CrossCurrents A Catholic Reflects on Faith in Our Times

# 164 Bernard F. Swain, Ph.D. www.CrossCurrents.us

Oscar’s Coming to Church?

The Oscar nominations this year include no Passion of the Christ, but we’d be wrong to think there are no new movies of interest to people of faith.

In fact, Church people often assume (wrongly, I believe) that movies and faith operate in separate realms, and generally have nothing to do with one another. It’s true, of course, that the motion picture industry is driven by money. But it’s also true that many moviemakers (not just Mel Gibson) approach their work as art—and no art in human history has avoided the great mysteries of faith. Movies, like all art, can help us ponder the great questions which human life poses and which all faiths address.

I’m not just talking about the so-called “religious” movies—Biblical epics, lives of saints, and sentimental pious movies like Going My Way. In fact, such movies are relatively rare and moreover they are rarely the best movies. It’s much more likely that important themes of faith and morals will show up in movies about average people living average lives—or even in stories of people facing extreme challenges far from the nearest church.

This year’s Oscars are further evidence.

Longtime CrossCurrents readers know that for years I have championed the work of Martin Scorsese as one of America’s greatest living Catholic artists. For more than 30 years his movies have consistently portrayed the struggle to do good—even to be good—in a world plagued by violence and corruption, deception and disappointment.

His latest, The Departed, shows the warring consciences of two mirror-image informants in the battle between Boston’s organized crime-lords and the forces of law and order. The moral tension is obvious to all, even if many moviegoers miss just how Catholic the sense of guilt and redemption is.

Perhaps few viewers, for example, have noticed Scorsese’s nod to Irish-American Catholic art in the scene where one villain is shot while watching TV. The movie on his screen just happens to be John Ford’s famous The Informer (1935 Oscar for Best Director), specifically the final scene where that film’s dying informant (Victor McLaglen, 1935 Oscar for Best Actor) rushes into the local church and throws himself on his knees before the mother of his victim, Frankie McPhillips. He confesses to Mother McPhillips, and after she forgives him he turns to the crucifix and shouts “Frankie, Frankie, your mother forgives me!” with his dying breath as the movie ends.

Ford’s Catholicism was more sentimental than Scorsese’s, but no American filmmaker since Ford (the greatest American Catholic director of cinema’s first century) has probed deeper than Scorsese into the Catholic core of modern drama. Ford made lots of Westerns, while Scorsese makes gang movies, but Catholicism is their common bond—and Scorsese knows it. And since Scorsese has never won a best director Oscar (despite five previous nominations) it would be gratifying to see him rewarded this year.

What is less gratifying is the failure of US Church leaders to exploit film’s potential for faith formation. How many dioceses sponsor film programs? How many parishes run film series? How many preachers refer to current movies? How many Catholics are trained to see their faith reflected in motion pictures? Given the long tradition of Catholic support for art over the centuries (from mosaics to chant to architecture to stained-glass and sculpture), this indifference to our age’s major art-form represents a significant failure.

By contrast I was so impressed, during my November visit to France, by the attitude of the French hierarchy. I was lucky to attend “Christian Week of Cinema” sponsored by the Notre Dame Foundation and the Diocese of Paris. The festival’s aim is to develop “a more lucid and open sense of the world around us through film.” Twenty films in 7 days developed the 2006 theme, “Him and Her,” which was designed to “decipher the images of the couple that film gives us, sometimes sad or happy, cruel or hopeful.”

These were not “religious” films at all, but mainstream movies including Hollywood classics like Adam’s Rib, North by Northwest, and The Shop Around the Corner as well as newer efforts like John Casssavetes’ Minnie and Moscovitz and Woody Allen’s Hollywood Ending.

The Archbishop of Paris, Msgr. Andre Vingt-Trois, attended the festival, and even wrote the introduction for the festival program. That introduction strikes me as a remarkably perceptive commentary on faith and art:

The cinema is a powerful way to observe the human condition. In an hour or two, thanks to the performances of the actors, the aptness of production, and the creativity of direction, a story is presented which reflects the dramatic character of all human life.

But it’s not merely a reflection, for in the faces and bodies of the actors, there in flesh and blood, something expresses itself without thinking, happens without wishing, something at once desired and yet accomplished beyond of all desire, something which brings us in intimate touch with our own heart and our own flesh.

“Her and Him”—the relation of man to woman of woman to man—is there any other theme that cinema has explored better? Given the great questioning of our age on marriage, on parenthood, on sexuality, we can only thank the Christian Week of Cinema for giving for us entree to the original wonder: “This at last: bone from my bones, and flesh from my flesh! She is to be called woman.” (Genesis 2:23)

I could not help but wonder why US bishops show less appreciation for Hollywood’s spiritual potential than a European bishop, but then I remembered the obvious: US Catholicism has always seen movies as the devil’s handiwork, and has pitched battle against them for generations. How could I have forgotten those stolen moments at the back of my parish church to survey the racy titles of all the movies “Condemned” by the Legion of Decency?

For Catholics who like the idea of forming their faith at the movies, my latest recommendation is Children of Men (nominated for 3 Oscars: Cinematography, Screenplay, and Editing). What appears at first glance a Blade Runner-style science fiction thriller is actually a parable in the full Biblical sense where faith is pitted against destiny to answer the question “What might the Second Coming look like?”

The film is dark, violent, and depressing as the drama unfolds, but the filmmaking is masterful and the message full of hope for a human race which looks for all the world like it needs to be saved all over again—and is.

The climax scene (a single shot lasting five ferocious minutes) left me breathless and teary-eyed. As I said to my wife the next night, sitting in a restaurant booth behind parents of a crying new-born, “I’ll never hear a crying baby the same way again.”

That’s the power of film—to remake our sense of the world. And, in the best of films, to renew our faith in the process.

© Bernard F. Swain PhD 2006

Send Your Comments and Questions to bfswain@juno.com

Dr. Swain’s opinions do not represent the views of this parish or any other official body.

Bernie Swain has devoted more than 30 years to adult spiritual formation in dioceses in the US, Canada, and France. Since 1991 he has maintained a private practice as trainer, teacher, and consultant to leaders in parishes and other religious organizations. He holds degrees in theology and political science from Holy Cross, Harvard, The University of Paris, and The University of Chicago.

His writings include Liberating Leadership (Harper & Row, 1986) and more than 200 articles in periodicals such as The National Catholic Reporter, Commonweal, The Miami Herald, The Catholic Free Press, The Pilot, Harvard Theological Review, and Liturgy.

A lifelong layperson, he lives in Boston with his wife and three children. Visit his website at:

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