which is the basis of cult, is it not?” It is as if out of Lancaster’s sheer act of will serial reincarnation is created. Beyond the metaphysics of the human soul, Lancaster conflates religion with science. Of his dyad-based “method” by which participants can have bad memories from their past lives erased, Lancaster claims that some forms of Leukemia can be cured. He explains to his now-shocked critic, “In going back over past lives, we may be able to treat illnesses that started thousands, even trillions of years ago.” Doing away with negative emotional impulses from this and past lives can cross over onto medical science regarding the bodies that each of us “inhabit.” Even Freddie supposes himself to think scientifically; without a doubt, Lancaster considers himself a scientist.

Even though Freddie’s childhood had been horrendous, with his father having died a drunk and his other being committed for psychosis, facing Lancaster in the next jail-cell, Freddie glimpses the Master clearly. “You’re making this shit up. You don’t know what you’re talking about.” As if a schizophrenic whose knowledge of other realities cannot be shaken, the Master replies, “I give you facts.” So it is a fact that, as Lancaster tells a women whom he has just put under hypnosis, “Our spirits live on in the whole of time, exist in many vessels through time.” Even the hypnotic time travel back to past lives is presumably a fact, and thus to be deemed to be effective, without any empirical evidence, in capturing the mind’s fatal flaws to correct the mind back to its inherent state of perfect, while, Lancaster insists, “righting civilization and eliminating war and poverty, and therefore, the atomic threat.” This is the Master’s project, supported by a religious metaphysics of the human soul, or spirit, embodying trillions of bodies through time. The astute reader may recall Nietzsche’s notion of the eternal recurrence.

Perhaps when Lancaster first meets Freddie and believes that the two have met, it is because both men “connect” in having similar mental impairments. It is ironic that even though Freddie is the “identified patient” in the film, it is he who laughs off Lancaster’s claim of having recalled that both men had run military supplies together in another lifetime. That Lancaster changes his method in his second book from recall to imagine may just be an attempt to grow his movement by making it more credible, or he may have been coming to question even his own access to metaphysical truth. Such truth would have it that Lancaster and his followers were all about the human imagination, which, if so, raises the uncomfortable question of whether religious myth itself is so too, once the metaphysical and historical stilts are removed. Yet distinctively religious meaning, and thus truth, can be distinguished from these stilts and, as such, be unthreatened by the role of human imagination in clothing such meaning. 

Properly classified in terms of its distinctive genre, religious truth can be understood to not be about history, metaphysics, or medical science—claims of those domains are off-limits to the religionist; otherwise, conflicts and quagmires with the latter domains are inevitable while the innate fauna of the religious garden are obscured and overlooked. Were Lancaster to simply state that he uses hypnosis to get his patients to confront painful memories by imagining the latter to be safely distanced psychologically in “past lives,” then his medical practice would not be polluted by the assumed religious garb of infallibility, but then the film would not be such a good demonstration of one of the major lapses that is triggered in the human mind when it enters the religious domain: the deactivating of the mind’s ability to self-check, as in thinking, have I gone too far, maybe I’m wrong, so I should be more circumspect, for I am human, all too human.