Just a question....
Is this movie disrespectful to the Catholic church or not?
shareI was wondering the same thing especially at the end when she's wearing half of the nun outfit and doesn't have her head covered and is wearing earrings and lots of makeup.
shareA bit patronising i think. The nuns don't know how to sing, and need an outsider to teach them, which seems most unlikely. and it is implied that they should be skipping about acting like teenagers, frankly my sympathy is mainly with Maggie Smith's character.
shareMany nuns are good singers, especially those in contemplative orders, but there are exceptions. I once knew a small convent of sisters that were all elderly. The Mother Superior was 70, the rest were in their 80s or even 90s. And most of them were senile. They sang exactly like the sisters in this movie. They tried to sing in the soprano range of their youth, and most of them were extremely hard of hearing. And during Vespers, one sister kept forgetting that the Magnificat had already been sung. I still have those "My soul doth magnify the Lord…" — "No, sister!" exchanges in my ear.
By the way, I would rather stand with Maggie Smith's character. You can hear popular music everywhere, and what is hip and what is not changes all the time. The hairstyles and clothes in this movie are definitely out of fashion now, for example. Classical church music, like Gregorian chant, is timeless, though.
You may cross-examine.
But I don't think that Mother Superior was supposed to be unsympathetic either.
She was only feeling "obsolete" as she put it herself.
I'm not Catholic but I know a few Catholic families who loved the movies. Many went to Catholic schools and joked about individual nuns and how they reminded them of their school days.
shareI know a priest who loved it.
share