Updated 12:35 P.M., March 16, 2024.
I wrote earlier this week about the new feminist feature film, Cabrini, a shockingly secularized story of a sainted nun converted into a warrior woman battling bigotry. I focused on the film’s remarkable sin of omission in fully excising any mention whatsoever — not one — of the very Jesus Christ who motivated everything the real Mother Cabrini did. I’m pleased to see that others are noticing. Particularly insightful reviews have been done by Andrew Fowler at RealClearReligion, Barbara Nicolosi, Thomas Mirus at Catholic Culture (who did two thoughtful and charitable pieces) Brad Miner at The Catholic Thing, and Giancarlo Sopo at National Review.
I got a lot of responses to that review. In the process, unfortunately, I’m learning still more that’s very disappointing. Frankly, I don’t want to devote further time to this film, but I should share some of the new details I’ve learned. (Watch: The American Spectator editor Paul Kengor discusses his review on EWTN News Nightly.) READ MORE from Paul Kengor: (Gutting Jesus: Feminist Cabrini, Secular Saint)
As I noted, the movie is gutted of references to Jesus. It’s an astounding portrayal of a sainted nun who doesn’t go to God, but only to herself, to her womanhood. She never goes to the cross. As I noted, I dare say that if we exhumed Mother Cabrini’s body in her tomb on the Hudson we might find it flipped over. In fact, here’s a sobering question that I would honestly ask the filmmakers: What do you think Mother Cabrini herself would say if she watched this film? I’m confident she would respond with two words, in Italian: “Dov’è Gesù?” (Where’s Jesus?)
Previously, I gave several examples of the film’s gutting of Jesus. I’ve since learned more. And if I researched Mother Cabrini’s life, I’d surely find still more.
This is not a saint movie for Christians. It’s a secular film catered to the woke.
For instance, this “Cabrini” and her sisters in the film hang a sign outside their New York City orphanage, calling it the “Holy Angels Orphanage.” In truth, Cabrini’s original orphanage was called “Sacred Heart Orphan Asylum” (click here for photo), duly named for her Missionary Sisters of the Sacred Heart of Jesus. This is another shameless fictional flip that fully excises the name of Jesus from the film. In this instance, the literal very heart of Jesus.
But perhaps most egregious reality flip is that while Jesus, the primary motivation in the real Mother Cabrini’s life, is removed entirely, the filmmakers took great care to insert a fictional mayor, “Mayor Gould,” who serves as the dominant villain (played by actor John Lithgow). Gould is invented. (Among other reviewers who have noted this fictional Gould, click here and here.) More specifically, and very 21st century woke-ishly, Gould is employed as the villainous sexist-racist. He despises Cabrini because she’s a woman and Italian. Clearly, the filmmakers felt they needed this character to more firmly establish and repeatedly shove down our throats the film’s dominant theme, namely: discrimination, discrimination, discrimination.
To be sure, fictional characters — or more specifically, composite characters — are used all the time in films, often to great effect. But they need to have some resemblance to reality. The key is what one does with the fictional composite character, especially in a film in which the dominant protagonist in the heroine’s life (Jesus Christ) is shockingly removed altogether. As for this fictional character, there was no such mayor, and yet he’s central to the film and even its climax. He’s employed not for the core narrative of Cabrini’s religious life, but for the filmmakers’ modernized narrative about sexism and racism.
This fictional mayor spews insults at Cabrini and her mission. A sexist-racist dialogue is tailor-made for him. (For the record, Alejandro Monteverde, the film’s director, says that when Mayor Gould tells Mother Cabrini that she would have made “an excellent man,” those words were inspired by real comments made by other men in her life.)
In one exchange, Gould rants at Archbishop Michael Corrigan (who was a real person): “So you let a woman push you around. An Italian woman. Is that how you run your church? I’ve got the whole Upper West Side climbing down my throat. They look out their window and what do they see? A wave of brown-skinned filth parading up their streets with a nun as their Pied Piper.”
“Brown-skinned filth.” That’s red meat for the woke to sink their teeth into. They’ll gobble that up.
But guess what? The mayor who says this is made up.
And yet, Mayor Gould becomes a thread throughout the film (unlike the non-fictional Jesus Christ). He’s the chief antagonist, a handy sexist-racist caricature, and not surprisingly to the thrill of secular progressives and liberal Catholics reviewing the film (click here and here and here). (READ MORE: Marxist Women’s Day)
And even then, that’s not the worst of the Mayor Gould moments.
The film actually ends — climaxes no less — with a showdown between Cabrini and Mayor Gould. In an astonishing exchange that evidently is fictional, Mother Cabrini demands to see the mayor, gets into his office, and then politically threatens him like some seasoned, Machiavellian machine politician. Once Mayor Gould senses that this gal can play hardball, he smiles appreciatively, cynically, and offers the little Italian broad a glass of whiskey. Cabrini slugs it down. The saint then finishes with what serves as her final testimony in the movie, driveling a gulp of feminist gibberish about how no man could do what a woman could do.
Thus ends the film of this holy woman. It stops with a statement not about the power of Jesus, God, faith, but womanpower. Thomas Mirus summed it up well:
Cabrini’s greatest struggles in the film are not of a spiritual nature, but bureaucratic, either in the Church or the state. Her final victory is gained not by her prayer or holiness, but by political machinations, promising votes, and threats. In the film’s final dialogue, as the music swells to the emotional climax of this victory, she looks almost at the camera and says, “Men could never do what we do.”
Let me repeat: This serves as the climactic scene in a movie about a sainted nun who did everything for Jesus. The final words are not a statement of divine inspiration but girl power. In fact, it’s very telling that the Angel Studios promotional trailer for Cabrini invokes not Christ or even the Blessed Mother or hums Ave Maria but has Shania Twain belting out, “Let’s go, girls!… I feel like a woman!”
That’s a very fitting theme song for a film promoting girl power more than divine power.
As I watched that crude final exchange in the theater, not to mention the previous over-the-top rants by the sexist-racist mayor, I suspected they were at best exaggerated and at worst invented. “Did this mayor really exist?” I asked myself at one point. Answer: No.
There’s much more I could say, but I’ll finish with this:
My friend Glenn Beck, who I greatly respect, had a dialogue on this film with Jordan Harmon of Angel Studios. Glenn noted that he was enthralled by the visuals, cinematography, and the feeling of what it must have been like to watch The Godfather in the theater for the first time. I felt the same way. Halfway through the film, Beck said he was floored — as I was. But after that, the film wholly failed to seize on the faith elements that it should. In their discussion, Glenn and Jordan asserted that Cabrini is the best Christian film since The Passion of the Christ. I find that analogy terribly off-base, given that Mel Gibson’s Passion obviously doesn’t hold back on Jesus at all. It’s fearlessly bold. This Cabrini is the exact opposite, and intentionally so. It’s the anti-Passion.
Moreover, Glenn and Jordan spoke of the director of Cabrini as perhaps the next Frank Capra. I’ll say only this about that comparison, sticking strictly to my theme about the lack of prayer and Jesus in Cabrini: There is, in point of fact, literally more prayer and mentions of Jesus in Capra’s It’s a Wonderful Life (obviously not a saint film) than there is in all of Cabrini. (READ MORE: It’s a Wonderful Film — Yes, the Best Ever)
This is not a saint movie for Christians. It’s a secular film catered to the woke. It’s less about faith than feminism. In aiming above all to appeal to the widest masses of our secular culture, the makers of Cabrini effectively secularized a sainted nun.
