St Mary's

The Trouble With ‘The Trouble With St Mary’s’

This homily is my response to the film The Trouble With St Mary’s. I am a friend of both Peters – Peter the film-maker and Peter the film’s chief protagonist. As a friend I don’t wish to say  anything that is harmful to either, but I have some misgivings about the film which from the community point of view I think are important to express.

When I refer to Peter in this homily, I’m always referring to Peter Kennedy. I refer to the other Peter, Peter Hegedus, as the film-maker. I do this to avoid confusing you about which Peter I’m talking about.

Documentary films purport to be factual accounts of real events. But no film, even a documentary, is real or can aspire to be real. 70 minutes can never replace a lifetime, or, in the case of St Mary’s, a couple of years.  Film stories, particularly documentary film stories, come out of the real, but by selection and concentration they go beyond real.

The camera can isolate an emotion or a gesture in ways that we can’t with the naked eye. Characters appear on screen many times larger than we are in reality. Scenes are edited out of chronological order. Images are often placed out of their real context. The lives of the characters are accompanied by background music. (Our real lives are not accompanied by minor chords and crescendos and god help us if they were.) And all these things, character, size, editing, music, they all serve the story. The story is what matters. And in documentary stories, since it can never be real, the most important question we can ask is: does the film truthfully reflect the experience which we lived through?

At the emotional level, I think the film (and more so the 70 minute version than the Compass version) is at times a powerfully truthful account. However, documentary films are also historical records and the filmmakers must be particularly careful about what they present as fact.  Here the film fails. I think the filmmaker is seduced by the common media practice of identifying and exploiting a sensational aspect of an event at the expense of the deeper story and the richer context. Whilst films are ephemeral, the history in them is not. And for this reason I think this failing of the film should be challenged.

There are really two different stories being told and the juxtaposition results in damage to one of them.  One story is about the nature of belief and faith (which are not necessarily the same thing). St Mary’s is a community which has always, and will always struggle with the question of belief. Not knowing all the answers is its strength. St Mary’s community embraces that ignorance with trust (sometimes fear) and faith. This aspect of St Mary’s, along with its practical commitment to social justice may very well define its collective spiritual identity.  Whatever the truth of that, the important point here is that it is this story which is damaged by the telling of the other.

The other story develops the claim made in the film that St Mary’s is a cult. St Mary’s is nothing like a cult. But by returning to this broadside later in the film, the filmmaker gives the idea credence and later the impression is created that the community has naive cult-like tendencies. If anyone doubts this read the the Sydney Morning Herald critic, Jim Shrembri’s preview of the film. He is paid to read films. It’s his job. A far as I know he knows nothing about this community other than what is in the film and that’s how he read it. This is deeply troubling because film critics also influence the way the general public read films. The impression created is not a reflection of this community and it undermines the authenticity of the deeply emotional experience of the exodus.

Let us deal with the exodus story first. Peter Kennedy is the protagonist through which the story is told. And, for many reasons he is the perfect choice. Directly or indirectly, so many of us are here because of the opportunity for communion that Peter first created. Peter also spans the time from Vatican II (the birth of hope within the church) to the current troubles (the expulsion of hope from the church which continues today). A third reason to choose Peter as the central character is because he is so deliciously human. He feels everything and censors little. A film-makers dream.

We humans can believe anything. And belief is a necessary starting point if we want to move from where we are to where we are not. The inventors of the first flying machine could not have made a flying machine unless they believed they could. But surely their faith in flying machines came after the first one stayed in the air. Otherwise it would have been blind faith. Once embedded in their new faith, when they looked back, they may very well have laughed at some of the things they believed. I’m of the view that faith happens when we reach “where we were not”.  The beliefs we once held may or may not have been illusions but were necessary to bring us to faith.

We ourselves may not fully understand how we came by the faith that brings us here. But we look at the homeless who have been given homes. The women and children who have been sheltered from domestic violence. The hands which no one wants to hold being held. And we know this is the product of a loving caring community. One that we can have faith in, not because of what it believes but because of what it does. It does good. And whether you are a Christian, a Muslim, a Buddhist, a Jew, or, for that matter, a secularist, an atheist, or a humanist, if our actions do good and don’t create harm, they are good. The idea of doing good is not a religious idea. Do unto others as you would have them do unto you is also common sense. As I heard a Buddhist monk say at a dhama talk. “If there’s a heaven, and I do good, I’ll go there. If there’s Nirvana, and I do good, I’ll find it. And if there are none of these things and I do good, I’ll die happy.” This is a philosophy I can live with. Or die with.

The burying of the dog is the emotional heart of this film because it contains within in it feelings we can easily transfer to the collective experience. Peter was burying more than a dog. He was burying beliefs which over time he also came to believe were a bit silly, perhaps even dangerous. They were part of the institutional cancer which had been killing the body of the church for a long time. But cancerous or not, Peter, in his quixotic innocence, also for a long while, was attached to them and them to him. Thus the pain of loss. And the grief. Inevitable and natural as rain. Everything that follows – denial, anger, depression, acceptance – Peter allows us to see, and, more importantly, feel. Importantly, because we, too, grieved the loss.

When Peter spat the dummy in the board room (another part of the film I particularly liked), the people around that table showed great love towards him. A love no better attested to than by the manner in which they were able to tell their truth, with keen consideration for Peter’s feelings, but also without fear. Peter wanted to leave, but he didn’t. Whether they were right or wrong, the collective wisdom and love of the community conquered his self-will. Anger, denial, depression, acceptance. In that short scene we had them all. It was humility and courage in action. I don’t know if I will ever have the necessary courage or humility to do that. But having seen Peter do it gives me the hope that I may. Hardly anything is changed by will. It’s only by bringing our attention to something that there is any chance of change or any value in it should there happen to be change. That’s what makes the modern news story which feeds what it thinks is our voracious appetite for sound grabs, personality conflicts, and ‘reality’ drama so infuriatingly superficial.

Which brings me to what makes me uncomfortable about the film. Particularly with the Compass version. The primary difference between the two versions is that one is narrated and one is not. Words drive the story in the Compass Program which creates a focus on the “issues” the film explores. The other version is driven by music which draws us more towards the emotional undercurrents. The content of both versions however is the same.

There are many disputed definitions of the word “cult” but in modern usage, they have one thing in common. They are all pejorative. Here’s one from Michael Langone:

“Cults are groups that often exploit members psychologically and/or financially, typically by making members comply with leadership’s demands through certain types of psychological manipulation, popularly called mind control, and through the inculcation of deep-seated anxious dependency on the group and its leaders”

The idea that St Mary’s in any way fits this description is preposterous. Particularly when individuals in this community are so deeply engaged in thinking about their spirituality and their humanity.

Nevertheless, I can see the attraction in following the cult idea from the film-makers point of view. Just as films are stories, so too are film-makers storytellers. And cults are dramatic. They are dramatic precisely because they tap a deep-seated anxiety in the broader community about cults. It may be a good story, but it’s just not true. That impression which the film (not the community) creates should be unambiguously corrected.

The problem for the film (and the cause of my mixed feelings about it) arises because the cult story is so entwined with the deeply spiritual and cathartic emotional story that some audiences will find it hard to separate them. In other words, if you weren’t there, or perhaps even if you were, it is hard to differentiate the false (that Peter is some kind of guru and we blind followers of a cult) from the true (the experience of loss that was felt by an entire community). I think that is a great pity because St Mary’s has always been a refuge for those who are struggling with their faith, who are trying to reconcile what they have been taught to believe with what is practiced. A cult is not a refuge. A cult is a prison. Who would want to seek refuge in a prison or, as the Sydney Morning Herald previewer of the film saw it, in a God made of tin? Yet, that is a proposition that the film puts out there. That can’t be good. For us or for those wanting refuge.

In an interview, the filmmaker said that SMX “must ask themselves: What do we do? What is our identity? What is our belief system?” They are are obviously honestly felt questions for the film-maker but unnecessary ones for the community. The evidence of what this community does is everywhere. We just have to look. And a system of beliefs is precisely what we don’t need (isn’t that part of the reason we left?). As for identity, we ask that question of ourselves constantly. We asked it before the exodus and now we are asking it after the exodus. Nothing has changed. We argue amongst ourselves. We get passionate about this idea or that. We sometimes wonder what the hell some of us are talking about. We laugh, we cry, we get frustrated, we get in tizzy fits, we are puzzled, we console, we support, we rally for good causes, we stumble, we fail. No problem.

Until now, I never fully appreciated what I think is the essence of us and I’d like to share that with you. It’s something which is in the film but obscured by the filmmaker’s need to find answers. It’s what brought me here and what brings me back. It’s the opposite of certainty. It’s living in the not knowing or as one mystic called it The Cloud of Unknowing. And may it always be so.

God, hold and protect us (this beautiful, courageous, imperfect community) and save us from any belief that we have, or must have, the answers.