MAKING THE PICTURES BIG: GodSpy interviews Barbara Nicolosi: “…When you’ve been thrown out of the convent during the worst vocation crisis in the history of the Church, what else can the world do to you?

“…If we turned over Hollywood to the Christians tomorrow, we’d make worse movies than we’re making now because they would mostly be guilty of what Flannery O’Connor called–for Christian–‘inexcusable sentimentality.’

“…One of the reasons Barbara Hall became a Catholic, as she expressed it to me, was: ‘I just got exhausted with unbelief. I just couldn’t keep it up anymore.’ She’s typical of the creative community that has worn itself out since the sexual revolution, throwing itself around, doing anything it wanted, absolute license and power. And they’re exhausted. So, they come to faith with a deep understanding of sin.

“…First, in terms of artistry, I think the Catholics, even the ones who are lapsed, have a natural sense of allegory and metaphor that comes from several thousand years of ingrained liturgy. The liturgy is real, but it’s also rich in symbols. So you have the people who are fallen away–I’m thinking of a screenwriter right now who’s an angry, angry ex-Catholic. He’s done so much harm. But he has an instinctive sense of symbolism that gives his writing visual power. I’ve said to him several times, ‘the reason you’re really good is because you were Catholic’ and when we’re alone he’ll acknowledge it. I think the liturgical tradition is key to that.

“…I think that, unfortunately, a lot of orthodox Catholics and Christians are either sitting in the cave hunkered down, or they’re like Jonah sitting under a Gourd plant waiting for God to vent his wrath on the world–on the ungodly–and they’re going to be disappointed if He doesn’t. I don’t see these people having sorrow for sin; I see them having indignation towards sin. And to me, that’s an important difference. Sorrow for sin is ‘I am a part of this.’ Indignation for sin is ‘you are the ones messing up the world.'”

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