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The thread count plugging this TV movie is becoming almost BoD-like. (Cui bono, I wonder?) Indeed, there is a hardly a subforum that doesn't have one or two. I'm almost yearning for another couple of Michelle-Obama-is-a-cross-dresser threads, complete with YouTube links, to wash the taste of the inappropriate Trad applause out of my mouth.

While I do not disagree with the tenor of BTNYC's assessment—how could I? I offered a similar assessment on an earlier thread—I fear his last paragraph is overly optimistic in its tentatively proposed explanation of why self-identified Trads treats these crumbs as if they were croissants flown in fresh from an upscale Parisian boulangerie. That is, I think that a distaste for the NO has little or nothing to do with it. Rather, I have seen time and again that for a certain sort of Trad, the glimpse of a tonsured head or a delicately tatted dalmatic receding into the distance, especially when accompanied by the barely audible background chanting (recorded decades ago probably) of matins or nones or one of the other hours, has an appeal that frequently overrides all the critical faculties, an appeal that is uncomfortably akin to what in more conventional movie-audience environments is prompted by naughty footage of a yummy twenty-something starlet frolicking in the buff with a guy or another girl.

Put otherwise, inattentive Trads are swooning over the sizzle and barely noticing the steak. As I wrote on the earlier thread, the book that forms the basis of this manipulative program is a minor masterpiece of a sort, but neither the book nor the movie is proper fare for youngsters, who assimilate these misleading subliminal bits even more thoroughly and rapidly than their insufficiently critical elders.

The person who wrote the book was struggling with his own faith.

Brian Moore had given up any such struggle 25 years earlier. He had hardened his heart against the Faith, whatever "socially Catholic" aspects remained. To claim otherwise is to substitute imagination for evidence, VCR. However, as the version of Catholics you have also imagined exists nowhere in the world outside you, this is saddening but hardly surprising.

What's more, even were what you claim true (I reemphasize that it isn't), it would be of no account. The book he wrote and the TV movie others made from it must be evaluated on the basis of what one finds therein. And what is that? Nothing more nor less than a summons to cast off the remnants of a superstition that has outlived its usefulness, no matter how sentimentally appealing it might remain.

What you are saying is the movie was made to mock the Church?  Now I understand what you are saying.  We shouldn't compromise the faith.

However the tale is intended, what I like about the movie is the frank portrayal of the abbot (if that is his title), who has lost the faith but continues to run the monastery as its "superintendent." It shows in dramatic form how cynical many of the leaders must be, and how they'll employ a false concept of obedience to level any resistance.

I had the same impression of the movie.  

I thought it was well-made, largely because of the typically Irish actors.  They were playing the part of someone that wasn't unlike who they really are.  If you want an Irish character, get an Irish actor, because it's not easy to pretend that you're Irish when you're NOT, and do so convincingly.  

There are numerous very brief moments when various actors do things and say things that only an Irishman would do, and it is very entertaining to watch that.  They show the spark of their inextinguishable cultural faith in very subtle and simple movements and expressive words in context.  A most telling moment is when the monk in the rowboat pulls up to the stone steps with Sheen standing there, and the monk can't believe that Sheen is a priest because of his clothing, which appeared to be like a motorcycle rider's outfit, with leather jacket and boots on.  The boatman looked around and then refused Sheen to board, even SWINGING A STICK at him, perhaps a Shillelagh!  Those 5 or 10 seconds are simply genius, and most hilarious.  They are excellent entertainment and well worth replaying several times.  They get funnier every time you replay them.  Later on in the movie, when Sheen arrives at the monastery in a helicopter, our understanding of the Irish expectation for how a priest should look is enlarged by one monk in the room with the abbot, who can't believe Sheen is a priest, either, merely based on the appearance of his clothing.

There are instances all throughout the film, such as when the monk brings Irish soda bread up to Sheen, who then not so subtly proceeds to NOT "enjoy" it.  Another moment is when Sheen is moved through the refectory by the abbot, forbidding his monks from speaking to him.   Then there was the fishing scene at the water, and the words of the expert fisherman -- remember the Apostles were fishermen.  The symmetry is palpable.  The visitor is from Rome, and he is no expert fisherman, but he has to go to this "John the Baptist" niche in the water's edge rocks to be shown a real fisherman.  Between the loaves of soda bread and the fishes of the cove, we can recall the miracle of the loaves and fishes in the Gospel.  These things are all over the movie.

"However the tale in intended," the frank portrayal of each character, most prominently the abbot, is most edifying, really.  

When I first saw the movie, I had never heard of "Rock Mass" in Ireland, and I had never heard of "Mass Rocks" as being places that physically exist there.  Therefore, the opening scene of a priest saying Mass on rocky cliffs overlooking the ocean was surreal to me, rather bizarre, actually, and appeared to be contrived.  The thought crossed my mind that maybe this is something that may have actually happened somewhere in Ireland, but it also appeared to be some kind of "Woodstock" scene, with people in the open air gathering for an event.  I couldn't make heads or tails of the cultural significance because I had not known of Irish "Rock Masses."  

There is another thread here on CI that explores this theme in some detail.

All I had been able to understand is that those people were gathering on the mainland in a remote place for Mass, and that the priest who was the celebrant had come over from an island nearby, during the time when local parishes had abandoned the TLM in favor of the NovusOrdo liturgy, in 1970 or '71.  

The people came carrying signs protesting the changes in the Mass.  But who were the signs for?  Who was there to read the signs other than more people with the same ideas in mind?  The only person was the character played by Martin Sheen, who was effectively depicted as an OUTSIDER, one whose part later in the movie made it clear that he was no friend of Tradition, and had been sent from Rome to deal with a "problem of Resistance," one which CathInfo is really all about.  So it's very good advice for all members of CathInfo to watch the movie, and I recommend watching it more than once.


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