Why the Salvation Army/Amish/Mormon Pioneer sun bonnets?
Posted on 01/02/2009 9:47:21 AM PST by NYer
As others have noted, the Catholic-school movie Doubt (like the play) is kind of a Rorschach test that leaves audiences forming conclusions based on their preconceptions. The film, set in 1964, pits a disciplinarian nun (Meryl Streep) against a “the-Church-needs-to-change” priest (Phillip Seymour Hoffman) over his abuse of a child.
But having seen it, I think the movie version is open to several interpretations:
1. It might be a “Gay message movie.” (Spoiler alert!) We meet a boy who is misunderstood and abused because of his homosexuality (“God made him that way,” explains his mother. “We’re talking about actions, not inclinations,” answers the nun, sensibly), and the priest character in the film, who is hinted to be homosexual, and abusive to boot, is treated sympathetically. All of this hyper-awareness of homosexuality strikes me as anachronistic in a movie set in 1964, but I wasn’t around then so who am I to say?
2. It might be an “anti-organized religion” movie. The film is sympathetic to benign Christian concepts but every character who takes seriously the hierarchical Church gets twisted by it. The priest alternately thwarts and exploits the system. The older nun describes the importance of the “chain of command” from the Pope on down, but goes around it because the men who run it are corrupt. A younger nun is struggling to live in it, but finds she has to truncate her heart in order to do so.
3. It might be a movie justifying perpetual intellectual adolescence. The movie’s thesis statement is delivered in a sermon at the beginning of the movie: “Doubt can be a bond as sustaining as certainty,” and reinforced in the closing scene of the film. The problem: That’s nonsense. Doubt is isolating, not uniting. Compare your local Unitarian church to your local Assemblies of God church and see for yourself. Doubt can be a powerful force for deepening faith when it leads us to discover why we believe what we believe, but to wallow in doubt is to avoid reality — or, likely, to avoid having to break with some sin.
My answer to the Rorschach test: Doubt shows the deep corruption of 1950s and early 1960s Catholicism. Some want to pretend Vatican II is the root of all upheaval in the Church. To make that case, they employ a post-hoc-ergo-propter-hoc argument that points to the numbers of priests and nuns and Mass attendees before the Council and after it.
The numbers do make the Council look suspicious. But the elephant in the room is the state of pre-Vatican II Catholics. If they were so wonderful, why did they respond to a pope and Council’s decrees by walking out en masse?
In fact, externalism — moralism and duty untethered from charity and faith — had already rotted the Church behind the facade. Vatican II didn’t drive people away so much as it ripped off the facade and exposed what was underneath. And, for all the problems in the Council’s implementation, that was what it set out to do.
Too many in the older generations cringe and wince when you mention the school nuns of their childhood. They remember their cruelty, they take what they experienced to be typical of Catholicism, and are glad to be rid of it. Doubt dramatizes that 1950s Catholic experience: A little of its sweetness and power, and a lot of its subtle perversity.
Catholics of my generation grew up in the 1970s and 1980s with a totally different experience of the Church. All that baggage isn’t ours, and frankly, we’re not interested in carrying it around anymore.
Make that parents DIDN’T know what was going on educationally.
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Hollywood has known from the beginning that its biggest competitor for the imagination of its audiences was the Church.
It was hard-core threats of boycott by the Legion of Decency and the like (back when most Christians actually followed their pastors’ council) that got the Hayes Code implemented—which, ironically, launched the Golden Age of Hollywood.
When the Church lost its moral self-confidence in the 1960s, the Hayes Code went by the board, and the Legion of Decency became a punchline of every hipper-than-thou comic.
An amazing story in itself.
>> I don’t know that it would have done much good, but I think parents really realized how bad the religious education was.<<
Nothing would have been done. I can almost guarantee it. We had old Polish Felician Sisters. We couldn’t afford new Religion books for a few years so we still worked out of the Baltimore Catechism. But on the other side of the suburb, the Irish (and wealthier) parish could. We rode the bus together and were basically friends. I remember the books they were using. They were like coloring books! We were so jealous.
One of my friend’s moms tried talking to the nuns there. They had hired a lay teacher for religion. She was told that the woman knew what she was doing. Period.
The Cardinal was a notorious anti-Catholic hatchet job.
Holy hermeneutic of discontinuity! Just a minute. The one, holy, catholic, and apostolic Church is the Body of Christ. It is made up of sinners struggling to be holy. It is led by popes who have a gift of infalliblilty, and who have been remarkably good, bright, holy men for several centuries, at least. Jesus Christ is the head of this Church. The liberals must disparage the Church prior to VII as this is their only hope to overthrow the doctrines handed down from the Apostles.
This is probably the saddest legacy of VCII. Prior to that, Catholic children were rigorously taught the catechism. Those of us who attended Catholic school, also made First Fridays every year. Yes, the nuns were strict but judging from what passes for 'quality' education today, the nuns made sure we could (and still can) spell, have an excellent grasp of grammer and do mental math.
My daughter was fed a diet of catholic pablum at our prior parish. Now, as Director for Religious Education in my parish, I have implemented a program of solid catechesis to ensure a solid faith foundation on which our children can build their lives.
Great post!
I pray God hears your prayer! Not every council is as radical as the previous one. But you are correct, regardless of the change, it takes time to adjust. 50 years later and we are still talking about VCII as though it had been held yesterday. There are certain hierarchs still around who hoped to see VCIII.
A truly astute observation. One of the best summations I have seen on this topic. Kudos!
It’s not just the Catholic church,is it? I think chrisitianity has taken a hit in almost all church denominations. We’ve become weak when we needed to become warriors.
That was a wonderful movie.
Why the Salvation Army/Amish/Mormon Pioneer sun bonnets?
“Doubt is isolating, not uniting.”
The journey of faith begins with doubt. Such doubt is not disbelief.
It is occurring hand-in-hand with the creeping-in of Leftism into the pulpit (charity=socialism and all that).
Because they represent two sisters of The Sisters of Charity of St. Vincent dePaul of New York and Emmitsburg Maryland. They were my nuns at Epiphany School in Manhattan and I was a blessed having them in my formative education as i was having the Jesuits in HS an college.
I found Doubt a wonderful film experience. Extremeley well acted and written Streep was not recognizable in the film. She was Sister Cecile or Sister Seton, two nuns out of my past. Unlike the author of the articvle in discussion I know what this film does. It tells the story of caring, intelligent women, dedicated to a certain way of life and Faith. It tells of their having to be subservient to men, many of whom they knew, were not as intelligent or as dedicated to their Faith as the sisters. Many will have questions about the motives of Sister Aloyisius, but from experience I can tell you that every nun I ever had was concerned for her boys. That is Sister Aloyisius' motive as well.
Different orders of nuns had different styles of headdress. They varied quite a bit, and it's not unlikely that ones like this were used in an order or two.
Yeah, but Seton lived 150 years earlier.
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