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HONOR THY SACRILEGE No longer a believing Catholic, I am one who finds the secret workings of the Church more fascinating than its infantile bunk, so therefore I’m receptive to any vicious attack against it. Frank Perry’s Monsignor is based on the wide spread gossip about the financial machinations of Archbishop Paul Marcinkus, an American who became the president of the Institute for Religious Works, the euphemism for the Vatican Bank. From Time magazine, July 26, 1982: “A billion dollar Italian bank fraud has reached into the heart of one of the world’s most respected institutions, the Vatican. So far, two people involved in the affair have died, $1.4 billion is unaccounted for, and the financial stability of several European banks is in danger.” The screenwriters have altered the news item—and it’s providential the Vatican scandal broke while this movie was being edited—but it comes close enough. The movie doesn’t tell us about the Vatican’s investments in an Italian firearms factory or in a Canadian pharmaceutical company manufacturing contraceptives (the Church has denied any current involvement with either company), yet it does attempt to clearly establish a link to the Italian Mafia. People who have followed the Vatican in the news won’t be surprised by any of this, and may even come to suspect the missing billion could have been the first chuck of payouts for all the molestation the Church’s priests engaged in, but what might bother them more is the head of the bank of the Church is committing one sacrilege after another and then is rewarded for it. Who does the rewarding? Pope John XXIII, often referred to as the most loved of modern pontiffs. (Before John Paul II and Francisco.) Maybe Monsignor is supposed to be a put-down, insulting, but its genteelness is a jolt—nearly everything in it is pansy-toned (including Billy Williams’ dimmy photography) and vaguely fawny. Did Perry’s previous exercise Mommie Dearest purge him of his scumminess? Did anyone expect him to make The Cardinal II? The movie isn’t too stately or boring, and when things do get a little drowsy there’s always John DeCuir’s sets to gaze at, and for aficionados of trash there’s Christopher Reeve who, playing the financial wheeler-dealer, has this shitfaced grin covering a lot of his performance. (Seems he’s as stupefied at the dialogue postulant Genevieve Bujold mutters as we are.) As the biggest single private enterprise in the world, the Vatican’s fair game for pot shots. There’s so much hidden in those gilded closets even the slightest innuendo probably has plenty of unconfirmed fact in them. What’s so baffling about the movie: while Perry debunks the reverence for and exposes the hypocrisy of the Church, he’s poking mocking fun at the Church’s own blasphemy while honoring it at the same time. Text COPYRIGHT © 2007 RALPH BENNER (Revised 4/2016) All Rights Reserved.
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