Maintaining Purity in a Father Stu World

“How does swearing make you feel?” This was the unexpected question I was asked as hundreds of pounds of weights quivered over my head.

Back in my college days I enjoyed hitting the weight room – a place of unique sights and sounds. Quite often the sounds included “agricultural language” as an old Iowan friend refers to it.  And I found myself falling into the habit of uttering colorful words during the course of a workout as well.

Willie – a good and disciplined Christian – was spotting me that day and thought my set at the bench was a good opportunity for philosophical discussion.  He was rightfully offended that I was taking the Lord’s name in vain – and he called me out on it.  But Willie sensed I was doing it more out of habit than mean-spiritedness, so he called me out gently.  “How does swearing make you feel?”

It took precious little reflection to come to the answer, “not great.”  Oh sure, swearing might make us feel powerful, or puffed up, or energized in the moment – but when you dig down to the root of it, there’s no joy in swearing.

So, why is it that dirty little four-letter words are becoming socially acceptable in a whole new way?

Our Present Moment

I don’t know exactly when it was (perhaps you, dear reader, have an insight to share in the comments), but at some point in recent years the f-word (and its extended family) seemed to gain new prominence and acceptability in media.

The pattern may have begun during the hellish summer of 2020 (an appropriate use of a 4-letter word), or earlier, but in 2022 it seems all verbal restraint has been cast aside.

The dirty little words are delivered with a wide range of expression.  In writing they can be au naturelle, or spelled with a few strategic !@#% characters, or embedded in acronyms.  In speech, they might be spoken outright, or “bleeped” with just enough of the offensive little bugger spilling over so that it is still planted in our mind.

The Serious Business of Language

Language is a pretty big deal.  As far as daily life goes, it’s right up there, next to breathing.

For one thing it separates us from the animals.  And it can be used for good, or evil.

But why God invented language is a question worthy of meditation. He doesn’t need language; He is pure being itself.  And yet, the second Person of the Trinity is The Word.  Hmmm.

Language isn’t mandatory to tell a lie (all who have sexual intercourse out of wedlock are lying to one another, whether words are spoken or not), but it is certainly the method of choice for distorting the truth.  Just look at the slippery-tongued serpent in the garden.

Language is also the medium by which the “spirit of the world” works through collectives to hatch plans of stupendous evil.  Such was the case of Babel, and such is the case of our agenda-driven mainstream media.

So we need to be very careful of language; both what we express and receive.

St. Paul puts it plainly, “No foul language should come out of your mouths, but only such as is good for needed edification, that it may impart grace to those who hear” (Ephesians 4:29).  And Jesus tells us, “But the things that come out of the mouth come from the heart, and they defile.  For from the heart come evil thoughts, murder, adultery, unchastity, theft, false witness, blasphemy”  (Matthew 15:18).

Jesus gets to the heart of the issue, which is the connection between language and our interior life, and the need to protect our purity.

Taking an Example from Scripture

The entirety of the human drama is contained in Sacred Scripture.  Love, loss, betrayal, triumph, every bit of it.  And this includes violence and sexual impropriety galore.  Most every base and depraved impulse a human is capable of is accounted for, particularly in the Old Testament.

But do you know what is missing in scripture?  Lurid detail.  In the words of my old music teacher – the writers of scripture didn’t burlesque the drama, they played it straight and understated.

Consider the infamous fall from grace in the life of King David:

“One evening David rose from his bed and strolled about on the roof of the king’s house. From the roof he saw a woman bathing; she was very beautiful.  David sent people to inquire about the woman and was told, “She is Bathsheba, daughter of Eliam, and wife of Uriah the Hittite, Joab’s armor-bearer.”  Then David sent messengers and took her. When she came to him, he took her to bed, at a time when she was just purified after her period; and she returned to her house” (2 Samuel, 11:2-4).

Imagine if these scenes were written by a Hollywood screen writer!

It could be argued that this is just the literary style of the time and place when scripture was written. But I suggest God knew exactly what He was doing.  He inspired scripture to serve His divine purposes – and that included protecting the minds of readers from lurid details. God desires to maintain our purity even as we encounter the realities of the fallen world.

Wisdom from the Desert

The desert has always been a source of purification for the Church.  As an account of this, St. John Cassian chronicled his time with the Desert Fathers in writing “The Institutes” and “The Conferences.”

In Chapter Two of “The Conferences,” Cassian converses with desert father, Abbot Moses, who notes that all of man’s endeavors involve effort and sacrifice directed toward a specific end goal.  He says “The farmer, shunning neither at one time the scorching heat of the sun, nor at another the frost and cold, cleaves the earth unweariedly . . .  to secure a good harvest, and a large crop.”

Then he adds, “And our profession too has its own goal and end, for which we undergo all sorts of toils not merely without weariness but actually with delight.”

As St. John Cassian explains (Chapter 3) the “goal and end” is to attain the kingdom of heaven.  But Abbot Moses then says that the end goal of heaven is too far off, too remote. Men need something closer and more tangible to aim for on a daily basis, he says.

What is that daily goal?  Purity of mind and heart.

Abbot Moses warns us that our wandering minds must be carefully guarded, otherwise they fix on those things which come to it from the outside and are “constantly changed” by those things.  We must choose wisely.

Speaking of Father Stu

The movie Father Stu made quite a splash when it came out earlier this year.  Mark Walburg, Mel Gibson, and all involved deserve credit for taking a shot at a mainstream movie with a decidedly pro-Catholic story line.

Reviews were predictably lackluster, but popular opinion was high and, perhaps most surprising, the box office returns were respectable.  The one often-repeated criticism of the R-rated movie was about the heavy use of vulgarity (crass and obscene words), profanity (taking the Lord’s name in vain), violence, and sexual content.

But here’s the big question:  was the language and sexuality necessary to make the movie authentic, believable, and relatable?  Or, did it cross the line of sensationalism to generate sales?

I’m not saying it’s a small matter to keep a movie about a character like Fr. Stu clean.  Recall my opening anecdote of working out with Willie.  If that were a movie scene it would require footage of my potty-mouth for it to make sense.   But – and this is the thing – my potty-mouth wouldn’t have to be the showcase.  There are plenty of ways to finesse it.  Curse words don’t have to be repeated again and again.  That bit could happen once and then be implied off-screen.  And so on.

What’s Next?

This is the real challenge for people making faith-based films – to use their God-given talents of story-telling, acting, directing and production to find ways to tell real-life stories, without dragging the audience through the gutter.

There are some recent examples that set a high bar such as The Book Thief and A Hidden Life.  For that matter, Mel Gibson did a fair job of toning down sex and language in Hacksaw Ridge.

Perhaps the makers of Father Stu are getting the message.  They recently re-released a PG-13 version of the movie.  My expectation is that it will still have more foul language, violence, and gratuitous sexual innuendo than most people would want to share with their children. But it is a step in the right direction.

The real measure of the Father Stu movie isn’t the Father Stu movie.  The real measure is the next movie these people make.  Will they learn the lesson and strive for realism without sacrificing purity?  Or will they double down and play to people’s base instincts in the hope of selling tickets the easy way?

In Closing

I don’t know exactly why 2022 has brought a bumper crop of foul language.  But I do know that maintaining purity of mind and heart is a key to growing in holiness, and that only Satan is dancing a jig to the four-lettered serenade.

I wish everyone could hear Willie ask that question – “how does swearing make you feel?”  In fact, we can do Willie one better and ask a slightly different question, “how do you think it makes God feel?”