Contact

In the fall of 2026, Chris Graney, an astronomer at the Vatican Observatory, argued that the universe of at least 2 trillion galaxies (according to a study in 2016 using the orbital Hubble Space Telescope) probably contains few, if any, planets capable of supporting intelligent life. This claim may come as a surprise, given the gargantuan number of possibly habitable exoplanets in the universe and the associated likelihood of alien life out there. The overlay of theology onto science, as if the latter’s criteria were nugatory and thus dismissible relative to religious doctrine, is problematic because the two domains are arguably distinct and even unique, even though they are related. Such a category mistake is highlighted in the film, Contact (1997), in which religious figures (who have related political roles in the White House) impose monotheist criteria in the selection of an astronaut for space travel, which is primarily a scientific enterprise.

To put Graney’s scientific claim in context, scientifically, consider the estimate that a typical galaxy contains between 100 billion and 400 billion suns. Multiplying 400 billion by 2 trillion equals 800 quintillion. Now, multiplying this number by 8—based on science’s estimate that a typical solar system has between eight and ten planets—brings us to 6.4 nonillion! To be sure, simulations had shown that a solar system can support up to six planets in the habitable zone; multiplying 800 quintillion suns by a conservative 3 habitable planets gives us 2.4 sextillion planets where intelligent life could potentially exist.

Such an astronomically large number as 2.4 sextillion could support lots of sex, of whatever fashion or stripe, though the odds of whips being involved outside of Earth (especially beyond San Francisco’s sordid Dore Alley and Folsom Days “festivals”) are probably very low. But I digress. Graney’s claim may be too circumscribed, given the probabilities going along with there being up to 2.4 sextillion possibly life-supporting exoplanets, and this number does not include the planets of suns that may be in galaxies that in 2026 remained undetected by empirical science. Graney’s scientific claim pales as arbitrary, or at least as dogmatically circumscribed. That he was working at the Vatican at the time—the headquarters of the Roman Catholic Church—may explain why he made the statement: his claim aligns with the theological doctrine that, being made in God’s image, our species holds a special, singular place in Creation. Unfortunately, moving from a religious concept to a scientific conclusion is deeply problematic because religion and science are two distinct domains, each with its own criteria that ought not be supervened by the foisting of exogenous criteria from any other domain.

Historically, the Roman Catholic Church opposed the heliocentric theory, which posits that the Sun rather than the Earth is at the center of our solar system. In conflating theology with science, top ecclesiastical officials considered that astronomical theory to conflict with the theological doctrine of the primacy of our species in Creation. Heliocentrism was first suggested by Aristarchus of Samos (c. 310-230 BCE) and later revived by Hypatia of Alexandria (c. 350-370 CE), who was flayed alive by Bishop Cyril’s military guard because she was a pagan who had influence on government officials in Alexandria and would not convert to Christianity (Cyril was later canonized). Centuries later, Galileo Galilei (1564-1642) ran afoul of the Roman Inquisition because his scientific work supported the heliocentric theory. 

Putting scientists to death for advancing a scientific theory as if doing so were heretical (a distinctly religious concept) conflates science and theology by hyperextending religious criteria into the scientific domain as though the latter were merely really part of the religious domain. Furthermore, for a person to foist one domain’s criteria onto another domain, which has its own native or innate criteria and principles, is not only logically fraught, but also presumptuous and thus unethical as well. Science and theology are best approached as distinct domains, with their own hegemonic criteria not to be submerged by that of the other domain. It follows that religious truth and scientific truth can be considered to be qualitatively different (i.e., different in kind rather than degree or extent). 

In fact, the word “truth” may be best reserved for the religious domain, with “facts” residing in the scientific domain. Religious meaning and empirical facts are two very different things. The qualitative difference is missed in conflating the “Big Bang” with Creation, which can be thought of as meaning that even existence itself, or being, is inherently dependent. In other words, to say that our existence is precarious scientifically, as in, for instance, an asteroid being able to hit our planet and exterminate us, is very different than saying that Creation is dependent on its Creator so we are existentially precarious in our creatureliness. Religious meaning can legitimately be supported by myth, whereas science is the stuff of theory and empirical findings. 

Psychology, history, and politics are still other domains with their own distinct criteria and thus not to be conflated. Religious myth and historical accounts, for example, are qualitatively different, and are written with intent based on the respective sets of criteria. Josephus, a historian, and Paul, an evangelist, could have passed each other on a road and wished each other well without viewing each other as colleagues even though both men wrote because they wrote for different purposes and according to different criteria.

To grasp the harmful effects of superimposing religious criteria on scientific study, watching and analyzing the film, Contact (1997), is advisable and instructive. For example, the most iconic lines of the film, which was made just before the turn of the millennium, is illustrative. S. R. Hadden (wonderfully played by John Hurt) is talking with Ellie, the scientist who has discovered the radio signals sent from Vega. “The powers that be have been very busy lately, falling over each other to position themselves for the game of the millennium. Maybe I can help deal you back in,” Hadden tells her. She responds, “I didn’t realize I was out,” to which he pauses and says, “Well, maybe not out . . . but certainly being handed your hat.” That even Ellie’s boss, David Drumlin, a scientist who serves as the White House Scientific Advisor, appeals to religious criteria to marginalize Ellie behind the other candidates, including Drumlin himself, for the space trip to meet the aliens at Vega shows just how out of place such criteria are in a scientific venture.

That the selection process would be political is to be expected, but that religious criteria would be primary over scientific criteria is not. The film, which was written by Carl Sagan and his wife based on one of his books, castigates the interlarding of religious criteria as artificial and contrived—basically out of place—in the selection of an astronaut to travel through worm holes in space to visit an alien species that has, as Ellie points out in defending her candidacy, sent a distinctly scientific message to Earth on how to construct the space-transit vehicle and its supporting launching infrastructure. Sagan’s attitude can be gleamed as being hostile to the unethical encroachment of religion on astronomy, and space travel in particular. The dramatic tension in the film is as much about what criteria should be used to select a human to go on the trip as about what the aliens will say about themselves and even ourselves as a species. Interestingly, the alien who speaks with Ellie once she has arrived at Vega does not ask her about the religious beliefs of humans, so the concern of religionists that the astronaut should be able to discuss God turns out to be misplaced, and thus irrelevant.

Before analyzing the film in depth, it is useful to remember that in NASA’s space programs, the religion or atheism of astronaut candidates has officially never been among the criteria used in the selection process. Beyond the risk of prejudice, the inclusion of religion would be widely considered, especially within NASA, as entirely irrelevant. Health, physical stamina, and technical ability in space travel and spacewalking have been the primary considerations. In selecting Christa McAuliffe, a school teacher, for the ill-fated Challenger space shuttle in 1986, even though the primary criterion was not aerospace expertise, the key criterion being the ability to communicate to the public what it is like being in space was relevant to the functions of teacher in space, and thus the criterion is entirely appropriate. Because this skill—conveying different or complex matters in simple terms—is important in teaching, the ability to teach was indirectly involved, along of course with physical stamina and health. Asking candidates for the teacher slot on the shuttle, however, whether the experience in orbit would affect their respective relationships with Jesus Christ (or might increase their willingness to convert to Christianity) would have been  generally flagged inside and outside of NASA as irrelevant and even invasive. Furthermore, NASA administrators would hardly be in a position to decide whom God would want to go into the heavens. Such a question would make no sense to a Buddhist, and a Hindu might ask: Which deity? An avatar of Vishnu might prefer one person, while Shiva would prefer another.

In the film, the primary religious criterion used to select the astronaut who will travel to the aliens at Vega is based on the assumption that humanity is overwhelmingly (and properly) monotheist—believing that there is just one deity. This is problematic because a candidate could be a Buddhist or Hindu. Nonetheless, a member of a selection committee claims that 95% of the world’s population believe in a supreme being—a dubious factoid because neither Buddhists nor Hindus believe in a supreme being in the monotheistic sense. 

Buddhism teaches that neither a soul nor a deity exists, though Pure Land Buddhism in Japan includes the veneration of several “Buddhas” as de facto deities. In Hinduism, Brahman, which is infinite being, is not an entity, and therefore, is not a deity; infinite being is considered to be supreme, hence even more fundamental than the gods and goddesses, which are created out of Brahman, primal, everlasting infinite being. To be sure, a passage in the Gita has Lord Krishna claiming that he created Brahman, but as that is being itself, how could Krishna exist prior to Brahman? Presumably a deity doing something must exist while doing it, so something existing that brings about infinite being would appear to be an oxymoron. So in Hinduism, Brahman, rather than any of the deities—even Krishna, the avatar of Vishnu that in the Gita is supreme over the other gods and goddesses—is fundamental, and even in the Gita, Hinduism is not represented as being monotheist, as Krishna alludes to the other gods and thus their existence. So, in Hinduism, Brahman, which is not a deity, is arguably (to Shankara at least) most fundamental. Even in the Gita, Krishna is not the only deity. So monotheism does not apply to Hinduism. In the film, therefore, the claim that the astronaut selected should be able to represent monotheism because humanity is overwhelmingly monotheist can be rejected on religious terms; that the claim would be primary in the selection of an astronaut for space travel, which is primarily scientific, is thus especially problematic.

The film’s plot, in brief, unfolds as follows: Ellie, an astrophysicist heading a remote radio-wave detection station oriented to detecting signals from beyond Earth, discovers a strong signal originating at Vega. Her superior, David Drumlin, quickly takes credit and assumes control of the program from the White House. Figures including Robert Novak, a political commentator (playing himself), and then Richard Rank (likely a surrogate for evangelical politicos such as Ralph Reed during the Reagan years), and Palmer Joss, a presidential religious advisor and a nonaffiliated minister, all insist on the crucial relevance of religion to the matter of communicating with space aliens. Both Rank and Joss want the candidate who is selected to travel to the aliens to believe in the Abrahamic deity so as to be able to convey the nature of that deity to the aliens.

Astutely political, David Drumlin tells the selection committee that the candidate selected should indeed believe in God; he is trying to exclude Ellie, who would otherwise be selected but for her Atheism. Drumlin insists even after he has been selected that he will gleefully represent his “country, planet, and God,” as if God would ever be in need of being represented by a human being, especially one such as Drumlin who has manipulated the selection committee with a clean conscience because, as he later explains to Ellie, “life isn’t fair.” There is some divine justice, I think, in him being killed indirectly by a religious zealot who, in considering science as a threat to religion (which means he commits the category mistake of conflating the two domains), sets off a body-bomb inside launching superstructure during a dress-rehearsal of the launch when Drumlin is present (playing to the cameras for publicity).

Palmer Joss, who is romantically interested in Ellie, also personifies the hypocrisy that can exist in religion. He is on the selection committee, and he votes against her ostensibly because he feels strongly that a person who believes in his God should go, but as he later admits to her, he didn’t want to risk losing her. Like Drumlin, Joss is selfish, and is hardly in a position to assess the religious suitability of the candidates. The film’s message is that religion should not have entered the picture at all.

Ellie is the runner up, and so following Drumlin’s death, she gets to go to Vega. Even though the time-travel element means that the 18-hour trip looks like a failed launch to everyone here on Earth. The 18 hours of the scrambled video inside her cube-shaped space vehicle validates her account, but this information is kept secret by the few politicos who realize the significance of the find. During a Congressional hearing, Ellie is lambasted as not being credible in her testimony that she travelled to Vega and spoke with an alien. That the aliens might be capable of time travel is utterly missed by everyone. What is not possible for us is deemed impossible. This assumption is just as flawed as the assumption, it turns out, that the aliens would ask about, or even be interested in, the religious beliefs of humans.

During Ellie’s conversation with the alien, religion does not come up. Instead, the matter of discussion, set by the alien, is about how and when aliens might make contact with our species again. Given the relatively primitive condition of humans, the alien tells Ellie that contact will be made in what could be said to be baby steps—meaning very gradually. We are not alone in the universe, and by this both Ellie and the alien know that the reference is not to a deity, but, rather, to there being more than one alien civilization. The primary criterion of the search committee, it turns out, is entirely irrelevant. This does not nullify theistic belief in religion. Instead, Ellie has pointed out to the selection committee, the message sent by the aliens is scientific rather than religious. Conflating the two types, and more specifically, superimposing the criteria innate to one type onto the other type at the expense of its own criteria, can be flagged without invalidating religious truth within the confines of its own domain. Drumlin and Joss can both be viewed as religious hypocrites (using distinctly religious criteria) and Ellie can be viewed as an excellent scientist and astronaut (using criteria of science and space travel).

The Children Act

I contend that religion and science are two distinct and unique domains, and thus qualitatively different. It follows that they have their own distinctive criteria, which are rightly hegemonic in their respective domain. In other words, the criteria of religion should not be extended onto the domain of natural science, especially if in doing so the native criteria of science are eclipsed or overridden. Likewise, the criteria of science should not be superimposed into the domain of religion, especially if at the expense of the sui generis criteria of religion. The film, The Children Act (2017), demonstrates the problems entailed in imposing religious criteria onto medical science. An interesting question from having seen the film is whether any such hypertrophy of one domain’s criteria onto another domain inevitably incurs a narrowing of perspective and a corresponding warping of judgment.

The film’s narrative centers around Fiona Maye, a judge in Britain, and Adam Henry, a 17-year-old who has leukemia. From the standpoint of medical ethics and religion, the first half of the film is salient, whereas the second half centers around Adam’s infatuation for Fiona and her efforts to distance herself from him. The infatuation is likely a result of the fact that he has lost his religious grounding due to Judge Maye’s order that him be given a blood transfusion in violation of the dogma of the Jehovah Witness sect of Christianity. It is precisely that transfusion that is the legal/moral/religious issue that is presented in the film. If as I contend the medium of film is an excellent means of bringing to people matters of ethics and theology (and philosophy generally), then delving into the complex issue before the court in the film is warranted.

Adam’s parents have asked the court to stop the hospital from giving Adam a potentially life-saving blood-infusion, without which he would die (as the film’s end demonstrates). The parents’ lawyer presents the theological position of Jehovah’s Witnesses against blood transfusions. Genesis, Leviticus, and even Acts are cited as scriptural support, but no passages are cited before the court. The theological potential of the film would be strengthened were even a bit of exegesis presented to the judge (or she could be shown studying the matter at home, especially as her husband is away having an affair). The lawyer for the hospital points out in court that blood transfusions did not exist in ancient times, so we can infer that the relevant scriptural passages are at best indirect, being on blood itself as necessary for life. The hospital lawyer points out that if blood is tantamount to life itself, then the sect should be heartily in favor of blood transfusions to continue life.

Even though no reference to blood transfusion itself is in the Bible, the Jehovah Witness religious organization denounces the medical treatment as if God prohibits it. In court, Adam’s father says that he knows this, but in matters of religious, belief, and thus faith, rather than knowledge sans doubt applies. The notion that blood is or carries a person’s soul, which is implied in the sect’s position, conflates the material and spiritual, and in terms of domains, the biological and the religious. Conflating different domains can indeed lead to such astonishing claims that a person’s soul is in one’s blood. Typically, people dismiss such a claim without realizing that the underlying problem is a category mistake in terms of conflating two different domains or hyperextending one onto another.

Even were scripture to proscribe blood transfusions in particular and explicitly, rather than by an assumed inference from a passage on blood, such a prohibition would be of minor importance given the leitmotif of the gospels. In them, Jesus does not mention transfusions of blood; nor does he mention abortion or gay marriage, yet that hasn’t stopped some Christians from treating such ethical issues as foremost and as religious in nature. This is not to say that transfusions, abortions, and gay people marrying are ethical or unethical. Instead, my point is that from a religious standpoint generally and from the perspective of the New Testament, those issues are not particularly salient. Before the judge’s ruling, Adam is worried that his Church would disenfranchise him were he to get an infusion even if against his will! Even just to distance a member on the basis of an ethical issue that carries little or no distinctly religious importance, especially given the salient feature in the gospels of compassion where it is least convenient (i.e., to detractors, outsiders, and even enemies), incurs a bias in terms of perspective and judgment. Treating a minor factor as though everything hinges on it is to judge erroneously. To violate the theological principle of caritas seu benevolentia universalis (love as universal benevolence) under the rubric of Christianity and especially on a theologically minor issue incurs hypocrisy. The sick are to be cared for—this is very evident from the gospels. Magnifying some passages on blood (rather than more specifically on transfusions as if that practice were proscribed) such that the prohibition eclipses the main theological thrust of the gospels demonstrates a lack of good judgment (and common sense).

Because the transfusion would likely forestall Adam’s eventual death from the cancer means that, as Judge Maye declares from the bench, the Jehovah’s Witness organization was acting against rather than in line with Adam’s welfare. Something had gone very wrong in the governance of that organization. Adam’s welfare includes the happiness that continuing to live can make possible; a religious institution that is in favor of precluding a person’s future is likely making a category mistake underneath—in this case, extending religious criteria onto medical science at the expense of that domain’s own criteria.

As Fiona realizes when she visits Adam in hospital before her verdict, he is a lively, precious young man full of a lively spirit, which is shown in his sarcastic grin even more than in his blood. A person’s soul—isn’t it through a person’s eyes anyway? A person’s entire being is the “form” of one’s soul, as evinced especially in tone of voice and facial expressions as well as the language that one uses. The role of blood is biological, and thus of science, in human life, whereas the spiritual transcends the limits of human thought, perception, and emotion. The religious domain can thus be understood to be distinct from that of natural science.

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.

The Seventh Sign

Carl Schultz’s film, The Seventh Sign (1988), centers on the theological motif of the Second Coming, the end of the world when God’s divine Son, Jesus, returns to judge the living and even the dead. In the movie, Jesus returns as the wrath of the Father, which has already judged humanity as having been too sinful to escape God’s wrath. David Bannon, who is the returned Jesus in the film, is there to break the seven seals of the signs leading up to the end of the world, and to witness the end of humanity. Abby Quinn, the pregnant wife of Russell Quinn, asks David (an interesting name-choice, given that Jesus is of the House of David in the Gospel narratives) whether the chain (of signs) can be broken. How this question plays out in the film’s denouement is interesting from a theological standpoint. Less explicit, but no less theologically interesting, is what role humans can and should have in implementing God’s law. The film both heroizes and castigates our species.

The lamb of God now returned as God’s lion, the second person of the Trinity (i.e., the Logos incarnated), tells Abby that God has already judged against humanity due to too much killing of humans by humans. A quarter of a century into the twenty-first century, David would only have to point to the Russians in Ukraine and (especially) the Israelis in Gaza as more than enough support for God’s wrath. That the Israelis atop Israel’s government and military even enjoyed the mass killing, including by starvation, of hundreds of thousands while more than a million residents of Gaza were being made homeless (and even bombed in temporary camps), all in the Hebrew deity’s name could easily excite the deity’s wrath because the residents were not worshipping another deity. Jesus’s notion of God, which is primarily mercy because, as Paul and Augustine wrote, God is love—a statement that applies even to God’s love for people who intentionally offend and even reject the Trinity—would be, from at least my limited, human, all too human, perspective, utterly shocked by the atrocity unleased by the “chosen people” against innocent civilians as if they were subhuman. The Zionist biblical claim that Yahweh gives the lands of Gaza and the West Bank to the Hebrews translated into public policy evinces a category mistake in conflating religious narrative, or myth, and empirical public policy. Ignoring this category mistake, we could look at the Old Testament to find Yahweh punishing the Hebrews for willfully disobeying the deity and conclude that it would support a government’s military conquering and clearing out Israel. Ignoring the category mistake, more than one scriptural precedent could be found.

In the film, the presumptuousness of humans applying God’s law to other humans and even executing punishment is personified in Jimmy, a young adult who even has Downs Syndrome and yet thinks he is able to decide against his parents because they were brother and sister before he spread gasoline on them in bed and burned them alive. If such a severe punishment fits such a sin, then even more severe punishments surely befit greater sins. Clearly, the execution of Jimmy hardly qualifies as the death of the last martyr. That David (i.e., Jesus) comes to Jimmy’s cell and pats him on a shoulder is perhaps the filmmakers’ greatest blunder. Sympathy with a person with Downs Syndrome would be appropriate were one a victim, but Jimmy is no victim; in fact, the name Jimmy applied to an adult who has Downs Syndrome can be considered to be a pathetically patronizing puerile appellation.

The execution of the Word of God killer is one of the signs of the apocalypse: the last martyr. Therefore, Jimmy’s death is very significant theologically, for if he is not killed, the series of signs is interrupted and the world does not end. Jimmy’s excuse for killing both of his parents so grotesquely is, “It’s not murder if it is God’s punishment,” but if it is God’s punishment, and, notably not even specified in the Hebrew Bible, then it is presumptuous of any human to decide what specific punishment fits the violation of the sin, and then to go on as the executioner adds presumption on top of presumption. Jimmy’s certainty may even evince self-idolatry. Only a deity with Downs Syndrome would think such a heinous punishment fits a brother and sister who marry because they have fallen in love. To be sure, I am not advocating such a marriage. Rather, as Lyle and Erik Menendez found out in the twentieth century, not even having been psychologically abused and repeatedly molested by one’s own father justifies killing him, and those two brothers were better equipped cognitively than is Jimmy in the film.

That in history so many people have unilaterally presumed an entitlement to know and execute God’s law makes clear the serial, recurring lapse of which the human brain is all too prone commit, wherein theology (as in scriptures) is treated as the same type as are history, politics, and even science. Religion is a qualitatively different domain, so it is worse than unfortunate that the human mind seamlessly goes from a theological tenant to empirical criminal justice; presuming that a scripture is also a historical account (rather than making selective use of events in history) also evinces the cognitive vulnerability.  

It is no wonder that the proverbial “public square” in many societies has become secularized; the cleansing of religious activities and artifacts may have been due at least in part to too many people applying their religious beliefs in objectionable ways to other domains, such as politics and society. The core of the mental problem may be that the self-check function of the human mind tends to be turned off or dismissed as irrelevant in the domain of religion (and that of political ideology too). A brain could do worse than to periodically keep the need for self-checking in mind whenever anything religious (or political) is being thought. Furthermore, keeping in mind that theology is a distinct domain, or discipline, would be a good addition to a person’s spiritual exercises. Even if a deity is not finite, the human mind is, and thus the latter is inherently limited, and thus hardly omniscient. Epistemological humility applied to religious thinking can go a long way, given the salience of subjectivity, which includes ideology, inherent in human nature.

In the film, Jimmy connects a passage that he has read in the Old Testament with the fact that his parents deserved to be burned alive. In the Euthyphro, Socrates points out to Euthyphro that the prosecution of his father for having left a murderous slave in a ditch overnight (such that the slave died) does not count as piety to the gods; for one thing, the son has violated his duty to his father. That filial duty has not even registered indicates that Euthyphro is too certain that he knows what piety is. In the film, Jimmy commits the same sin, and yet is treated as a martyr even by Jesus.

Given the propensity of humans to implicitly lapse into wanting to be gods—a motive anathema to Augustine and yet urged on by Marsilio Fincino during the Renaissance—the motif of the individual hero in Christian theology may seem to be paradoxical, or else as saying that we can be awesomely good even in our weakness and yet we can be horrific creatures. The sheer distance between these two poles is astounding; human nature is indeed complex rather than isomorphic.

In the film, Jimmy, motivated by his religious beliefs that he misconstrues as facts, has burned his parents alive; his execution, as a martyr, even has apocalyptic significance. On the other end of the spectrum, Abby, who has attempted suicide, is in a position to bring life not only to her baby, but also to the whole world. Strength out of weakness is perhaps the motif of Christianity, epitomized theologically by God’s agape love in emptying Himself by incarnating in lowly flesh. God loves our species even before Creation by the unincarnated Logos of God, and such spontaneous, unconditional love is very, very different than any love that a human being can have and extend to others. So that God reverses judgment on the species because of the use of free-will by one person makes sense even though it can be asked why should humanity’s fate depend on just one person? In the film, that person is not David (i.e., Jesus in the Second Coming); rather, Abby is decisive, for her infant is to be stillborn without a soul unless she gives up her soul for her child.

Earlier in the film, before the birth, Abby asks David whether she can do anything to break the series of the apocalyptic seven signs. David points out that it would require her to have hope, and yet in attempting suicide she had none of that; she had given up not only on the world, but also her own life. “How can someone who cared so little for life give life to the world?”, David asks her rhetorically. She could stop the sign of the soulless birth of her child—souless because the hall of souls in heaven is now empty—but she would have to die for her child, and in so doing she would give humanity a second chance as her self-sacrifice would be enough for God to freely reverse His judgment on the sinful species.

“Will you die for him?” is the line that she hears repeatedly in dreams. The voice is that of Cartaphilus, the gatekeeper of Pontius Pilote fated to live until the Second Coming for having hit Jesus on His way to the Cross for going too slow (as if the Romans were justifiably in a hurry). In the film, Cartaphilus is Father Lucci, the Roman Catholic priest who shoots Jimmy before the execution to make sure that he dies so the series of signs does not end part-way because the last martyr is not martyred. Lucci is in a hurry to die because he has become tired of living for so long; death is the only redemption that he can have, for he is not sorry for having struck the definitive, soteriological martyr whose death is believed by Christians to be redemptive. Yet apparently not enough, for just after Abby declares while giving birth that she will die for him—her soulless baby—Jesus aka David Bannon enters the operating room and declares “The hall of souls is full again. It was you, Abby, with hope enough for the whole world.” He addresses Abby’s young Jewish friend, who is presumably now Christian, “Remember it all, write it down, tell it, so people will use the chance she has given them.” Out of her weakness—her utter lack of hope—she has mustered enough hope to give humanity another chance. 

With the twentieth century as the bloodiest century, to be followed by so many killings of innocent people in Ukraine and Gaza after two decades in the next century, it is hard to argue that the Christian message has made much of a difference. As beautiful as “strength out of weakness” is, too many people still value “might makes right.” So, I think the film hits a nerve in that a second chance is needed; the Christian Passion Story has not been sufficient to change how people, especially those in power, behave. The high are not made low. Corporate CEOs give only lip-service to “servant leadership.” Too many universities in the U.S., even private elite ones, had by 2025 been intentionally made into virtual police-states, with Yale even inviting the FBI in to train the university’s private police force in counter-terrorism tactics that could used on even paying students. Even university administrations can be seen as being visibly backed up ultimately by their own hired guns. But it is perhaps the engineered genocide of Gazans for two years without the world coming to their rescue that damns the species. 

At the very least, the notion that the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ had redeemed the species could be viewed as having been debunked (and rejected) by the species as a whole, for the value in kindness and compassionate help being directed to enemies clearly has not taken hold of humanity. On an interpersonal level, responding compassionately to human needs of people whom a person dislikes or are disliked by the person is so rare that we can declare after two-thousand years that Jesus’s message has been de facto rejected by the species as a whole even if the preachment has made a dent in some people. The leitmotif of the film, that our species is in need of a second chance, is as much an indictment on historical Christianity as it is of our species. Perhaps with less hero-worship and more attention to the substance what it takes to enter the Kingdom of God before physical death, our species could have that second chance.

Mary

The film, Mary (2024), is pregnant with intimations of the theological implications of her unborn and then newly born son, Jesus. That story is of course well-known grace á the Gospels, and the theology of agape love associated with that faith narrative is at least available through the writings of Paul and many later Christian theologians. What we know of Mary is much less, given that her role in the Gospels is not central even though the heavy title, Mother of God, has been applied to her without of course implying that she is the source of God. The film, like the magisterium of the Roman Catholic Church has done, endeavors to “evolve the myth” by adding to Mary’s story even though the additions are not meant to be taken as seriously as, for example, the Catholic doctrine that Mary is assumed bodily into heaven. The movie comes closest to the magisterium in suggesting that Mary’s birth is miraculous; the magisterium holds that Mary is born without sin, and that Jesus inherited this because of the Incarnation (i.e. God, rather than Joseph, impregnates Mary). Suffice it to say that the perception of myth as static is the exception rather than rule; it is natural for the human mind to work with myths such that they can evolve rather than take them as given in a final form or extent. This is not to say that we should focus on the faith narratives as if they were ends in themselves and thus unalterable; rather, as the film demonstrates, religious transcendence is of greater value.

I contend that the film does a bad job of adding events to Mary’s life—filling in gaps, as it were—but the film does a good job of evolving her spirituality, or spiritual strength, and an even better job at intimating the nature of religious or spiritual transcendence. The failure, I suspect, have more to do with wanting to titillate audiences with fight scenes and even special effects, such as when Mary and Joseph ride a horse through a wall of fire to escape a fight scene. As there is no hint if a miracle, the entire scene adds nothing theologically and thus it can be easily tossed. Similarly, killing off Mary’s father in yet another fight scene adds nothing theologically and can thus be written off as another appeasement to keep movie-goers entertained by action and drama. Mary’s years spent growing up in the Temple scrubbing floors and presumably being educated are more useful, however, because her stint there cements Mary’s association with religion, which in turn helps support her as a major, though not the central, character in the Gospels. In this way, the film can be considered to serve as a foundation, or basement, for the Gospel narratives, which of course focus on Jesus, the Christ-Messiah.

The principal ways in which the film evolves the story by providing background to the Gospels are subtle and few. The first does not even involve any lines. Mary’s spiritual strength can be seen literally in how she maintains eye-contact when she comes face to face with Herod. He is the one who looks away; she does not. The implication stated by one of Herod’s guards is that Mary has “special powers,” and is thus a threat. The assumption is antiquated in the modern world; we would say Mary has fortitude. More than once in the film, she does not cave into the demon who is trying to tempt her. Her spiritual—not just ethical!—strength is evinced in her standing up to evil entities, human and otherwise. This hints at Jesus’s line to Pontius Pilote, “You would have no power over me if it were not given to you from above.” Mary has that same faith, so there is a spiritual connection between mother and son. Considering all the antagonists facing Mary in the film, her faith that her role in the saga by which love will conquer the world by means of her son will succeed is truly amazing.

That faith is explicitly thought by Mary as the last line in the film. “But in the end, love will save the world.” Love will prevail. That may sound strange to people living in 2024, given the horrendous and large-scale aggression that were still being unleashed by certain governments, which of course are comprised of human beings with power. Mary’s faith may seem woefully or downright utopian. In the film, Mary believes that her faith that love will save the world has a lot to do with the fact that she chose her son just as God chose Mary to bear Jesus, and she would make the same choice even in that last scene after hearing a prophesy in the Temple from an old man. Holding baby Jesus in his hands, the man tells Mary and Joseph, “This child is destined to cause the fall and rise of many in Israel, and he will be opposed, and the sword will pierce your soul, Mary, so that the thoughts of many hearts will be revealed.” Even in spite of this future, Mary says, in effect, bring it on; the goal is worth it.

Parsing the prophet’s statement can provide us with the theological meat of the film. The haughty will be brought low by Jesus’s preachments and example of self-less, humble love, whereas the presumed lowly yet humble Hebrews of pure hearts will no longer be presumed to be sick or sinful (or both). It is easy to grasp that the sword refers to Mary watching Jesus’s excruciating death on a cross and having to mourn the death of a son; it is more difficult to understand what is meant by the sword that will pierce Mary’s soul being necessary “so that the thoughts of many hearts will be revealed.” Christians watching the film may expect something like, “so that many will be saved.” Revealing the thoughts of many people whose thoughts were presumably hidden is a curious expression. Is the revealing of the thoughts of many part of, or necessary for, love to save the world? At its conclusion, the film raises an interesting puzzle that, in pertaining to the future, presumably has to do with the content of the Gospel narratives, including Jesus’s preachments and life. In the Gospels, does he or his actions facilitate the revealing of the thoughts of people? What thoughts, and of whom?

It is perhaps in the nature of religious truth that it is not in a film’s action scenes, but like the breeze that passed by Ezekiel on the mountain—a breeze that eludes the grasp of our finite fingers. Distinctly religious transcendence is not exhausted within the limits of human cognition, perception, or sensibility (emotion), so wrote Pseudo-Dionysius in the sixth century. The film is perhaps most of value in affording us an experiential glimpse of such transcendence as we try innately to figure out the prophesy.