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Corpus Christi – The Body of Christ

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“Each of us is a priest of Christ. Me, you. Each and every one of you.”

Oscar-nominated Corpus Christi (for Best International Feature Film) explores what it means to be a priest of Christ. But it does so through the story of an imposter who finds a community in need. The story is inspired by actual events. There are various such accounts for the filmmaker to chose from. The story is told with comedy, but also with darkness and pathos. In doing so, the balance creates an environment to consider our own role in serving Christ.

Twenty year old Daniel (Bartosz Bielenia) has had a spiritual awakening while in a juvenile detention center. He serves as an acolyte for the Father Tomasz who holds services. When he is to be paroled, he wishes he could go to seminary, but none will accept him with his criminal record. He goes to a town where he is to report to a sawmill for work. He wanders into the church and meets Eliza (Eliza Rycembel) a young woman whose mother (Aleksandra Konieczna) seems to run the church. Trying to impress Eliza, Daniel claims to be a priest, and has a clergy collar to prove it.

When the local vicar has a spiritual breakdown and must go for treatment, he convinces Daniel (going by the name Father Tomasz) to fill in for a day or two. It is Daniel’s dream come true. But it turns out to be more than just a day or two. Soon Daniel is having to deal with various spiritual issues that the town is struggling with—especially the grief and anger over several people killed in an auto accident.

He soon becomes an important part of the community. He connects with young people (especially Eliza). He uses the kinds of therapy sessions he experienced in juvie to lead the people through their grief. His preaching brings joy and hope. He reaches out to the woman who many blame for the accident. He goes to the sawmill where he was supposed to work to give a blessing. But that also leads to problems when someone recognizes him.

During a Q&A at the screening I saw at AFI Fest, director Jan Komasa noted that the Catholic Church did not want to cooperate with the film because they thought it made it seem like anyone could act like a priest. I sympathize with that sentiment. Most churches have requirements about who can be ordained. Those standards are important. The fact that Daniel was not ordained could well bring into question the validity of the rites he presided over. But it is also true that Daniel was a gifted young man who brought the healing grace of God into a community that sorely needed it. He was, despite being an imposter, truly the priest of Christ for those people.

The title of the film comes from the Feast of Corpus Christi, which is one of the events Daniel presided over. It becomes a key event in the crisis the town is experiencing. That feast focuses on the real presence of Christ in the elements of the Eucharist. The term translates as “Body of Christ”. In this story we see what it means for the church to be the body of Christ—and for Christians to be Christ’s presence in the world.

Even though I understand the Catholic Church’s opposition to this story, I also support the way this film brings forth an important concept, the priesthood of all believers. Even though we may see the ordained ministry as important, we also need to remember that the ministry of God in the world is not limited to the men and women who have had hands laid on them. The words Father Tomasz (the real one) speaks to his juvenile detention center congregation (the quote that opens this review), is a reminder to us all that we are all, each and every one, priests of Christ to those we meet and serve.

Photos courtesy of Aurum Films

1on1 with Jan Komasa (CORPUS CHRISTI)

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I recently had the opportunity to speak by phone with Jan Komasa, director of the Polish film Corpus Christi, which is on the shortlist of films being considered for an Oscar nomination for Best Foreign Feature. The film is the story of a young man (Daniel) who impersonates a priest in a small town parish. The film is due to be released in the U.S. in the spring of 2020.

First off, congratulations on making the Oscar shortlist for Best Foreign Language Feature.

Thank you. Thank you. It came as a huge surprise, out of 90-some films. Yeah, a lot of people were working on this, at least to get it out to the members. Getting through a huge number of films, it’s a huge obstacle without a very big budget, because we don’t have a huge budget for promotion. We’re very happy.

 I see the film’s done well at film festivals. How has it been received in Poland?

So far, so good. About 1.4 million people saw it in cinemas, so the turnout is great. As far as I know the sales agent has sold it to around 40 countries, I believe. So it’s going great, for people with money.

That wasn’t my purpose to be honest, in the first place. I just wanted to make it sincere. To be honest, I’ve made some blockbusters already here in Poland, so I sort of know how it is. I’m not interested in big success. I’m interested in success, but not financial success. All of this, it might be overwhelming, but I don’t feel like I care that much about it.

This is a film that’s based on real event. Could you say a bit about how you heard of the story and made a film about it?

My scriptwriter, Mateusz Pacewicz, he was the one who heard about this. When he was eighteen years old he became obsessed with people pretending to be priests or people of faith in Poland—people of faith as officials of church. As it turned out there are several cases each year of imposters—fake priests. Not a lot people know about it because the Church is not happy with it either—being so easy to manipulate people with just wearing priests’ robes and collar. There’s such respect for priest, for Church, here in Poland, that people don’t ask you for credentials. They don’t check you out. They just believe that you’re not going to fool them or cheat them. Especially in rural areas.

So I didn’t know about it. We’ve heard some crazy stories about imposters every now and then. There was one case in 2011 where a guy was a fake priest for four months [including] May and June, which is during [the feast of] Corpus Christi, and he helped organize Corpus Christi in one of the small villages in rural Poland. That was the basis of Mateusz’s article in the newspaper. First it was a fiction short story, then he wrote it into an article. Thanks to the article he was approached by one of the top producers here in Poland who wanted to acquire rights for the story. And Mateusz decided to write it himself, with the help of the producer.

They found me and sent me the script. I was fascinated by it, but not too much. I sent them my commentary on the film and the process. They fell silent for two or three months.  After three months they sent me the revised version script, and it turned out they implemented ninety percent of my comments. It fit well with the script. I felt very, very lucky and I should appreciate it because while reading it I saw my film, but I also met this amazing guy, Mateusz, who I’ve already made another feature film with, and it’s finished.

What struck me with the film—with the project—at the beginning was, I’m Christian and my biggest fear—I have a huge family. I have three siblings. My parents, and my wife has four siblings. Everyone married. Almost everyone has kids. So when we sit at the table there’s thirty of us. My biggest fear is that—the family was always like a bubble. I felt secure in it. The family is like number one subtheme in my films. I have another project about family. So, I love family sagas like The Godfather. My biggest fear came when—I feel that around 2014-15 a huge national socio-political change came to Poland, not only to Poland, I could feel it going on everywhere, leaning towards ultra-conservatism. There’s been many reasons for it. But what happened with nations, with continents, is there turns out there’s a huge gap between tribes. There are tribes. That was the first thing to notice: there are tribes. The other thing is the gaps between tribes are huge. A gap of that size simply doesn’t allow people to come together and talk freely with each other.

Unfortunately it affected my family as well. The divide was not only cities and countries and streets, but families, and my family was one of them. My biggest fear was that one day it would all blow up, and people who were very close you feel are strangers. When I read the script for Corpus Christi I felt like it totally nails it—this fear of one community, which craves some kind of union, but it just fails. The community is broken, fractured. People know that and feel the hurt, but it’s just too much. It’s just too difficult for them to come together, to get over it.

The idea of a stranger coming to town and trying to do good, spread love, sort of learn the language of conversation using basic Christian values and approach—so Christian that sometimes it might be unheard of, even politically in the official Christian Church—at least in some places in Poland—that it might be revolutionary. Which is something, I think, is very basic today. Like, let’s just talk and come together. We’re not going to kill each other over differences. We’re all one species, so let’s just talk and do something about it. We don’t have to agree about everything. And the idea of having a healer, even when he’s fake, for me at least, was revolutionary and thrilling and refreshing. It just refers to a lot of my fear—and dreams at the same time.

One of the things about Daniel is that he’s broken too. When he comes to this community, he understands brokenness.

That’s right. Actually what’s tricky about this script, it might be very effective when it comes to creating paradox, which I really like in cinema. It’s great food for thought, if it’s written well. And here I think it was by Mateus remarkably well. We have two films in one. One film is about an imposter—a guy who uses his fake identity. I can easily imagine a film only about that. But there’s another film here about fractured community. I can also easily imagine a film about somebody, let’s say a real priest, but young, replacing the old priest at the parish and he comes and discovers there’s a mystery and a challenge, and he heals people. But here the two films are setting side by side together in one project and it gives a huge opportunity to play with paradoxes.

So for example, as you said, you have a broken person, who thanks to his brokenness, he relates to the broken community. We have a fake priest—somebody who cheats and lies. But at the same time he is able to squeeze out the truth from people. We have a patient from a juvenile detention center, and he runs a therapy on people who are not patients, but apparently behave like patients. We have a community which feels rejected by the overall society, and they don’t hesitate to reject other people too. Daniel is a broken character to start with, and he knows the bitter feeling of rejection himself. So when he finds that rejected people reject others, he finds the black sheep in the community, and he feels for her. He knows how it is to be out of the community—to be condemned by all. His mission becomes to get them together. I found it thrilling when I read it, and very rare in a feature film, that so many layers are conversing with perception and soul at the same time.

I saw in an interview that you think of this as a Protestant film. How so?

Protestant meaning probably a cultural thing. Poland is predominantly Catholic. Protestant in the way, at least stereotypically, in the way priests are with their community. In my understanding, there’s a certain wall between the priest and the community. At least here in Poland. The Protestant approach seems closer to people. Not every Protestant approach, obviously, but the barriers between someone who’s a priest, someone who’s a pastor and his community seem less severe, with less restrictions. I’m not saying there’s none because it’s impossible. It’s a function. It’s a social function, a church function. So it always creates some obstacles, obviously. But there’s a feeling that priests are not like regular people.

I was growing up with this, surrounded by this strong Catholicism. During Communism, Poland was very religious, because it was religion, but for fifty years it was religion that kept us going as a nation. Churches were the only places where we could gather freely—at least that’s what we thought. We felt we were independent in church. So a lot of intellectuals, people who are artists, people who today we would say they’re more affiliated with leftists—they found their home in church. That was the only place they could feel free—more free. After fifty years, when freedom was regained the Church sort of shelter wasn’t needed anymore. There’s a lot of people who after thirty years of being free as a country, we feel like the Church detached from the society to a huge extent. I feel the detachment is so great now, and I’m telling you, this as a Catholic, the Church became politically affiliated, especially with the right wing. They let nationalists, with the flag and the hate rhetoric, through its gates.

Suddenly, for people like me it became too hard to find our place in church. Not to say we were super active before, but still we felt—I felt too—that maybe, I don’t know, we became like two different species, tribes, too much. I just couldn’t find a relationship with church—my relationship with church—that significant. So I’m not the only one. But it doesn’t mean I’m not spiritual. I’m talking about me because it’s easier. I’m not generalizing. But I feel like I’m an example of many, many people who feel the same way. I feel like the community is still spiritual, as it was. Nothing changed in that matter. People need to talk about fundamental values and the sense of it all, not only philosophically and intellectually.

Since a lot of us felt we were sort of alone with this, but we don’t find any partner in Church anymore—the Catholic Church—we started to look for alternatives. That was probably Protestant church, which is not significant in Poland, became an option for a lot of people. A lot of now talk about Protestant church before talking about leaving church at all. I think that probably why Protestant church feels like the approach people are missing.

But that’s probably why this film, at least in Poland, was called a Protestant approach film. Like what is a guy who just wants to be closer with people without building too many walls around him because of the office he wields, just breaks barriers and wants to be very direct with people and more down to earth, almost like a pastor. Of course, it’s another generalization. To be honest, as I’ve said, we’re predominantly Catholic, so not much Protestant church in Poland, compared with knowledge as American about Protestant church. It’s complicated. I’m not an expert, but I feel like the Protestant approach is a bit more direct.

One of the lines that I find important in the film, and for me the theme of the film, is when Father Tomasz tells Daniel, “Each of us is a priest of Christ”. I thing that is often times seen as a very Protestant concept. We are all priests, not just the one who is designated as priest.

Okay. I think you’re right. I think that’s the theme. We don’t have to be designated to share Christ’s word, right?

By the Grace of God – The Sin of Silence

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“Deep down I knew. We all knew. We did nothing.”

Although it is not limited to the Catholic Church, sexual molestation of minors by clergy is an issue that continues to burden the church. In France, a notable example centered on a priest, Bernard Preynat, and the Archbishop of Lyon, Cardinal Barbarin, who oversaw the coverup. François Ozon’s film By the Grace of God, is a fictionalized version of this affair of how a group of survivors challenged the church and its silence. The film won the Silver Bear at the Berlin Film Festival.

The film is not so much about the sexual assaults as it is about the way the institutions of the church failed to act to stop them. The first victim we meet is Alexandre (Melvil Poupaud), an ardent Catholic, who discovers that the priest who molested him as a child is still working and has access to children. He writes to Cardinal Barbarin (François Marthouret) to raise his concerns, sure that the Cardinal, who has spoken out against pedophilia, will respond. Alexandre is invited to tell his story to Régine Maire (Martine Erhel), the diocese’s psychologist who dealt with victims. He also asks to meet with the Cardinal, and they begin a correspondence about the process. Alexandre writes to the police who open an investigation, but because the statute of limitations has expired, there is nothing that the police can do with Preynat—unless they find more recent cases.

Such a case is Emmanuel (Swann Arlaud), who has written on the website. He is convinced to go to the police and press charges. Now the archdiocese faces even more attention. Press is following the story now. More and more victims make their stories known. Eventually seventy people will tell of their molestation. During much of this time Fr. Preynat continues to serve in the church.

When Alexandre meets François (Denis Ménochet) another victim of Fr. Preynat, they begin to form a community, using a website to encourage others to tell their stories. This increases pressure on the archdiocese. Alexandre is invited to meet with Preynat, with Régine Maire in attendance. Preynat admits to everything, but claims he has gotten help. He does not, however, ask for forgiveness.

I found it of some interest that the film marks the passing of time (it covers about a two year span), not by a calendar, but via the liturgical year, noting various feasts and holidays as they pass. This creates an atmosphere that reminds us that this is not so much a secular issue as it is a religious one. And although secular issues, such as statutes of limitation, play a role in the film, the story we see deals with spiritual concepts in the lives of the characters.

Chief among those spiritual issues is the question of forgiveness. The question arises frequently about if the victims can or should forgive Prevnat. Forgiveness is a key part of Christian life, but it is often very hard to do. This conflict is evident in the scene in which Alexandre and Preynat, meet. At the end of the meeting, Régine Maire has the three of them join hands to pray the Our Father. When the forgiveness clause comes up, Alexandre is unable to say the words.

Another recurring issue is faith. Two of the three victims we follow continue to be devout. Only François has renounced faith and the church. For Alexandre and Emmanuel, they are clear that they are doing this for the church, not to the church. They see what has happened not just as something that has harmed them, but has harmed and continues to harm the church itself. Their continued faith in the face of betrayal—first by Preynat, and continuing with the institutional lack of response—is a reminder that the church and the Gospel are powerful in people’s lives. But that makes the betrayals all the more treacherous. By the end of the film, the faith of those who have come forward is being tested greatly.

As I mentioned at the beginning of this review, clergy sexual misconduct is not limited to the Catholic Church, even if they get most of the press about it. This film brings the victims to the foreground. It does not set out to bash the church, but rather to shine a light on the institutional abuses that prevent accountability and by so doing fail to bring healing to victims and to the church itself.

The film has some title cards at the end of the film that give the status of Fr. Preynat and Cardinal Barbarin as of the time the film was completed. However, since that time there have been new developments. An ecclesiastical trial was held that led to the defrocking of Preynat. Cardinal Barbarin continues to hold the title of Archbishop of Lyon, but has been removed from all administrative oversight of the diocese.

Photos courtesy of Music Box Films

Miracles and Hope – The Story of God (Ep. 6)

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Past Articles in This Series: Episode 1 | Episode 2 | Episode 3 | Episode 4 | Episode 5
CloudsIn the final episode of The Story of God (tonight 9PM/8 Central), narrator and host Morgan Freeman shares a personal story when, as a teenager, he was in a hospital with pneumonia and an abscess on his lung.  When it burst, he almost died.  Yet he survived and eventually became one of the premiere actors in Hollywood.  Was that a miracle?

Alcides Moreno was in New York preparing to wash windows with his brother on the top of a 47-story skyscraper. While on the platform, the cables snapped, sending both of them hurtling to the ground some 500 feet below. Alcides survived, but his brother didn’t (typically, a 10-story fall is instant death).  He’s not sure if that was a miracle, but believes God gave him a “second chance.”

So what exactly is a miracle?  The Random House Dictionary defines a miracle as “an effect or extraordinary event in the physical world that surpasses all known human or natural powers and is ascribed to a supernatural cause.” We talk of miracles all the time, ranging from somehow getting an A on a test we didn’t study to sports teams succeeding despite everything being stacked against them (think of Leicester City in the Barclays Premier League winning the title yesterday at 5000:1 odds [worse than Elvis getting out of his grave]).  But do they really exist or is it just a really big game of chance that happens to swing the right way once in a great while?

Jerusalem - The Church of the Holy SepulcherFreeman discovers that Christians and Jews are united about miracles being a key aspect of their faith (after all, most of the key elements of the Bible are pretty miraculous according to the above definition, such as Moses parting the Red Sea and Jesus raising Lazarus from the dead). The Catholic Church verifies miracles (two) in order to confer sainthood upon deceased individuals. In addition, prayer and faith in God makes a big difference. Tom Renfro, a pastor of a church in Virginia, shares his personal story about having cancer and not seeing the doctor, asking for prayers instead.  He eventually heard God tell him it was time to go to the doctor, then went in for one round of chemo and was completely healed.  Renfro attributes the miracle to his faith and the faith of the people around him.

Other beliefs vary as to the importance of miracles. The Egyptians believed everything that happened in a person’s life was the will of the gods.  In the case of the Romans, they believed their panoply of gods determined the outcome of chariot races at the Circus Maximus (think Ben-Hur), yet humans could help speed the process along by cheating and such. In the case of Taoism, everything is connected and the fates of an individual are set at birth. However, Jenny Liu, a fate calculator (that’s a great title to put on a resume), tells Freeman there is still room for a miracle since, in her words, “Birds don’t fly; they’re flown. Fish don’t swim; they’re carried.”  Buddhists go as far to say that humans can perform miracles such as love, peace, reconciliation, and the transformation of the mind.

Simply put: there’s a lot more to life than meets the eye and, if anything, miracles offer hope to a world that increasingly needs to know possibility can become reality.

Spotlight: In The Pursuit Of Truth

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“For a paper to best perform its function, it must stand alone.”–Marty Baron

In 2001, a new editor arrived at The Boston Globe, pushing the newspaper’s investigative team to look into the Catholic sex scandal in Massachusetts. Instead of assuming that the Catholic church’s hierarchy and the legal system are actually exposing the truth, editor Marty Baron (Liev Schreiber) pushes Spotlight team leader Robby Robinson (Michael Keaton) to uncover what actually happened to hundreds of children at the mercy of dozens of priests. This is a film about truth, justice, faith, and community that will show the depths of human depravity and the heights of human courage.

When the team brings in Phil Saviano (Neal Huff), an adult alleging abuse by a Catholic priest when he was younger, they discover that the situation they have heard about may be more widespread than they ever imagined. With the help of attorney Mitchell Garabedian (Stanley Tucci), the team (Mark Ruffalo, Rachel McAdams, Brian d’Arcy James) begins to interview various other individuals who claim abuse by Catholic priests throughout Massachusetts.

The Globe’s pursuit of truth leads them to uncover a list of potentially ninety dangerous priests with hundreds of possible victims. The investigation is helped on by a psychiatrist (Richard Jenkins) and their “gut.” In so many situations, we can recognize the truth, we can even know what the truth is, but we don’t know how to pursue it. In this case, the Spotlight team puts its extensive experience and intuition to the singleminded task of uncovering what several powerful institutions, including the Archdiocese of Boston and its powerful Cardinal Bernard Law (Len Cariou), have worked so hard to sweep under the carpet.

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While there will certainly be pushback about the release of this film, claiming that it’s “truth versus the church,” I found myself admiring the way that the filmmakers, namely writer/director Tom McCarthy artfully showed that the issue was actually a spiritual one- a powerful one- that needed to be brought to the light. These priests had power in their communities – especially over children who were abandoned, orphaned, or struggling to make ends meet. It’s an abuse of power that echoes a certain impeachment process, asking what power we attribute to others fairly and unfairly.

Mark my words, if it takes a village to raise a child, it takes a village to abuse one. –Mitchell Garabedian

What soon becomes apparent to the crack team of reporters is that it’s not just the priests abuse, but also the church/law working to cover it up. There must be hundreds, thousands even, of everyday citizens who know that something is not right with the local parish (like the cops depicted in the opening vignette) and who choose to do nothing. Is it ignorance? Is it laziness? Is it fear?

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Martin Niemoller said, about the rampaging Nazis in the 1940s,

First they came for the Socialists, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a Socialist.

Then they came for the Trade Unionists, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a Trade Unionist.

Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a Jew.

Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.

In one powerful scene, one of the reporters realizes how close to home the danger is and sticks a sign to his own children on the refrigerator, warning them. Suddenly, it’s not just a story but the danger to one’s own family that makes this something that can’t be dismissed, ignored, or merely argued about. Suddenly, it’s crucial that the truth be spoken, as more than an acknowledgment but as a pursuit of justice. They recognize that it’s not just priests, lawyers, or cops who stayed silent but also neighbors, siblings, and extended families who stayed silent.

I don’t think I should talk about it. – unnamed police officer. 

I think you should. -Sacha Pfeiffer

Jesus said, “Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free” (John 8:32). It’s hard to know what lasting impact the truth had on those who were already victims, but the work of the Spotlight team – and the honesty of those who had been abused – surely set things in motion that allowed others to be freed from hiding ashamed. And who knows how many children were kept safe from being molested because these men and women took a stand?

Acted subtlety and intelligently by the ensemble cast, the pacing of the story stays on point without dragging. While some ‘investigative’ films prove to be mind-numbingly dry, the complexity of the issue and the depth of the actors assembled makes this a ‘must-see’ film – especially those tracking the Oscars. Having applauded the way that 12 Years a Slave showed historical racism and warned of the impacts of slavery today, Spotlight shows us a vision of the past that should inform our present. If we want to keep our children safe, if we want the truth to be available to all, we must be prepared to fight through the smokescreens to bring justice and peace out into the light.