Dominion: Prequel to the Exorcist

Decades before dying while doing battle with the demon possessing Regan NacNeil in The Exorcist (1973), Rev. Lankester Merrin successfully extracts the same demon from a young man in Kenya. An African chief (or medicine man) tells Merrin at the end of Dominion: The Prequel to the Exorcist (2005) that he has made a rather bad enemy of the demon, which was not done with the priest. We know from The Exorcist that the demon will eventually kill the priest, but that is by no means the final word on a distinctively religious battle because in that domain, the human soul is eternal rather than necessarily tethered to a corporeal body. It is important, moreover, not to reduce religion to one of its aspects, or, even worse, to the stuff of any other domain, including the supernatural. Dominion reduces Christianity to one belief-claim and relies on supernaturalism to validate the religious phenomena in the film.

In the old church during at the film’s climatic event, Merrin incessantly repeats the identity of the Trinity to repulse and repel the demon from the young African man. Of itself, the very existence of the triune deity is abhorrent to the demon, likely because it, like Satan, is jealous of God’s pre-eminence and superiority. Even so, is repeating “Christ compels you” over and over sufficient for the demon to give up the possessed body? It seems realistic to assume that such an approach would reduce to a “No he doesn’t, yes he does, no he doesn’t” back-and-forth without a resolution. Adding potency, Merrin could preach the teachings of Jesus in the Gospels to the demon, which could be expected to reject in utter disgust the value of compassion as benevolentia universalis and especially to one’s detractors and even enemies. In addition to presenting the way into the kingdom of God to the demon, Merrin could try to convert the demon as a way of repulsing it enough to stop possessing the young man. Merrin could also point out that God is love, and what that means from a distinctly theological standpoint. For example, Merrin’s dialogue could include, “God is love—the sort that is self-emptying (i.e., agape) and this is superior to your puffed-up ego-pride by which you put yourself above Jesus’s voluntary sacrifice for us.” Besides being more distasteful than merely “Christ compels you” to the demon, the enhanced theological dialogue voiced by the priest would present the audience with a more substantive understanding of Jesus’s message in the Gospels than merely that he is the Son of God. Furthermore, that “Christ compels you” is coming from a “weak vessel” rather than from Christ himself means that the priest’s reliance on that line is not the best strategy for convincing the demon to give up the body. This is especially the case because Merrin had lost his faith and only recovered it because Rev. Francis had strongly asserted, “Satan is real.” If the basis of Francis’s declaration is not based in the religious domain—that is, is actually exogenous—then to the extent that Merrin follows suit, it is no surprise that the demon eventually—in The Exorcist—kills him.

Rev. Francis takes a long time to believe that the young African man is actually possessed. It is only when Francis sees the burn marks on the man’s forehead just after Francis has pressed a small crucifix on the man’s skin that that young priest believes that Satan is real. The religious faith of Rev. Merrin in God is in turn stimulated to return by Francis’s loud declaration, “Satan is real!” Whereas God as the Creator is like the condition for all that exists, and thus not an entity as we think of entities, Satan, and his demons are entities more easily recognized by the human mind. So it makes sense that faith in God could be derived from a declaration that Satan is real. The problem is that it is a supernatural empirical effect on young possessed man’s forehead that signifies and, even more troubling, validates the underlying religious phenomenon.

Even though such supernatural special-effects, including the fires that spontaneously start in the old church to provide lighting for Merrin and the demon, make for good cinema, the distinction between scientifically-valid empirical yet not-understood (and thus supernatural) happenings and religious phenomena is important. The supernatural is a subtype of natural science because the realm is empirical. Put another way, the supernatural can be thought of as being on the turf of science—just not (yet) explained. For the criteria and content of natural science to over-reach onto the domain of religion, even overriding the criteria innate to that domain, is to incur a category mistake. Basing the claim that Satan is real on burn-marks on a forehead treats empirical verification as determinative of the existence of a theological entity whose existence and basis transcends the empirical world rather than is based in it. This essence of religion renders it qualitatively different, and thus unique, from other, even closely related domains. Especially in a religion of the heart, such as Christianity, the validity of religious truth cannot rightfully come from seeing burn marks on someone’s forehead. Taking the latter as decisive gives a free hand to superstition.

Therefore, both Francis and Merrin depend on a non-religious marker to prove the existential reality of Satan, and, by extension, God. The meaning that God represents, which is theological love, which in turn is that which Satan rejects, is by implication not self-validating. This is deeply problematic from a religious standpoint. Depending on supernatural events or signs not only slights the distinctly theological meaning, but also remakes the theological into something else: the unexplained in natural science. The value of compassion being extending to rude people, for example, and even to detractors who disvalue rather than respect does not depend on unexplained observable phenomena. Either a person values agape love or not. Either such love is appreciated in one’s heart as being of great value, or as weakness. This judgment, rather than lines like, “Christ compels you,” captures what it means to internalize Jesus’s example and preachments in the Gospels. To a demon, those preachments may be more distasteful  than demands by a priest of Christ compelling obedience if the substance and essence of God is indeed love rather than domination to be served.

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. 

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.

Pope Leo on the Cinema: A Distinctively Religious Role?

As “part of the Vatican’s efforts to reach out beyond the Catholic Church to engage with the secular world,” Pope Leo spoke with actors and directors on November 15, 2025 about the ability of film “to inspire and unite.”[1] He spoke to the filmmakers about film itself as an art, and what it can do socially. What it can do in a distinctively religious sense was oddly left out. I submit that leaving out how film can contribute to spirituality wherein a transcendent is explicitly included, while instead discussing the social functions of film not only limits the potential of film, but also ironically marginalizes a significant potential of film ironically in the pope’s own field.

The full essay is at "Pope Leo on the Cinema."

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1. Nicole Winfield, “Pope Leo XIV Celebrates Cinema with Hollywood Stars and Urges Inclusion of Marginal Voices,” APNews.com, November 15, 2025.

My Name is Bernadette

The film, My Name is Bernadette (2011), focuses, almost as an obsession, on the question of whether the girl “actually” saw the Virgin Mary in a series of visions at Lourdes. All too often, miracles are treated as ends in themselves, rather than as pointers to something deeper. Even the girl in the visual and auditory (albeit only to Bernadette) apparition identified itself only in terms of a supernatural miracle, the Virgin Mary’s Immaculate Conception. I contend that Bernadette’s awe-inspiring spirituality visually conveyed on screen, and Monsignor Forcade’s spiritually-insightful advice to Bernadette as to her functions in her upcoming life as a nun is more important than the miracles, even from the standpoint of religion. In other words, the story-world of the film, which is based on the true story of Bernadette at Lourdes, is a good illustration of a what happens when everyone in a large group of people reduces religion to science and even metaphysics and misses the sui generis (i.e., unique) and core elements of religion. Such is the power of group-think that conflation of different, albeit related, domains of human experience can remain hidden in a societal blind-spot. Not even the film makes this blind-spot transparent.

The supernatural element is such a selling-point in religious myth/narrative that the thesis that the real value lies not in miracles must contend with a lot of resistance. The conflation, or fusing, of what is distinct about the domain of religion with elements that are actually borrowed from other domains is commonly done yet few people are aware that an error, or category mistake, is being committed. The error is compounded by dragging in yet another domain to ask, for example., whether something supernatural in a myth “really happened.” That it is perfectly legitimate for originators or conveyers of a religious myth to draw on historical events and modify them while still portraying them as historical in order to make theological points might be surprising to know. For example, in the synoptic Gospels of Christianity, “did” the Last Supper “happen” on the night of Passover in which the sacrifice of lambs in Exodus is commemorated (or “happened”)?  Pick your favorite Gospel for the answer that suites you, and then claim that answer to be a historical fact, but you would be no closer to history than when you started. Lest this point be mistaken as a denial either of the supernatural or history pertaining to religion at all, my point, it is simply that we cannot legitimately make historical or supernatural claims by means of myth (i.e., religious narrative) because it is a distinct genre of writing, as are historical accounts and even fiction. It is important to resist the temptation to over-shoot in one’s criticism in order to argue against something that was not argued, perhaps in hopes that such a critique will be taken as a valid counter to the actual point being contended.

In the film, the obsession of virtually every character, except for Bernadette and the Virgin Mary in the vision that appeared 18 times to the 14 year-old girl, revolves around the question of whether the girl is mentally ill or really seeing something that exists ontologically albeit from a religious metaphysical realm and only visible to Bernadette. Three physicians are brought in to examine her, and the exam even includes measuring the size of her skull and whether a small bump on it is indicative of a psychosis capable of producing hallucinations! I contend that we are just as primitive when it comes to distinguishing the unique elements of religion from the non-native fauna that has drifted in from other, related, domains. The medical report of the three physicians concludes that Bernadette is sane, and curiously notes that she has lively eyes. The eyes, it has been said, are windows into a person’s spirit, and Katia Miran did an excellent job in portraying her character, Bernadette Soubirous, with a facial expression of spiritual openness and even wonder; so much so in fact that the Abbé Dominique Peyramale hesitates in giving her Communion because she looks up at him so spiritually, so much like a saint. 

That facial expression, which is also present each time Bernadette sees and hears the Virgin Mary, rather than the question of whether the young woman in the visions exists beyond Bernadette’s brain, should be the religious highlight of the film. Put another way, such open, wondrous spirituality, and thus piety, which Jesus may be pointing out in the Gospels is more spontaneous and more open in children than in adults, is specific to religion, whereas metaphysics or ontology is not.

In the film, only the priest, Peyramale, and Monsignor Forcade eventually grasp what is going on with Bernadette herself spiritually. Not even the journalist who says to an arriving journalist who thinks the villagers are in a mass hysteria, “a miracle cannot be explained; it is experienced,” goes beyond the miracle. The local authorities are worse, for they try to explain away the visions by investigating the grotto, or cave, outside of which the visions are taking place. Even some of the local priests show a lack of faith, at least initially. Even Peyramale initially demands that the young woman seen by Bernadette make a rose bloom and provide her name before he will have a chapel built at the grotto and allow the Church to get involved. He even points out, “true faith does not need folklore, and is not measured by the number of followers,” to counter a young priest’s insight that the fervor of the villagers at the grotto is sincere, and so the Church should recognize that the Virgin Mary has chosen Bernadette as a messenger. The assumption that the selection of Bernadette is solely by grace rather than owing to her authentic piety and wondrous spirit is unfair and even diminutive of the pious girl.

In any case, the local clerics, and the Roman Catholic Church hierarchy, eventually come around and claim that Bernadette has indeed seen and heard the Virgin Mary. It doesn’t matter, and in fact supports her credibility, that she has no knowledge of the theological doctrine by which the girl in the vision makes her identity known: the Immaculate Conception of the Virgin Mary. Bernadette’s piety does not depend on having had an education in theology. Nor is constant good behavior and a positive attitude requisite, for as Bernadette herself admits to her cousin, “I’m not a saint; I’m normal.” Even so, a normal person can have a deeply-ingrained spirituality that is open to transcendence. 

Therefore, I contend that the Virgin Mary chose Bernadette not only by grace, but also because of Bernadette’s incredible spirituality. In fact, one of Mary’s messages pertains directly to Bernadette, who has had asthma throughout her young life: You will be happy in the next life. From a religious standpoint, Bernadette deserves the message. At least initially, her distinctly religious worth is not recognized by the Roman Catholic Church, even though it reveres the Virgin Mary as if she were a goddess.

To the serious monsignor dressed entirely in red (not Forcade) who tells Peyramale, “I cannot accept a heavenly message brought by an illiterate peasant. I need proof. Irrefutable proof,” it could be asked whether he thinks he can accept the heavenly message brought by an illiterate peasant in the Gospels—a figure who is also dismissed by the powers that be, as a religious threat. That Bernadette says while being examined by that cleric and two others that she felt “immense joy” in seeing the girl in the visions finally gets the attention of the three clerics.

Even so, it is Monsignor Forcade whose stance and spiritual advice fit and are worthy of Bernadette’s piety. “Do not try to be what you’re not. Be yourself. That’s all. Remain unnecessary and rejoice.” He adds something that fits both the sensitivity of spirituality generally and Bernadette in particular: “The greatest experience in life comes not from what you do but what you give out in love. From what is given out of love.” Empathy naturally is felt out of the sensitivity that is part of an authentic spirituality; such a person need not try to do anything. Indeed, Bernadette soon thereafter begins spontaneously to help the sick in the convent. This is in her nature, and thus does not need to be forced or even practiced. In the final scene of the film, she sits in the main aisle of the convent’s church and tells the Virgin Mary, “You promised [at the grotto] that I would be happy in the next life [for she has been quite sick]. I am already happy. It’s good to be useless and to give to others.”

In urging Bernadette to remain useless rather than being sent out to work in one of the charities run by the convent, Monsignor Forcade tells her the story of the tree that is useless. This story comes from an ancient, anti-Confucian Chinese philosopher, Zhuangzi, though Forcade’s version is not complete because he stays with the tree remaining useless rather than having a use in line with its nature (which is distinct from striving). The tree is the only one in the forest that the loggers have not cut down for lumber or for firewood, due to the twisted branches and all the knots in tree’s wood. Smoke from twigs from the trees being burnt has irritated people’s eyes, so even firewood is not a viable use. The tree is “absolutely useless,” but even so, as the Monsignor makes clear, useless does not mean worthless. Indeed, in the original story, as formulated by Zhuangzi, the tree is the only one remaining so it alone can provide much-needed shade for people in the area, given that all of the other trees have been found to be useful and thus cut down. Zhuangzi’s point is that simply being according to one’s nature, including what comes naturally to oneself, is not only not worthless, but can be more useful than chasing after fame and wealth by accomplishing things even though doing so is artificial next to what is natural not only for the human species, but an individual human having distinct genetics and natural abilities that come naturally rather than needing much practice.

In the film, it is difficult for the characters in general to see and acknowledge how an authentic spirituality can naturally manifest itself and thus be trusted to be left to itself rather than put to work in a worldly venture. A tree being used to build houses or fuel fire places is a very different kind of use than is simply providing shade. Only the latter is in a tree’s nature, and only for individual trees that have broad leaves. Bernadette’s usefulness is in line with the latter, in being naturally empathetic and benevolent without seeking fame or wealth—she explicitly refuses both, which resembles the story of Jesus in the desert being tempted by Satan. Bernadette is hardly perfect; she hates having to sign autographs, for example, and she is not the most obedient, given the angry frustration of Mere Alexandrine when Bernadette is late to class because she wants to marvel at a donated dress hung in the convent’s donation room. It is Monsignor Forcade, and the priest, Peyramale, who insightfully grasp just how unusually spiritual and pious Bernadette’s particular nature is. Even more astonishingly, given how the world usually works regarding work, Forcade is even able to provide Bernadette with particularly well-suited advice on the value of being useless by the world’s standards but not worthless, by allowing her authentic spiritual nature to manifest itself freely and spontaneously rather than being subservient to a work-assignment foisted by a person with authority to assign nuns to work-stations. That such freedom would be abused by many people shows just how miraculous Forcade’s insight and advice are. This is arguably the best miracle in the film.

Conclave

In the film, The Godfather, Part III (1990),  Cardinal Lamberto laments that Christianity, like water surrounding a stone that is in a water fountain, has not seeped into European culture even after centuries of being in Europe.  Watching the movie, Conclave (2024), a person could say the same thing about the Roman Catholic Church, though the ending does provide some hope that internecine fighting and pettiness for power, even aside from the sexual-abuse epidemic by clergy, need not win the day.

Concerning the dead pope, we are told at the beginning of the movie that he never had any doubts about God; what he had lost faith in was the Church. Through the movie, the reason is obvious. At one point, the new Cardinal Benitez from Kabul, Afghanistan aptly characterizes his fellow cardinals as “small petty men” concerned with power. Even thusly characterized, the cardinals elect Cardinal Benitez as pope, and it is only fitting that he chooses the name, Innocent. It is in the innocence of a person who has no ambition to be pope and is genuinely surprised to be elected that the Church has hope.

The outcome of the election is subtly anticipated early on by the notably unique sincerity in the blessing of the food that Cardinal Benitez gives at the beginning of the conclave, and is implicitly guaranteed by the rebuttal that he later makes in front of the other cardinals to Cardinal Tedesco’s claim that the Church is at war with Muslims. After the second bomb, Tedesco declares, “We need a leader who fights these animals,” who are the Muslims in Europe. Cardinal Benitz disagrees: Inside each of us is what we are fighting. This is exactly what Mary Magdalene tells Peter and the other disciples in the upper room after the resurrection in the film, Mary Magdalene (2018); rather than waiting for Jesus to come on clouds to vanquish the evil Roman soldiers, the change starts within, “in the transformation of our own hearts.” Accordingly, the kingdom of God is already here even as it is not yet—pending us vanquishing the enemy within, which is done in part by being compassionate to people who are suffering.

In the conclave, “the men who are dangerous are the men who do want it.”  Cardinal Bellini says he doesn’t want it, but he does. He has progressive views (e.g., more of a role for women in the Curia), which he refuses to hide in his campaign, and this strategy makes him appear to have integrity, but he doesn’t. Even though he is a Christian, and even a cleric, he angerly rebukes Cardinal Lawrence’s claim, “This is a conclave, not a war,” by saying of Cardinal Tedesco and the conservatism which that cardinal represents, “This is a war!” This is the first of two mentions of being at war—Tedesco’s war with Muslims being the second.

Even Cardinal Lawrence, the dean of the College of Cardinals, who laudably seeks the truth concerning Cardinal Tremblay and even Cardinal Benitez, is a partisan. The homily that he gives on the first day of the conclave subtly favors the progressive platform of Cardinal Bellini, whom Lawrence was still supporting to become pope. Cardinal Lawrence lauds the Church’s diversity in being comprised of people in different countries, whereas Cardinal Tedesco wants an Italian pope. “Certainty is great enemy of unity,” Lawrence tells his brothers. “Certainty is the deadly enemy of tolerance. . . . Faith walks hand and hand with doubt. Otherwise, there would be no mystery, and therefore no need for faith.” This message is in line with Cardinal Bellini’s liberal platform because the presumption of certainly saturates Cardinal Tedesco’s ideology. As the Cardinals sitting at tables at the first dinner, Cardinal Tedesco observes that the tables are “divided by language.” He suggests to Lawrence that the next pope be Italian so it is not Cardinal Adeyeme, a black African. Cardinal Lawrence is rightly disgusted and leaves the table. Lawrence even prays with Adeyine as he cries, and puts his hand on Adeyine’s hands even though Lawrence knows that Adeyine had impregnated a teenage woman when he was 30.

Furthermore, at some point in his search for the truth concerning whether the dead pope had fired Cardinal Tremblay, Cardinal Lawrence tells a bishop, “No more secrets; no more investigations; let God’s will be done.” That Lawrence himself later investigates by entering the sealed-off papal apartment is justified by what he uncovers not only concerning the dead pope, but also Cardinal Tremblay. Finally, Lawrence is justified in keeping Cardinal Benitez’s medical secret after that Cardinal's election. Even though Benitez’s rather unique medical situation technically violates church law, Lawrence earlier said to Cardinal Bellini, “I thought we were here to serve God, not the Curia.” 

As truth-oriented as Cardinal Lawrence is, faith without love is for naught in Christian terms. In this regard, Cardinal Benitez steals the show; he is the true protagonist in the end. Just as Mary Magdalene’s rebuttal to Peter on the nature of the kingdom of God gives the film, Mary Magdalene, so much theological value for audiences, it is Cardinal Benitez’s rebuttal to Cardinal Tedesco that the Church is at war with Islam that not only gets that cardinal elected, but also provides the theological value, and thus hope, of Conclave. Take on the enemy within—one’s own hatred of Muslims—rather than fight them, Benitez tells his brothers. He could have gone further by preaching to the petty, power-seeking men: feel and exercise kindness and compassion to Muslims; go out of your way to serve them, especially those who dislike you, for something more is involved spiritually than the much easier, "love thy neighbor as thyself." Then you will find that you have conquered the enemy within and entered the kingdom of God.

La Dolce Vita

Thus says the LORD: Cursed are those who trust in mere mortals and make mere flesh their strength, whose hearts run away from the LORD. They shall be like a shrub in the desert, and shall not see when relief comes. They shall live in the parched places of the wilderness, in an uninhabited salt land. Blessed are those who trust in the LORD, whose trust is the LORD. They shall be like a tree planted by water, sending out its roots by the stream." Jeremiah 17:5-7

Levi Strauss theorized that the function of a myth lies in reconciling basic contradictions, whether they are felt within a person or at the societal level. Such contradictions, and even dichotomies, can be used to energize a story’s dramatic tension and for comic effect, such as through misunderstandings. Typically, contradictions are reconciled in the denouement of a narrative; if so, the audience gets a psychic payoff. Otherwise, the audience is left with the uneasy feeling that the world is somehow not in order. I don’t believe that Fellini reconciles the contradictions in his film, La Dolce Vita (1960). The last scene, in which the film’s protagonist, Marcello, a young and handsome single man who is a tabloid columnist, turns back to follow his high-society drinking friends, who are leaving the beach. He makes the choice to return to his life of late night parties with empty socialites rather than to walk over to the only sane, available woman in the film.  Marcello does not find or establish an equilibrium, but goes on as a lost soul. Although religion is not much discussed by the characters in the dialogue, the film’s structure can be described in terms of going back and forth between two contradictory basic principles—one represented by the Roman Catholic Church and the other by the Devil. In spite of the back-and-forth, which even includes the visually high (overlooking Vatican Square) and low (in the basement-apartment of a prostitute), the main characters remain as if in a state of suspended animation between the dichotomous and contradictory relation between God and the devil. If commentators on the film haven’t highlighted this axis, the verdict could be that film as a medium could go further in highlighting religious tensions and contradictions than it does—not that going beyond religious superficialities to engage the minds of viewers more abstractly necessarily means that the contradictions must always be resolved or sublimated in a higher Hegelian synthesis and the dichotomies transcended.

In La Dolce Vita, Marcello parties the nights away for seven days while contending with an emotionally needy and suicidal fiancée. His hero of sorts, Steiner, seems like a pious man but ends up shooting his kids and committing suicide. Marcello realizes that he has barely known his father, but is not able to turn that around. The utter lack of emotional intimacy in his life is clear, and he goes on as a lost soul, with God being suggested as very distant—the Virgin Mary’s appearance to some kids amid lots of hype being dubious at best. Steiner’s piety turns out to be dubious as well. So too, Jesus, or at least the statue, is literally distant as it is up in the sky being taken to the Vatican by a helicopter in the film’s first scene.

A prostitute and a crept are much closer to Marcello, though he does not succumb to either. Although he hits on beautiful young women, including a movie star from America, he does not have enough sex to label him as a male slut. That he returns in his sports car at dawn to pick up his fiancée, whom he had stranded during an argument, distinguishes him from the empty, promiscuous women at the parties. Yet he is interested enough in other women that he realizes that at least for now, he is not the marrying sort. I submit that this, and even Fellini’s comedic satire on Rome’s contemporary party scene, can be situated within two polarities in which religion is salient in the film.

The lack of resolution or higher synthesis in the film’s narrative is epitomized by the continued back-and-forth between religious and devilish themes through the film. In the first scene, the flying statue of Jesus sets the tone for the film in the sense that religion will have a role. The scene picturing the idyllic Jesus is followed by one in which Marcello and a woman he has met at a party go to a prostitute’s flooded basement apartment to have sex. This is followed by a visual overview of Vatican Square, after a climb up a staircase, vicariously from the dark basement. This scene is followed by a night-time party outside, with large mounted torches in the background—whose fires connote hell. Then Sylvia, the movie star whom Marcello is after for sex, goes into one of Rome’s huge fountains. Both that she is wearing white and water connotes purity and even baptism brings the viewers back from hell. The purity doesn’t last, for in the next scene a jealous boyfriend slaps his girlfriend who has been hanging out with Marcello and beats him up. Then Marcello is in a church, where Steiner makes the film’s main dichotomy explicit in saying, “Priests aren’t afraid of the devil.” Then, just in case the audience has missed this point, Marcello says, “Where the devil is this place?”

Not only do the devil and Jesus have roles in this film, the Virgin Mary ostensibly puts in an appearance for two children (and their father, who takes tips). The people at the site are so desperate to see or be healed by Mary that that the viewer is able to take stock of the mob itself as if it consists of rabid wild animals. Why would the Virgin deign to make an appearance among a pack of hungry wolves? Marcello, and a priest who is there too, are skeptical as to the veracity of the two kids, especially when they whip up the crowd into a frenzy by saying, “She’s over there,” then, after sprinting to another area of the field, exclaiming, “She’s over there!” It is significant that there are no supernatural visuals in the film’s story-world. Ironically, if the reports of the “Sun miracle” associated with the Virgin’s appearance to three children in Europe in the twentieth century are empirically valid, then the non-supernatural, secular story-world that Fellini constructed may be regarded as partial, and even biased. Even in the seance in which a woman is seemingly possessed by the soul of a dead person, Marcello is not convinced that ghosts do in fact exist. The dichotomy between the Virgin Mary and the possessed woman is yet another instance of the back-and-forth structure of the film. If there is a metaphysical realm of the sacred, it is not in Fellini’s story-world. Marcello and the rest of the main characters are on their own, and there is scant any character arc in the film, even after Steiner’s suicide and murder of his kids, which would be enough of a shock emotionally to motivate Marcello to find peace and meaning.

The audience is left on its own too, assuming resolution and synthesis are naturally sought by the human mind when faced with contradictions and dichotomies, as exist in the case of the realms of the devil and that of Jesus and the Virgin Mary. In terms of religion and what is typically associated with the devil (e.g., suicide, orgy-like parties, prostitution, sex), the film shows first one then the other, und so weiter. The utter futility in transcending the dichotomy and resolving the contradiction between God and evil while in the secular world of socialites and fame may have been Fellini’s (at least unconscious) point in making the film. It is no Rosemary’s Baby, in which, by the way, the contradiction in having sweet Rosemary give birth to a creature fathered by the devil is finally resolved when she finds that she can love the baby without becoming a Satanist because her mother’s instinct is healthy.

Fellini’s protagonist does not “find” religion; nor does he leave his party-circuit socialite friends and the world of hollow fame. Presumably Marcello goes on, after the last scene, with alternating views that can connote religion and hell, respectively, while he is a static entity wandering somewhere in between. The interior settings are hard, with bland walls that do not exactly connote warmth or emotional intimacy. Perhaps that world is none other than modern secularity, wherein meaning is futilely sought in drinking, sex, and our careers. Were Marcello to say, for example, "I am a tabloid journalist," would that capture the essence of his self? An affirmative answer wherein functionality is definitive would, I submit, be worse than chasing the gossip of the famous. Therefore, Fellini's masterpiece can be understood as going well beyond a critique of the debauchery of the socialite Roman society of his day.

Religion in Film: Resisting the Formulaic

Historically, meaning in the history of cinema, perhaps too much effort or attention initially went into fidelity to doctrine, especially in Christianity. Heavily stylistic, unrealistic epics could be said to merely illustrate doctrines. Then as filmmakers began to think in an open-ended way concerning how to depict the transcendent both visually and ideationally (i.e., as an idea), the dominance of the earlier control-orientation slipped away to be replaced by innovative ways of understanding how the transcendent may relate to the realm of our daily mundane existence in the world. The extraordinary potential of filmmaking to tap into the human imagination without necessarily providing definitive answerers could be seen. I submit that this historical trajectory is a positive development. This does not mean that heterodox belief has or should win out; in fact, religious practitioners, including the clergy, can help filmmakers to depict the transcendent and its relationship to our existence in novel ways that do not seem so formulaic as to be easily brushed aside as less than credible. Old wine can indeed go into new jugs, and even new wine may be tasted without the world collapsing as a result.

Let’s begin with the old approach. “In his 1936 encyclical Vigilanti Cura, Pope Pius XI argues that, insofar as ‘the motion picture has become the most popular form of diversion which is offered for the leisure hours . . . ,’ it is crucial that Catholics pressure ‘the industry  [to] produce motion pictures which conform entirely to our standards.’ Only in this way can ‘the motion picture be no longer a school of corruption’ but ‘be transformed into an effectual instrument for the education and the elevation of mankind.’”[1] But what standards?  Are they moral or theological in nature, or both? Are the standards moral only that can be derived from theological doctrines? If not, on what basis are the extrinsic moral standards legitimate for the Church to enforce on Hollywood? The very notion of standards, moreover, connotes the negativity of prohibition, whereas teachings instead would imply that films are made proactively to illustrate through narrative principles and values found in Christianity. Rather than fixate on Hollywood as being corrupt, the pope could have pictured it as an opportunity full of potential, ignoring the decadent films. For beyond educating people, films can elevate us, as the pope admits. In short, rather than viewing the glass as half empty; it can be viewed as half full. Rather than concentrating on emptying out the stale brew, the focus can be on that which is added that is salubrious from a distinctly religious standpoint. What does it take to do so?

Going from the mentality of slapping a ruler on a wrist to helping filmmakers to render the transcendent through narrative using visuals and sound entails eclipsing the subjectivity of the filmmakers as well as “’the immanent frame’ of technological modernity,”[2] which includes not only the techniques but also the business of filmmaking.

Roman Polanski’s Rosemary’s Baby (1968), for instance, eclipses Polanski’s own subjectivity (or secular bias) in leaving it to the viewer whether Rosemary is dreaming or really is raped by Satan, although the short cut-away later briefly showing the baby’s face in the crib provides an answer that the supernatural realm that is transcendent of our world is indeed real. Furthermore, showing the animal raping Rosemary hardly fits with modernity, including the business interests of Hollywood. In short, Polanski took a risk, and he was not out to superimpose his own views of the supernatural onto his audience. That is, Polanski resisted what Heidegger calls the “culture-industry,” wherein, according to Barnett, “cinema merely discloses the rich subjectivity of the artist rather than any truth conveyed by the work itself.”[3] Instead, Polanski allows Heidegger’s “letting be” to occur by not trying, as Barnett puts it, “to wrest determinate meaning” from the work.[4] Polanski creates the openness in which viewers can be open to transcendence in a metaphysical sense.

Barnett points to The Greatest Story Ever Told (1965) as being an example of what to avoid in this regard, as “the thematization of Christian doctrine or dramatization of Christian conversion” in the film “is most likely to elicit eye rolls and snickers.”[5] The characters are so stylized and idealized as to please not only the camera, but the financially-inclined producers as well. Nothing offensive. Nothing challenging. To be sure, at the time, as the first film to show Jesus’ face, the film could have been reckoned by some people as controversial. Even so, merely illustrating a Biblical narrative visually and with sound goes only so far.  The Ten Commandments (1956) too, goes only so far. Both films are “safe” in that they follow well-established doctrines exquisitely and present the Bible in the modern medium.

To be sure, over-stylized, non-realistic illustrations of Biblical narrative can contain allusions to the holy that seem genuine or real. In the television miniseries, Jesus of Nazareth (1977), for example, an eerie scene takes place in which other-worldly instrumental music plays as Jesus silently walks, with bright back-light behind him highlighting his meager, weak (yet paradoxically strong!) form, toward Pontius Pilate, whose facial expression intimates that something wholly other is going on in the case of Jesus. We see something similar in the realistic reactions of the disciples witnessing Jesus recusitate Lazarus in The Greatest Story Ever Told. Both scenes resonate with the qualities of the holy described by Rudolf Otto in The Idea of the Holy. So the phenomenon of the holy can be depicted in a catching way even in heavy-stylized (i.e., unrealistic) films whose primary orientation is to present established Biblical narratives in an orthodox way. 

It would take perhaps until The Last Temptation of Christ (1988) for the transcendent itself to again be raised as a question rather than an established fact with respect to Christology, or Christian dogma. The Exorcist (1973) explicitly raises the question of whether the supernatural demon really exists, though the psychological bias of modernity is eviscerated by supernatural feats that cannot possibly be explained as mental phenomena.

Of course, the very existence of the transcendent need not flagged and left up in the air for a film to represent religion in a way that resists the easy and convenient stylization of modernity.  The Others (2001) resists simple movie technique by turning the tables on the viewers without questioning the reality of the transcendent. Ghost (1990) also provides an innovative way into there being another realm, though with the familiar bipolar trappings of heaven and hell that ironically give the film the veneer of established doctrine—such easy formulaic being used by the modern industry of film to sell.

To draw out the transcendent in a way that does not seem trite or already well-groved, “Filmmakers must uncover the tensity between beings and Being, between the systematized habits of the human world and the raw primitivity of non-technical existence. Thereby, the mystery of being-in-the-world is manifested, and with it, the possibility of a truly poetic encounter with Being itself.”[6] Overstylized, too-conventional depictions of Biblical narrative can fall short in terms of showing the human “struggle to discern the divine presence.”[7] To manifest “the ineffable and invisible” beyond “normal sense experience,” “a fundamental incongruity between human everydayness and the transcendent world is expressed” even as both are contained within a oneness.[8] This incongruity must burst through preconceived notions, as are in heavily stylized Biblical epics, or the depicted transcendent will not seem real to viewers. Put another way, raw Being should challenge the viewer, yet not be so different or new that it is not believed to possibly represent something real beyond the movie theater or living room.

The subtle, almost-invisible cascade of ghosts going down the stairs in Poltergeist (1982) and the human’s facial expressions of simple wonder are much more suggestive of another realm than is the over-fabricated, almost sensationalistic hole in the bedroom closet heading to the other realm. The liminality of the numen, which lies between realms in at least the human imagination, is difficult to capture visually, and is thus too susceptible to being done up in a meretricious or gaudy way by filmmakers in line with modern sensationalism and cinematic technique.

There are of course new ways of telling old stories. The Chosen, a television series made in Texas of Jesus and his disciples, is a case in point. They are all presented in a realistic way, as are the Romans. Matthew is mildly autistic. Jesus has some very human reactions to everyday situations. Yet the world depicted is one in which miracles take place. The transcendent is real even as the characters are portrayed realistically. So while some stories, such as The Others, may do away with conventional notions of a heaven and hell, other stories are quite conventional yet they resist easy formulation repeating oft seen epics. There is indeed so much potential in filmmaking to depict transcendence in a myriad of ways that the old way of controlling the medium so that it conforms with doctrine in a conventional way has thankfully been defeated.  Nevertheless, the danger of an over-reaching subjectivity of a filmmaker imposed through the medium is still with us, given human nature, and it may still be too tempting for filmmakers to turn to heavily stylized Hollywood props and well-trodden plots instead of thinking outside the proverbial box. I am convinced that the human imagination applied to religion in film has not come close to having been exhausted.  

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1. Christopher B. Barnett, “Can Cinema Be ‘Religious’? Heidegger, Technology, and the Transcendent,” Insights: The Faculty Journal of Austin Seminary, 139, No. 2 (Spring, 2024): 19-23.
2. Ibid. Barnett is quoting Charles Tayler, A Secular Age (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2007), 539-93.
3. Ibid.
4. Ibid.
5. Ibid.
6. Ibid.
7. Michael Bird, “Film as Hierophany,” in Religion in Film, John R. May and Michael Bird, eds (Knoxville, TN: The University of Tennessee Press, 1982), p. 4.
8. Paul Schrader, Transcendental Style in Film: Ozu, Bresson, Dreyer (Boston: Da Capo Press, 1972), pp. 3-13.

True Confessions

The film True Confessions (1981) centers around a priest who is the heir-apparent and assistant of the cardinal of the Archdiocese of Los Angeles, California. Even though the priest is a precise bureaucrat and liturgist, I contend that he lapses in what can be said to be the true mission of a Christian priest, and thus in the essence of Christianity. Moreover, the film is deficient in not making this point explicit.

The priest, Des Spellacy, enjoys a cordial yet emotionally distant relationship with is brother Tom, who is a homicide detective. Tom is working on the murder of a prostitute who was sent to a porn-maker by Jack Amsterdam, who has profited from several commercial real-estate deals with the archdiocese. Although Tom knows that Jack did not kill the prostitute, the homicide detective hates Jack and wants to pin the crime on him anyway. That Jack has profited in his dealings with the Church even while engaging with prostitutes offends Tom, given the hypocrisy. Indeed, the Cardinal and Des are in the midst of cancelling an upcoming deal with Jack. But Des does not go after his brother for intending to arrest Jack even though Tom admits in the confessional to Des that Jack may be innocent of the crime. Using the confessional to talk with his brother, Tom says that he is about to arrest Jack. “Did he do it,” Des asks repeatedly. “I don’t care if he did it or not,” Tom replies. Des says nothing.

I contend that Des, a monsieur in the Roman Catholic Church, misses an opportunity to hold his brother to Jesus’ command to love one’s enemies. At the very least, Des could go after Tom’s abuse of police power as being antipodal to Jesus’ example and teaching. Vengeance is mine, sayeth the Lord. Des does not even mention the word vengeance to his brother. As a priest, Des is called to resist even brotherly attachment to proclaim Jesus’ commands; being a priest is not merely knowing how to perform rituals.

At the end of the movie, when Tom and Des are old men, Des tells his brother that he has finally come to understand the mission of a priest. I demure. Being a quiet, peaceful person is not the mission. In fact, just as Jesus goes after the Jewish hypocrites, including the money-changers in the Temple, priests should stand up to seemingly pious hypocrites. No priest should be a punching-bag in the face of hypocrisy. I submit that Tom’s hypocrisy is much more egregious than is Des’ own ‘worldly ambition” to become a bishop and ultimately a cardinal.

I contend that the film would evince the Christian message were Des to urge Tom to let go of his hatred of Jack, for we are all flawed, as well as the urge to abuse police power, and to go even further in helping Jack by befriending him while not shying away from calling Jack on his hypocrisy (while Tom admits his own to Jack). Two struggling men both in touch with their respective depravities in the context of Tom the Christian helping Jack as a friend (without enabling the hypocrisy) is what the filmmaker could have shown were the film to esteem the specifically (and uniquely) Christian ideal. Having Des relegated to a parish in the desert for a silly reason pales in comparison to depicted why he falls short of the mission of a priest.