A Pilgrim's Digression

http://www.cbsnews.com/st…ain567365.shtml

Last night I watched a disturbing film called The Magdalene Sisters. There is a CBS news article from 2003 which elaborates on the background of the film.

Set in Ireland in the mid-nineteen-sixties, the film follows the lives of four girls who are sent to what was known as a “Magdalene Laundry,” where girls were sent as punishment for sins of the flesh (both real and imaginary). A Magdalene Laundry was operated for profit by the Catholic Church; it amounted to nothing more than a prison.

The first girl we meet, Margaret, is raped by her cousin in one of the first scenes of the film. Her father delivers her to the Laundry himself, where she will live for the next four years until her brother is old enough to take responsibility for her and thus “liberate” her from the “care” of the Nuns. The rape scene is interesting on a number of levels. It occurs at the reception following a family wedding. As Margaret is raped, a priest is singing a traditional Celtic love tune while playing the Bodhrán . Afterwards, she tells a family member immediately, and while the music is still playing we see her father and other men of the family gathering as if to punish the boy. In fact, it is the girl they are planning to punish.

Another girl, Rose, has had a baby out of wedlock and is in the hospital with the child. Her mother refuses to speak to her or look at the child, and her father arranges for the baby to be adopted and Rose to be sent to the Laundry. The scene in which her baby is taken is heartbreaking. Her father struggles to hold her back, and the violence of the scene mimics other scenes of violence and rape elswhere in the film.

The third girl, the ironically named Bernadette, is an orphan living at the (again ironically named) St. Attractus Orphanage. She is a flirt and is viewed by the Nuns as a potential temptress of the boys. She, too, is sent to the Magdalene Laundry.

The fourth girl is already present at the laundry when the other three girls arrive. Her name is Crispina, which considering the fate of her namesake, Saint Crispina, does not bode well for her. She is a bit simple, but her innocence makes her a prime target for abuse. She has been sent to the Laundry for having a child out of wedlock. Her sister cares for her little boy and brings him to the Laundry gate occasionally so that Crispina can see him as she hangs the laundry to dry. Crispina and her son wear matching St. Christopher medals, but Crispina does not even know the name of her son. They were parted before she had a chance to name him.

These four girls, then, arrive at the Laundry to suffer what can only be described as a fate worse than imprisonment. Prisoners have certain rights, and prisoners know when, or if, they are going to be released. The girls at the laundry cannot leave unless a relative is willing to claim them and take responsibility for them. And so they work away their lives at washing other people’s laundry.

Crispina, it turns out, is the girl we end up having the most sympathy with. She is abused by everyone, including the priest who comes to the school to celebrate mass. Margaret happens to see Crispina giving the priest oral sex and it is this scene, more than any other, which precipitates the plot to its conclusion.

The head of the laundry, Sister Bridget, is in some ways a stereotypical Nun. Her brutality is expected; her greed is something else. When the three girls arrive at the laundry, they are shown into Sister Bridget’s office where she is counting money, rolling it into tight wads of bills, and placing it in cake tins. Whenever she is in her office, she seems always to be counting the Laundry funds. Her first act upon meeting the girls is to preemptorily change Rose’s name to Patricia. We also see her deliver many brutal beatings with whatever object comes to hand. The Laundry is a place where naughty girls literally wash away their sins, or else have them beaten out of them.

In a scene near the end of the film, we see another side of Sister Bridget which is an ironic contrast to her brutality. On Christmas Day, an important business man brings a film projector and a movie to the Laundry and the girls are allowed to watch the movie. In a preface to the film, Sister Bridget explains how she loved films as a girl, especially Westerns. Although the film showing that day is not a Western, when the movie title appears on the screen, Sister Bridget claps and screams giddily: it is The Bells of Saint Mary’s, an Ingrid Bergman feature in which the stunning Sister works to save a condemned parochial school. The girls watching the film note how Sister Bridget weeps at the film’s sappier moments.

The film has a reasonably happy ending for the three girls who came to the laundry after Crispina, but for Crispina, there is no happiness. In that way, the film is both depressing and honest. When Margaret’s brother comes to rescue her, in a moment when another Director might have resorted to tired cliché about the powerless woman being saved by the heroic man, Margaret’s anger flashes at her savior. “Where have you been for the past four years?” She snaps. “Growing up,” the brother says. “Well you should have grown a little faster,” Margaret retorts. It is this kind of blunt honesty which makes this movie stand out. Another example of it is in the character of Bernadette, with whom we sympathize, but who is not naturally a sympathetic character. She steals Crispina’s St. Christopher medal because she does not believe the girl has suffered enough. Her anger at her own suffering results in her desiring the suffering of others.

Unbelieveably, the last Magdalene Laundry in Ireland closed down as recently as 1998. When the property was sold off, the sordid story of what took place in these prisons came to light. On the property were the unmarked graves of 133 women essentially given into slavery by their families.

To me, an American man living in the early years of the twenty-first century, this movie represents the evil that can result when religion and state become intertwined. Ireland was for many years a kind of theocracy. One has only to view this film if one wants to see what it really means to live under theocratic rule. The practical result of a state religion legislating morality and ascribing punishments not for crimes, but for moral transgressions, is a horrible transgression of both human law and God’s law. In truth, no one would have been holier in the eyes of Christ than the “whore” Crispina. Her fate at the hands of the powerful is much the same as the martyr for whom she is named. Thus is it always: power corrupts and destroys the good.