In the opening, Father General waxes nostalgic about the old mass, even as he deputizes Kinsella with orders to go get rid of it. He doesn’t show a personal dislike for it, but the pope has spoken, so for the sake of his career and influence he needs to get them in line, even if that means crushing their faith, their sense of purpose, and their attachment to something he himself remembers with fondness.

His problem is that they are “fanatics”–the old mass is not itself the issue. I take that to mean that they believe too much as it were. And the problem with believing too much is that it is divisive: Recall how he asks Fr. Kinsella if the monks would see it that way (that is, would see themselves as having a lot in common with Fr. Kinsella, belonging to the same order, seeking to do God’s will, and so on)? Recall too that the immediate problem with these monks was that they would stand in the way of the impending Buddhist-Catholic ecumenical rapprochement? Fr. Kinsella himself expresses to the Abbot the importance of adopting the new mass as a means to unity: “We are merely trying to create a uniform posture within the Church. If everyone were to worship in his own way, obviously that would create disunity.”

The monks, though, have their own sense of Catholic unity. The older priest, early in the visitation, emphasizes to Fr. Kinsella, “And it was always in Latin. Because Latin was the language of the Church, and the Church is universal. I mean if a fellow could drop into a Church anywhere in the world and hear the very selfsame mass, the Latin mass, the only mass there ever was . . .” And Fr. Abbot points out that before the new Mass, “Everybody went to Church” but after the new Mass, the men and the boys stood outside smoking. And of course, their Latin mass attracts, as we are repeatedly reminded, pilgrims from every corner of the globe.

So whose version unity is right?
In this context we get the recurrent struggle between individual conscience and belief on the one hand and obedience to lawful authority on the other. Which gives the Church its unity? And what do you do when your conscience binds you to follow an order you believe is wrong? And what if you are ordered to believe what you sincerely believe is wrong? We see the struggle of the brothers between doing and fighting for what they sincerely believe is right and being obedient throughout, though these struggles come to a head near the end.

This is certainly central to Fr. Abbot’s thinking: “remember Martin Luther? Insubordination is the beginning of the breakdown of the Church. And I have been insubordinate. . . . It’s easy to lecture others. In my own case, I have gone against the orders of my superiors.”

Near the very end, Fr, Abbot poignantly quips to the monks, “No one can command belief, it is a gift of God.” That line seems to me to sum up a critical tension of the movie. The piece is not at all pedantic (you can see this in the way ** you do not have permission to see this link **), but if there is a thesis, I’d hazard it could be that one can’t build a universal Church on a uniformity of sincere belief. But at the same time, a unity enforced by brute authority, without regard to people’s faith and conscience, is hardly shown in a favorable light. Who can’t be moved by the suffering the monk’s endure?

I think the author is also toying with the concept of revolution (Fr. General says the monks don’t belong in the modern Church, which he says is “revolutionary” like the early Church. Fr. Kinsella’s Liberation theology is literally revolutionary. The monks are saying mass at a place that was “associated with rebellion.” So who are the real revolutionaries? Those overthrowing the old ways and beliefs, or those maintaining those beliefs against the orders of their superiors?

Finally, I’m not sure what to do with Fr. Abbots attitude to other people’s faith. First, he defends his reverting to the old Mass by saying his job as priest was not to tamper with people’s faith (the implication being that people had lost their faith when the new mass came in, and he was preserving it by giving them the old rite). At the end, he cryptically says he was wrong to say the old mass, because it isn’t his place to tamper with other people’s faith. But he doesn’t explain why he now views giving them the old mass as tampering with their faith.

Another random thought: I was caught, the second watching, by Fr. Abbot’s reason for disbelief: He saw all sorts of pathetic maimed people who had spent their life savings to go to Lourdes to pray for a miracle that evidently didn’t come. It is a poignant image.

I’m also still working through Fr. Abbot’s closing comment that prayer is the only miracle. I’m not sure if it is profound or just a trite way to end the piece.

Fr. Abbot’s attitude towards faith is interesting. On the one hand his attitude towards Lourdes makes it seem that faith is, for him, pitiable and pathetic. Those who come to Lourdes looking for miracles are saps. At the same time, faith gives purpose; his own lack of faith is acutely painful to him. The miracle is, for him, belief itself. Faith really is a gift; a gift he doesn’t want to tamper with–though it seems that no matter what he does it could be taken as tampering with faith. This is illustrated in the monks. Their belief gives them purpose: they really think they are doing God’s work. But it also causes them profound suffering. It is only because they believe so totally, that following their superior’s orders brings grown men to tears. So is belief actually good, giving purpose, or is it a curse that causes disunity and needless suffering?

Going back to his statement that prayer itself is the only miracle, it both resolves the problem and opens a new problem. It solves a problem by denying that there are miracles: There is no transubstantiation, God doesn’t heal you at Lourdes: faith–at least that sort of faith–is empty. But what then is good (sophisticated?) faith a faith in? If there is no God working among us, to whom are we praying and for what are we praying?
Perhaps more later.

I still favor the view that while the Abbot’s faith has been hollowed out he still loves the life of the monk and the value that he sees in faith for his monks and the people. He favors the Latin Mass, for example, because of the effect he sees it has on the people. I think this is the source of his ambiguous actions. In the end, he accepts discipline from his superiors just as he dished it out to impudent Father Matthew (a nice turn from Andrew Keir).

Oh, I agree with all that. I didn’t mean for my interpretation to deny any of that. I just think there is more going on.

I read that review of the movie from the “Traditionalist” site. I’m not reAL dang sure I would want to use this movie in support of traditional praxis however. I’m pretty sure the reviwer doesn’t understand the cost for Abbot.

Well, yes and no. On the one hand, the ending is certainly not of a piece with a traditionalist worldview. Those monks would never have been docilely informedd “the only miracle is prayer.” And the reviewer is aware–at least–that there are some serious problems in the ending–even if he doesn’t understand how deep those problems go. He derides the “Mere Christianity” closing.

But I think–as a former Traditionalist–I can shed some light on why he is enthralled by it. Tradtionalists tend to be angry; not all of course, but it is an inevitable temptation once you start down the path.

They are angry because they feel like their patrimony has been torn away from them. The Catholic mass was largely unchanged for centuries, it fostered hundreds of saints, it was revered by generations on generations of Catholics. Then it was effectively suppressed, practically overnight, by the Church authorities who are supposed to guard the tradition. This suppression took place at various levels, but it was pretty thorough. I remember asking a Dominican about the (old) Dominican Rite, and he got visibly uncomfortable to even be heard getting asked about it where one of his confreres might hear. And that was in the relatively orthodox eastern province. I remember clandestine house masses, where a diocesan priest was paranoid that word might get out even to our own family because saying the old mass would get him in serious trouble with his bishop. I remember the local bishop celebrating mass for a community where the (largely young adult) congregation voluntarily knelt at the communion rail to receive communion (not even the old mass, just kneeling for communion), and the bishop refused–in the middle of mass–to go along with the practice and insisted that it be stopped “for unity” and in accordance with the norms of the national bishop’s conference (Rome, the CDW under Arinze, subsequently overruled him, but by then it was too late and the practice had been crushed). Even using little bits of Latin in the new Mass–like the Angus Dei or the Sanctus–might, depending on the local climate, get a priest’s wrist slapped (even though Latin remained the normative language of the Church and the Latin Rite liturgy).

So as a traditionalist, who loves the old mass, who sees it as part of the Catholic tradition, who sees it as a liturgy that was revered by countless generations and that nurtured innumerable saints, a traditionalist who sees it as beautifully instantiating Catholic dogma (lex orandi, lex credendi), it is hard to understand why Catholic bishops would treat it with such disdain; why they would forbid it, of a sudden, as though it were suddenly harmful. The same bishops who are so often eager to reach out and appease non-Catholics, who always talk about pastoral accommodation, and meeting people where they are, and recognizing the good in other religious faiths, and who are willing to create a rapprochement with the world often by soft-pedaling prior Catholic teaching, won’t allow any pastoral accommodation (unless forced) for the actual Catholics who believe what the Church teaches and have a perfectly natural attachment to their own Catholic patrimony.

So as a trad, the dynamic in the movie is spot on. The modernists don’t really believe anything. They are more interested in being well viewed by the Buddhists than they are in being a spiritual father to the monks and the pilgrims who flock to their old mass. And the monks’ apologia for the old mass is also spot on, top to bottom. This is *the* mass. We’ve been doing it this way for (almost) ever. If you really believe what the Church teaches, how can you find this objectionable? Even if you don’t like it, even if you don’t believe anything yourself, why can’t you at least just leave us alone to continue the way we always have? Why can’t you show the same respect for us you show for the Buddhists? Especially since it is demonstrably feeding people’s spiritual needs and fostering their faith and thus helping to bring them to heaven? Why would you use these jackboot tactics to crush genuine Catholic piety?

I said earlier, that I was surprised at how the movie gets inside Catholic baseball right. And that is why a trad would love it. It shows the dynamic with remarkable accuracy. And as a trad, you will see that as favoring yourself.

Of course, Kwesniewski bemoans the monks’ rolling over rather than holding out. But (and he doesn’t say it because he doesn’t want to give spoilers) I can’t help but think his take-away (not entirely inaccurate) is that they were manipulated into giving up by an Abbot who didn’t believe. The end is tragic for a trad, but they can be comforted in saying they lost through their leader’s perfidity.

I want to emphasize that I was channeling traditionalist Catholics. I wanted to explain the profound frustration and sense of betrayal the trads feel–which was poignantly presented in the film. While I do sympathize with them, my change of beliefs leaves me with no emotional investment.

I am open to the hypothetical possibility that a Vatican IV might express a liberal but genuine faith. But two points:

First, I’ve never (even now) been able to make sense of liberal, Christian faith. The problem may very well be my own lack of imagination.

Second, I don’t think such a liberal faith is developed in the film. What is clear in the film is what the liberals do not believe. This is in stark contrast to the monks who give–in their own ways–pretty compelling defenses of their own convictions.