Tag: nuns

Fisher Family Mandatory Lent Film Party limps on!

The Fisher Family Mandatory Lent Film Party! It’s our annual Lenten tradition, except sometimes we don’t do it. This year, we’re sort of doing it. The idea is that we have screen-free evenings in Lent, but on Fridays, we cordially insist the kids join us in watching a movie that has spiritual or moral themes, and which we expect to be worth watching for one reason or another — and which we probably wouldn’t get around to watching otherwise. You can find I think a few dozen previous reviews at the Lent Film Party tag. 

So far this year, we have watched two very different movies: Heaven Knows, Mr. Allison and A Man For All Seasons. We paid $3.99 each to rent these on Amazon Prime, but they’re both available on other platforms as well right now.

Here are some quickie reviews!

Heaven Knows, Mr. Allison (1957) 
where to watch

I had no idea what to expect from this movie, but since it has Deborah Kerr as a young Irish nun and Robert Mitchum as a hard-bitten marine, and they’re both stranded on the same South Pacific island, I kind of assumed smoochiness would ensue. I will spoil it for you: They do not end up together. 

It’s a John Huston movie, but it’s no African Queen or Treasure of the Sierra Madre. There’s nothing wrong with it; it’s just not that deep. The story moves along fine, there is a decent amount of suspense, and you do wonder what will happen to the characters. It’s very nice to see the faith, and holy orders, being explained simply but clearly by an intelligent, admirable woman. And Robert Mitchum is always fun to watch. 

And that’s it! It’s a reasonably entertaining movie that more or less held our interest. It’s hard to imagine anyone making this movie today without cramming in a romantic entanglement (although Wake Up Dead Man managed, come to think of it. I HIGHLY RECOMMEND WAKE UP DEAD MAN, BY THE WAY.) There was not much to talk about after Heaven Knows, Mr. Allison, but most of us liked it well enough. Here’s the trailer, which is a little goofy, but gives the general idea. 

 

Suitable for all but very sensitive viewers. It has a little violence, nothing gory, and lots of shooting and bombs falling, and Mr. Allison gets drunk at one point. I feel like it shows a Japanese soldier’s butt cheek at one point. 

***

A Man For All Seasons (1966)
where to watch

This movie deserves all the hype.

First, the casting is impeccable, and the acting is thoroughly persuasive. Robert Shaw (whom my kids know as Quint from Jaws) is tremendous as Henry VIII. You feel like you’ve definitely met this guy, and this is exactly how he would act if he were the king (bad); and Damien says that, as far as he can tell, the portrayal is pretty historically accurate. But also the wife, the daughter, the son-in-law, the friend, the traitor, and of course the exceedingly unhealthy cardinal (Orson Welles) are all fully formed characters who deliver subtle, compelling performances.

So too, most of all, does Paul Scofield as Thomas More, who comes across as kind of a pain in the ass who is aware he is annoying people, but truly can’t help being who he is, and putting who he is thoroughly in God’s service. (This is a message that was kind of good for me to hear right now, for reasons.) But the acting is good enough that you can really see his distress toward the end, as he struggles to convey his motivation to his family, even as he sees them suffering because of it. Lots of under-the-surface emotions portrayed in several characters. 

I also appreciated seeing a saint who is heroically holy without being scrupulous or self-immolating. He doesn’t want to die! He wants to live, and keeps looking for ways to stay alive in ways that won’t violate his conscience. Sort of reminds me of Gianna Molla. So many people believe she found out she had cancer and immediately embraced or even pursued death as a sacrifice for her baby. In fact, she hoped all along that they would both survive. An often-misunderstood point about sainthood.  I also like how he makes room for other people’s weaknesses. He sees through his son-in-law, but allows his daughter to marry him anyway. He recognizes that the law only requires him to pay a certain fare, but when the boatman tells him it’s harder to row upstream, he pays him more than he’s required to. He has such high standards for himself, and so much compassion for everyone else. 

The dialogue requires you to listen attentively. They speak quickly and they say a LOT (it was originally a play). This is the part the kids struggled with the most. There’s a lot of talking, but the dialogue is all carefully crafted and illuminating, well worth paying attention to, and sometimes pretty funny.

The pacing works perfectly, but you have to allow it to not be an action movie. I thought it was important that they show people in great haste and agitation — but still having to row laboriously up and down the Thames, sometimes throughout the night, to deliver urgent messages. That illustrates one of the themes of the movie, which is having to work within the framework (or season?) you are given. That’s what Thomas More does: He is who he is, and that’s what he has to work with. The world is as it is, and you have to understand it thoroughly in order to discern how to behave morally. I need to develop this thought more — something about the tension between what changes and what is unchangeable —  but I’d need to see the movie again. 

Anyway, the settings and most of all the costumes were so fabulous, I almost passed out. I would absolutely watch this movie again with no sound, just to stare at the various fabrics. I also admired how comfortable the characters seemed in the period clothing. They wore them like clothing, not costumes. Same for the setting. They seemed really at home in the 16th century, and not just moving around in a museum. 

All that said, most of my teenagers and young adults didn’t think much of it. They didn’t like the characters, they got frustrated at all the talking, and they wanted more exciting things to happen. This is more or less how I felt about the movie when I was a teenager. My 15-year-old daughter, however, was spellbound, and didn’t take her eyes of the screen the whole time. She found the drama moving and compelling. So, I guess it depends on the kid! 

It’s suitable for all ages, although my youngest (age 11) fell asleep halfway through. It might possibly be upsetting for sensitive viewers toward the end, when Thomas More is in a dungeon and has an emotional final visit with his family. And of course it is a martyrdom story, and it does have that scene. You don’t see the death, but you hear it. 

This is a pretty thin review of a great movie, but so much in-depth commentary has been written about it, I’ll just urge you to watch or re-watch it. It was much more entertaining than I remembered, and gave me a lot to think about, even though I’m already very familiar with the story. Some of it felt extremely relevant to 2026 — this scene in particular (starting about 1:51)

“Where would you hide, Robert, the laws all being flat? This country is planted thick with laws, coast to coast. Man’s laws, not God’s; and if you cut them down …  do you really think you could stand upright in the winds that would blow then?”

Yeah, go watch it! So good. 

Not sure what we’ll watch next. I would like to finally watch Of Gods and Men, which I haven’t seen, and I would like the kids to finally see The Passion of the Christ, which they’ve been resisting, but out of sheer honesty, if they can sit through Nosferatu and other gross stuff, they can watch this one. Out of sheer honesty. 

 

 

Discerning out: What happens when a Catholic leaves seminary or religious life?

Joe Heschmeyer was once so sure of his vocation to the priesthood that he forgot he was supposed to be discerning it.

Everyone around him thought he should be a priest. His mother, he discovered later, had offered him to the Lord as an infant the way Hannah did in the Old Testament. Mr. Heschmeyer wrote about his vocation frequently on his blog Shameless Popery, speaking of his ordination as if it were inevitable. Things were going so well, he lost track of the idea that he was in seminary to test and explore his vocation.

“Pretty soon after I entered [in 2011], I stopped asking God if this was what he wanted. I felt like the question had already been answered. My grades were good; I was well esteemed; everything internal to the seminary felt successful. That felt like enough validation. I forgot to ask, ‘Are we still on the same page?’” Mr. Heschmeyer said.

It was not until friends and family had already bought airplane tickets and reserved hotel rooms for his ordination to the diaconate that he began to feel some doubt. He tried to assign his misgivings to “last-minute jitters,” but a black cloud of unease hung over his head.

He described riding on a bus on the way back from a retreat.

“The archbishop has an open seat next to him. A sort of rotating spot, where you can share whatever’s on your heart. It’s usually pretty short, out of respect—a 10-minute thing. I was there for half an hour, pouring out all these difficulties,” he said. The archbishop immediately reassured him that if he had any doubts, he should take more time before making a final commitment.

“It was a tremendous load that had been lifted off my shoulders. It was an illuminating and painful experience. I realized I was happy I wasn’t getting ordained. It wasn’t what I wanted to feel, or expected to feel,” Mr. Heschmeyer said.

He decided to take time off and then consider rejoining—a plan which, according to the Rev. Matt Mason, the vocations director for the diocese of Manchester, N.H., is not uncommon. But nine days into a 10-day retreat, Heschmeyer knew for sure he was not meant to be a priest after all.

Leaving the seminary or religious life can feel like freedom followed by disorientation, or like rejection followed by clarity. For many, the experience eventually bears fruits of self-knowledge and a more profound relationship with God. But first comes suffering.

Read the rest of my latest for America Magazine. This article is also in the July print edition. 

Lent Movie Review Vol. 3: THE TROUBLE WITH ANGELS

See previous installations of our Friday Night Lent Film Party series: I CONFESS and THE ROBE. 

Everyone disliked The Robe pretty thoroughly and we wanted something very different, so we went with The Trouble With Angels (1966). No one in our family had seen this one before. We streamed it through Amazon for $3.99. Warning, this post will contain a spoiler.

 

The plot: Mary, a born leader and troublemaker (Hayley Mills), and Rachel, a willing follower (June Harding), are high school girls deposited at St. Francis Academy for Girls, where they immediately begin to hatch “scathingly brilliant ideas” for how to subvert the peace and stability of the school. The imperturbable Mother Superior (Rosalind Russell) is their particular nemesis whose patience is put to the test more and more.

The story is an episodic series of pranks and escapades, but it is gradually revealed that the various teaching nuns aren’t just all quirky in their own ways, but many of them have poignant, sometimes tragic pasts that led them to the convent. This is not lost on Mary, even as she continues to torment them and flout their rules. Eventually, Mary and Rachel’s mischief goes too far; but when their guardians are called in for an expulsion interview, Mother Superior discovers that Mary, too, has her reasons for being the way she is, and she has mercy on her (and sees promise in her). At the end, when the girls are graduating, Mother Superior announces that two girls will be joining the convent as novices, and one of them is Mary. Rachel is furious and feels betrayed, but Mary is at peace with her decision, and it’s clear that she can be who she is but may still have a true vocation. 

So, this is a very 1966 movie. It’s very mannered, and some stretches are tedious, and the some of the sight gags are painfully dated. There are some uncomfortable moments where the camera lingers on young girls’ thighs and bottoms for laughs. The accents are a mess, and it’s unclear exactly where the school is. There’s not a scrap of subtlety in sight.

At the same time, the movie doesn’t steal any bases. All the elements are there for the story of Mary’s gradual maturation, and Mother Superior’s growing affection, to make sense and feel real (and it is, in fact, based on a memoir, Life with Mother Superior by Jane Trahey). Haley Mills is a much better actor than I realized, and there were a few truly moving moments, as well as several funny ones. I liked that it showed true friendship between the nuns, as well. I would have liked it better if they cut about twenty minutes out, but I did like it.

Overall, recommended. The animated opening and closing credits are a lot of fun, too.

Next up: I don’t know! I’ll probably push for Babette’s Feast.  The kids somehow manage to read subtitles when they’re watching their Dragonballs, so they can’t beg off on those grounds.

Some of us also re-watched Hail, Caesar, which I appreciated even more after having seen The Robe. I love Hail Caesar so much. The Cohen brothers are upfront about not knowing what to do about God (“Divine presence to be shot,” it says on the screen of the religious epic they’re filming, to mark the place where they’ll add in God later), but it’s less nihilistic and less yearning, overall, and very sweet and very funny. Everyone is just doing their best, according to their very varied abilities. Recommended all to pieces, probably for ages 10 and up.