Guest Post: The Philosophy of “Sister Act”
Cooper started practicing magic as a young child and continues to this day, leading his own tradition and working to establish collaborative, comparative projects. He daylights as a journalist and spends his evenings critiquing pop culture, metaphysics, and rambling on Twitter.
I’m excited and honored to share a new guest writer for the White Rose Witching blog: Cooper, aka The Witch King. I met Cooper via Twitter last year when I purchased a natal chart reading from him. The level of depth, care, insight, and accuracy of the reading was incredible and also low-key dragging me. Since then we’ve continued to ping off of each other mainly around deep reflections on our own spiritual paths and shared rage at the state of discourse in our democracy.
I hope you all enjoy this essay examining one of my favorite movies, “Sister Act”, and how it reflects a deeper crisis of faith rocking the Catholic Church at the time this movie was produced.
“Sister Act” tells the story of Dolores Van Cartier and her exploits after witnessing her mobster boyfriend commit murder. Hidden in a convent in a rough neighborhood, Dolores dons the name Sister Mary Clarence and struggles to adapt. Her main antagonist within the convent is the Reverend Mother, a conservative, older nun who insists on order and restraint in all things. Throughout her days at the convent, Dolores pushes boundaries and draws unwanted attention with her success. A singer herself, Dolores uses her talents to train the choir and give a voice to women quite literally kept away from the world. In turn, Dolores finds a renewed sense of self-esteem and community. By the story’s end, nuns use Catholic guilt to commandeer a flight to Vegas and rescue Dolores in the knick of time. The movie also (unintentionally) gives us a look at the Church that could have been and offers lessons on how to balance the unknowable depths of a person’s faith and the necessity of externalizing that through works.
On its surface, the movie sets up what will become a perfect formula for 90s comedies: an outsider is forced into a situation with stodgy white people and they find some escape from the alienation of modernity. Structure aside, there isn’t a whole lot the movie does that breaks new ground. A clean mix of standard shots clears the established expectations for a popcorn comedy with fun costumes and great sets. The songs and soundtrack help liven up the stale writing and give the almost exaggerated performance of the cast freedom to exceed the story. As expected for a headliner vehicle, what makes “Sister Act” work lies in the performers themselves.
If you took just the script and did a read for some random studio executives, you’d probably be told to go home. Have them listen to Whoopi Goldberg read it and you get why this movie made millions. Kathy Najimi and Joseph Maher trade off being the jester in the convent with Bill Nunn showing up every now and again to give a tongue-in-cheek performance of everyone’s favorite 80s cop. The mousey Wendy Makkena serves as Dolores’ foil, belting the high notes on cue. Add to that a few classic Maggie Smith as the Reverend Mother with a few “flustered British woman” moments and Harvey Keitel in the role he was born to play over and over again and it’s hard to not enjoy the cheesier moments of the movie. I don’t think the performances are intentionally as good as they ended up being. I suspect the success of this film was somewhat an accident and explains why its successor failed to resonate as deeply with audiences. The timing of this movie is hard to understate in retrospect.
Unexpectedly, setting a comedy in the ruins of a Church looking to rebuild itself spoke to a deeper need in Americans. After the rise of Evangelism in the 80s following the disillusionment of hippies in the 70s, religion in the country was uniformly performative. The film’s narrative relies on that frustration and dependence. Released in 1992, the destruction of the Church’s public image in the minds of Americans had yet to really begin. A decade of sex scandals, rising violence, and the destruction of labor unions would cement a trend that continues today: fewer and fewer people born into the Catholic Church remain or have their children participate. Ironically, had the epilogue of “Sister Act” played out and the Pope embraced a bit of diversity and showmanship, perhaps the Church would have fared better over the subsequent 30 years. Looking back, “Sister Act” serves as a wonderful postmortem examination of the committedly faithful and the dangers of putting faith over acts.
The Reverend Mother appears to be in her 60s and from the United Kingdom, meaning she’s lived through The Troubles, Magdalene Laundries (which would be blown open in the public’s mind a year after the film released but were well-known ‘secrets’ before then), and seen many women come and go. Not everyone in a convent is a cloistered nun pledged for life. Historically used as an alternative to imprisonment for women (especially prior to the existence of women’s prisons in America) and a place for “extra” daughters, a stay in a nunnery or convent may not always be a search for sanctuary or inner peace. By the movie’s end, we’re shown how genuine the Reverend Mother cares for the women in her community, Dolores included. She isn’t clinging to these outdated morals and structures because she desires to cling to power or even necessarily thinks the world outside is inherently wrong. Instead, the Reverend Mother adheres to that structure, submits to that system, and ‘bears that cross’ because it’s the only way she knows how to keep a place for those who have nowhere else to go.
The Reverend Mother breaks down at one point, revealing her rigid commitment to order comes from a desire to protect the women who depend on her leadership. Bound to the whims of an arbitrary, if-well-meaning bishop and the unabashed sexism of the Church, Maggie Smith gives layers of depth to what should have been a simple “mean mom/teacher” surrogate. Certainly the Reverend Mother primarily exists as such in the movie, but the realities of the convent keep her from falling into the simplistic stereotype the film’s imitations depend on for their minor antagonists: the Reverend Mother is right, at least in part. Dolores’s outreach efforts don’t bring the immediate danger predicted, but they do lead to Dolores being discovered and the violence of the movie’s climax. While the two sisters joining in on Dolores’s excursions are young and able-bodied, many of the other sisters are older, show signs of some kind of impairment, and have likely lived inside gated walls for decades. What’s a funny bar scene could easily go wrong.
While Dolores is sent here for a short moment, no one else will be leaving. It’s overly simplistic to say the reforms Dolores enables could have existed without her. The tone-deaf choir quickly finds their way under Dolores’s instruction. While the movie plays with the Madonna/harlot dichotomy of the choir and the role of women within the Church sufficiently, it can be easy to lose all of what Dolores adds. She’s the only woman of color in the convent, despite the building itself being situated in the middle of a diverse community. She has business acumen and a sense for branding. Above all else, Dolores is an agitating force: she is a disruption in a highly ordered, very small world. Even if the Reverend Mother wanted, how would she have created a choir capable of filling the cathedral? It isn’t that she’s spiteful or unconcerned for the wellbeing of others. It isn’t that her faith isn’t true. Instead, the Reverend Mother’s faith had solidified into a single form: an escape from the crushing realities of the world. The frustrating truth that reverberated with me long after the credits rolled is this: faith alone is not enough.
James 2 reminds us “faith without works is dead” but the Reverend Mother is doing the work. While the fun-loving audience is there to see a comedy, a nunnery isn’t a setting for hijinks nor a prison. It’s a spiritual sanctuary, an expression of sincere and heartfelt service to Christ and His Church. Dolores isn’t alone in her disappointment with life behind the walls of the nunnery, but she does appear to be alone in her lack of faith. Dolores leads the other nuns in doing the kind of outreach that we as the audience wish to have from the faithful: a choir of joyous nuns singing to lift our spirits as we walk into a grand cathedral, a colorful playground for our children, and a safe space in a neighborhood for the body and soul. We’re shown a version of faith that is expressive, extroverted, and consumer-focused. While sincere in her way, Dolores’s actions are motivated more out of boredom than a desire to embody the works of Christ. If this wasn’t a movie, the outcome may have been very different. Regardless, once Dolores left, those projects would fall apart and things would return to business as usual with a better choir to show for it. The Church and nunnery aren’t failing because they lack faith nor because their work is insufficient: they’re failing because they remain archaic.
Vatican II reformed the Church only a few decades before the film’s release. The bulk of audiences watching the movie grew up with a Church in flux, shifting Latin liturgy and prohibitions against cameras giving way to vulgate masses and studios clamoring for access. After taking one large step forward after a millennia of clinging to stale incense, reactionary movements within the Church and a muted response from the public discouraged whatever momentum progressives might have had. The movie tells the story from that generation’s perspective. It quite literally opens on Dolores in Catholic school as a child. Rightly choosing to tell the outsider’s version of the story, we know to cheer for the rightly defiant Dolores and against the rigid nun. Audiences recalling their own powerlessness in the face of a habited woman or the confusing mysticism of Catholics chuckle at the seemingly pointless rituals and commitments. But what is the Reverend Mother’s version of this? What does “Sister Act” say to those who don’t need someone to minister to them, but a place for their spirituality to be understood and freed from the confines of the mundane world? What does a woman living in a system she cannot change do when confronted with her own powerlessness?
How many well-intended reformers did she see rise up and fall? How many decades has she spent watching that cycle play out and fall? She warns that Dolores will come and go, her explosion of excitement and externalities leaving a vacuum of desire and disappointment for the women in her wake. The Reverend Mother has immense responsibility with little agency and fewer resources yet. Devoted to her faith, tasked with upholding a sanctuary obviously on the decline, and given a cast of largely aged and exhausted women to care for, it’s hard to not empathize with her. As confrontational as she may be, the Reverend Mother doesn’t discredit Dolores’s intentions nor the immediate effects: she raises the specter of consequences unknown. Consequences the Reverend Mother has no doubt seen. In a world without Hollywood endings, Dolores is beginning something the Reverend Mother knows cannot survive. Dolores has works, the Reverend Mother has faith, but neither can quite find a place for those two to meet without a screenwriter’s assistance.
How do we negotiate that in our own world? As practitioners of the esoteric, it’s easy to blame the institution and follow that narrative. It certainly echoes “Sister Act”’s faint Protestantism and dismissal of the ritual and rites. Having grown up devoutly Catholic and still holding those rituals dear, I find myself siding with the Reverend Mother throughout much of the film. My own inclinations are toward withdrawal and the rich, inner life of the spiritual. I often fantasize about the cloistered life, romanticizing the isolation and opportunity to fully, blindly devote myself to the ritual exaltation of God. To spend your days bringing Heaven and Earth closer together is one of the most honorable callings I can imagine. I also understand how bitter it can be feeling that way.
The skepticism of the modern American in matters of faith is easy to understand. In more cases than not, I imagine religious leaders care much more about their material power and social influence than their service to whatever God(s). It would take more time to find a sincere religious leader than not in the U.S., especially as TV networks turn churches into big ticket venues. Whether selling their demon hunting daughters or the latest plant-based cure for cancer, hucksters and charlatans always cloak themselves heavily in spirituality. We have become so plagued by false prophets and temple-based markets that we need street smarts to survive in the hallowed sanctuary of the Gods. I can’t fault people for forgetting that sincere, genuinely devout religious people exist and find immense joy in that humble service.
Having your choice to cloister be cast as running away, ignoring the world, or otherwise skeptically framed in material terms hurts. Measuring the worth of the Reverend Mother work’s by their impact on others still forces that service to be taken on mundane terms. It betrays the need of modernity to strip life of meaning and measure it only in naturalistic ways. We have such a hard time imagining sincerely held beliefs and a desire to live in accordance with those things because it’s an affront to modernity. If the meaning of life lies outside your life, how can we be compelled to participate in systems that otherwise deprive us of meaning and then sell it back to us? If prayer and the silence of God are enough to give you joy beyond anything that can be purchased, how dangerous are you to a world desperately trying to sell happiness?
Conversely, if we accept that ascetic ideal, we run the risk of silencing ourselves when our faith demands we speak out. Turning a blind eye to the practical mechanization of the world or insisting on the superiority of spirit only replaces one kind of alienation with another. We also find ourselves with a small cathedral and millions outside still starving for the Divine. I am especially prone to this temptation and so found myself wondering how to become the Reverend Mother without falling into the same trap: how do we create a respite from worldliness without forgetting that place is part of the world too? What good is reaching Heaven if you’re alone?
For my fellow Reverend Mothers, perhaps our answer is this: we create a space built on our faith for others to explore theirs. Maybe that’s at a church or maybe it’s at a coffee shop. Maybe it’s singing the high notes or conjuring up an angelic intelligence. Maybe it’s good advice or quiet listening. Maybe they will never understand our answer nor come to find a deep faith. Maybe they will be inspired and learn to swim in the starry skies too. Maybe faith looks like trusting the cops that a convent will keep you safe. Maybe works looks like having your world upended. Maybe we choose to close off that space from time to time. “Sister Act” reminds us that even if “the way out is in”, it’s lonely out there. Achieving Enlightenment doesn’t unlock a “Game Clear!” screen, it’s the beginning of the actual game. Find your piece of Providence and then work to make it part of this imperfect, flawed world as much as possible.
