Description

The common admission that "everything I know about religion I learned from the movies" is true for believers as much as for unbelievers. And at the movies, Catholicism is the American religion. As an intensely visual faith with a well-defined ritual and authority structure, Catholicism lends itself to the drama and pageantry of film. Beginning with the silent era of film and ending with movies today, eleven prominent scholars explore how Catholic characters, spaces, and rituals are represented in cinema.

Reviews

"Colleen McDannell has brought together an all-star cast of scholars to examine what happened when American Catholics went to the movies, what happened to them and to the movies. Movie screens were an extension of the streets and shrines of the American church, where Catholics struggling with the hard realities of American life encountered their deepest fears and wildest dreams. This fabulous book makes it clear that going to the movies was as formative of American Catholicism as going to church." --Robert Orsi, author of The Madonna of 115th Street and Thank You, Saint Jude

"Although the title of this collection is Catholics in the Movies<$>, it is in fact about so much more than Catholics and movies, encompassing a range of subjects that bear on religious life in US history including race and gender, immigration and sexuality, fear and power. McDannell and the other writers bring Catholic history to light, but they also illuminate a much wider cultural field with compelling, insightful results." --Gary Laderman, Chair and Professor, Department of Religion, Emory University