magdalene

last night, kirstin and i watched the magdalene sisters, a rather horrifying true story about catholic church abuses in irish laundries run by nuns for the purpose of saving young wayward girls. i'm not sure when these laundries started, but they were finally shut down in 1996.

the four main characters were sent to the laundries for various sexual sins: being raped, giving birth to a child outside of marriage, flirting. for these crimes, they were made to work, essentially, as slaves, all the while enduring prison-like conditions (gruel for food, absolutely no talking out of turn, constant surveillance, etc.). at one point, the girls are lined up naked in front of two nuns and completely humiliated and denigrated as the nuns hold an impromptu contest comparing the girls' body parts.

while the film was a little too simplistic in its portrayal of catholic authority (for example, there isn't one redeemable nun in the entire film), its story is an incredible reminder of the dangers of moralism and power. humanity seems infinitely capable of committing heinous atrocities in the name of morality and religion; at the same time, we seem utterly incapable of recognizing the incompatibility of these two things. and that, it seems, is the implicit danger when making faith about morality instead of love for God and neighbor. i should also clarify that when i speak of love, i mean an all-encompassing love that is concerned with both the here-and-now as well as eternity--not merely the latter, a rather common error that has allowed christians to legitimize injustice in the name of Christ.