Inspiration

We attended the world premiere of an inspirational movie3 called Leonie!, put together by the Catholic Church.

I am neither Catholic, nor particularly in need to inspiration. I went because about half the movie was filmed in and around the house of some friends in Romeo. Their Victorian manse bears a striking resemblance to the house where Leonie and her sister Therese Martin grew up.

Local lore buffs may recognize that name. Therese Martin, aka Saint Therese, is the person behind the Shrine of the Little Flower on Woodward in Royal Oak. Though named after the same saint that inspired Mother Teresa, late of India’s slums, she seems to be little known outside Catholic Circles.

Inside is another story.

Therese, who was a Carmelite nun, died of tuberculosis at 24. She was an extremely self-effacing person, but also a prolific writer. Her wild popularity is probably due to her literary legacy as much as any good works.

All her sisters who survived to adulthood became nuns. Most of them, like her, became Carmelites, but Leonie, the subject of the new movie, entered the Sisters of the Visitation, instead. Leonie had been a sickly, rebellious, not-too-bright child who somehow slipped into the religious order. Apparently they didn’t have competitive entrance exams or a selective admission process.

After watching the film, I remain unsure how or why Leonie’s life is seen as inspirational. True, she was surrounded by suffering. Several sisters died in childhood. Her mother died at 45. Her sainted sister Therese died at 24, and her father succumbed to dementia. I imagine that life was typical of late eighteenth century France or anyplace else, for that matter. Medicine was next to useless.

While I was raised Catholic, I no longer practice. Maybe they skipped that chapter in catechism, but I never caught onto the appeal of asceticism. So you live a cloister life of denial. No one sees except the other religious. The world goes on in its slow downward spiral toward depravity. What have you accomplished?

The contemplative life is focused on prayer: appeals to God to intercede in human affairs. This is something I do have firsthand experience with, and from direct observation, it doesn’t do anything beyond self-delusion.

Are people spontaneously healed at Lourdes and Lisieux? I don’t know, but all the people with life-threatening diseases who claimed healing died anyway. Certainly God never answered any of my prayers, despite my sincere, fervent entreaties.

Leonie had a difficult childhood, grew up amid sorrow, joined a convent and died. So did many other people, most without the benefit of the Church to support them in their hours of distress.

I am not impressed. 

Someday, I'll publish an account of my own religious experience. It will not be so pretty.