Students of St John School (1952-53) Identified

In response to an earlier post, Wayne Buls, who was in fifth grade at St John Elementary School in 1952-53, sent me an e-mail identifying several students in photographs from that year.

Here is a crop of Wayne himself.

He identified the following 21 students:

Gordon Ahlschwede
Margaret Beckmann
Gordon Bredow
Keith Brose
Orval Buls
Wayne Buls
Charles Fenster
Larry Goldsmith
Fred Kroger
Roger Lindner
Roger Mailand
Leora Mueller
Ronnie Mueller
Dale Pieper
Diane Rigert
David Rolfsmeier
James Schmieding
Tim Wake
Harold Walker
Carol Yauk
Margret Yauk

I have updated the earlier post and also the Flickr page.  

Thanks, Wayne !!

The Meaning of the Movie "Footloose"

The Footloose story has appeared in two movie versions, which were released in 1984 and 2011, and in one musical-play version, which ran on Broadway from 1998 into 2000. The story takes place in a small town where local Christians have imposed a prohibition against dancing. A high-school-senior boy comes to live in the town, wins the love of the pastor’s daughter, challenges the prohibition, and organizes the town’s first dance for high-school students.

I myself grew up in a small town, Seward, Nebraska, and attended its Lutheran high school, which prohibited dances. I attended as a freshman and sophomore during 1966-1968. In 1968, following years of discussions between the students and the faculty, the prohibition was removed and the students were allowed to have their first dance. Thus, I myself experienced the rather unusual situation that the Footloose story depicts.

When the first Footloose movie was released in 1984, I read reviews and knew the essential story, but I decided not to see it despite my own similar experience. My reluctance was caused by my assumption that the movie would treat the dance-ban conflict between the Church and the students in an offensive, anti-religious manner.

However, about 20 years later, in about 2005, I caught the movie’s beginning while I was channel-surfing my television, and I watched the entire movie. I found that I liked the movie and also that its portrayal of Christians was rather understanding and sympathetic.

The movie resonated with my own memories of how the dance controversy had been resolved in my own Christian high school. For me this resolution is a happy memory, because this decision to end the dance ban resulted from polite, respectful, persistent talks between the adult faculty members and the young students. Both in the movie and in my high-school experience, Bible verses were used in the debates as evidence in favor of dancing.

I liked the movie’s portrayal of the Christian family. The pastor’s daughter is the movie’s female lead, and her parents are important supporting characters. Several of the scenes take place in their church and include parts of three sermons. The pastor, his wife and their daughter behave and talk in a manner that is realistic for such a family. They are religious and intelligent.

The 1984 movie depicted Christians as engaged in a couple of controversial activities – preaching about Hell and banning books from school – that probably most viewers would consider to be distasteful or even contemptible. The 2011 does not, however, depict those particular activities. Most people watching the 2011 movie would find that the Christians are portrayed quite positively.

In both movies, the pastor’s daughter rebels against her Christian upbringing, but then reconciles with her family at the end. This rebellion and reconciliation are more vivid in the 2011 movie.

The 2011 movie adds a second Christian family to the story. The boy who comes to the small town moves in with his uncle’s family, which displays its Christianity in an admirable manner. The uncle’s family prays before meals, attends church every Sunday, and donates money to people in need. This family is generous, kind, happy and well adjusted.

In the 1984 movie, the pastor and his wife (Shaw and Vi Moore) were played by the actors John Lithgow and Dianne Wiest.




I felt that these two characters were likeable and even admirable. They were not the villains I had expected. They treated their daughter and other people in a nice manner, they spoke intelligently about the dance issue in their town, and eventually they decided publicly to change their minds and support the young people’s desire to dance.

Thus the movie resonated with my own memories of how a similar issue had been resolved in my own youth. There had been polite and respectful conversations that led eventually to the removal of a restriction and to a change of attitudes. When I thought back to these memories of my own youth, the resolution of the dance prohibition was a positive and happy memory about how adults and youths had worked out a difficult but successful reform in our local Christian community. I thought that the movie shed a similarly positive light on the resolution of its own similar conflict.

I found that the 2011 movie was even better and that its portrayal of the pastor and his wife -- played by Dennis Quaid and Andie MacDowell – was even more positive.




The Footloose story is based on an article that appeared in People magazine in 1980, about the Oklahoma town of Elmore, population 653, which had banned public dancing ever since the town was founded in 1861. In January 1980, some students petitioned the town council to allow dancing at a school prom.

The People magazine’s article described the opposition to the dance as follows:

"No good has ever come from a dance," thundered the Rev. F.R. Johnson of the United Pentecostal Church in nearby Hennepin—the father of two teenage daughters. "If you have a dance somebody will crash it and they'll be looking for only two things—women and booze. When boys and girls hold each other, they get sexually aroused. You can believe what you want, but one thing leads to another."

The Rev. Johnson insisted he spoke for many of the churchmen in the area and many of their parishioners. At a town meeting to consider the question in February, a local citizen predicted that after the dance there would be a surge in pregnancies at the school "because when boys and girls breathe in each other's ears, that's the next step."

After the debate, however, the town council voted 3-2 to permit the dance. The article’s description of the subsequent events was charming:

… the kids decorated the school cafeteria so lavishly that even John Travolta would have felt at home. The theme of the prom was Stairway to Heaven, the Led Zeppelin standard that was also the opening dance. The room was decorated with blue paper sprinkled with silver stars, an aluminum-foil moon and a spiral "staircase to heaven" made of sequined cardboard.

Arriving in their Sunday best at 7 p.m., the kids sat down to chicken-fried steak, mashed potatoes and gravy, fried okra and strawberry shortcake, then changed into jeans for the evening's serious business—showing off the fancy steps many had been rehearsing in front of mirrors for weeks.

Maybe it should have been months. "Shoot," groaned one porky lad, watching with his buddies from the sidelines, "I sure wish they'd play more slow songs. I can't do that fast stuff yet." Another novice caught her breath by an open window. "I got me a side-ache," she confessed, falling into a chair. "I'm not used to this."

Girls found it easier going than the boys. "He don't dance," complained one blonde, nodding with disgust at a lanky youth in denim. "He kicks and steps on you. He'd probably bite, too, if you didn't watch him."

Not all the males had two left feet. Cool and collected Mike Niblett, 17, was first out on the dance floor with his date, Catherine English, 18, and later won the limbo contest. His secret? "A lot of us have gone to dances before," Mike explained, "but we've always had to drive far away to do it."

When the prom was over, all the dire worries had proved groundless. "It went exactly like I thought it would," said Superintendent Kirby. "They're a fine bunch of youngsters." Asked if next year's class would also get their prom, Kirby would say only "We'll see." But the school board will have problems keeping 'em down in Elmore City now that they've heard the beat.

Class president Rex Kennedy said with a grin: "We thought about asking for permission to dance at the next Future Farmers of America meeting, but I guess that's pushing our luck."

---

This true story was turned into a movie script by Dean Pitchford, who was born in 1951 in Hawaii. As a youth he performed as an actor and singer in the Honolulu Community Theater, the Honolulu Symphony Orchestra and the Honolulu Theatre for Youth. He enrolled in Yale University and majored in drama. In 1971 he performed in off-Broadway performances of the musical Godspell, and in 1972 he played the lead role in Bob Fosse’s Broadway musical Pippin.

After Pitchford read about the situation in Elmore, Oklahoma, he wrote a screenplay and also collaborated with various musicians – Eric Carmen, Michael Gore, Sammy Hagar, Kenny Loggins, Tom Snow and Bill Wolfer – on nine songs that eventually were included in the movie.

The movie cost only $8 million to make, and it grossed about $80 million in the theaters. The soundtrack album rose to #1 on the US Billboard’s album chart (knocking off Michael Jackson’s album Thriller) and remained at the top for ten weeks. The album sold 17 million copies worldwide. The album’s first two songs – “Footloose” and “Let’s Hear It for the Boy” – both reached the #1 position as single songs.

It is apparent that Pitchford was captivated by the People article's element that the most prominent opponent of the prom dance was a Pentecostal pastor with two teenage daughters. This pastor was concerned especially that the dance would attract male strangers to come from distant locations to crash Elmore’s prom and intoxicate and seduce the local girls:

“If you have a dance somebody will crash it and they'll be looking for only two things—women and booze. When boys and girls hold each other, they get sexually aroused. You can believe what you want, but one thing leads to another."

This concern suggested to Pitchford his screenplay’s central conflict – a boy would come from a distant place into the small town and would violate the small town’s dance prohibition and thus seduce the daughter of the Christian pastor who tried to uphold the dance prohibition.

---

The end of the dance prohibition in Elmore, Oklahoma, coincided roughly with the end of the Presidency of Jimmy Carter. The prom took place in about May 1980, and Carter lost his campaign to be re-elected in the election of November 1980.

Carter was a devout Christian who had grown up and remained in the small Southern town of Plains, Georgia. During his long political career, he used his Christian religion as a motivation and tool to promote racial integration and for other political reforms in his town and state. A major factor in his successful campaign for election to President in 1976 was that his Christian morality and stability seemed to be a refreshing improvement over the preceding ten years of what many people considered to be undisciplined and immoral.

Carter turned out to disappointment as President. Unemployment and inflation soared, people had to wait in long lines to buy gasoline, and Carter was not able to free the US citizens who were held hostage in Iran.

Carter seemed to be a moral man who was too proper to succeed as President. He meant well, but he was overwhelmed by troublesome forces and too finicky about making tough decisions that might leave some people as victims.




For many Americans, especially those who did not attend church, the Carter family was the model of a Christian family. Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter seemed to be happily married, and they had a daughter, Amy, who became a 13-year-old teenager in 1980.

In that same 1980, Pitchford turned 29 years old and began to write his screenplay about a pastor who had a teenage daughter and who tried to maintain his small town’s traditional prohibition against dancing. I don’t know whether Pitchford had grown up in a Christian environment, but I do suppose that the Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter family, at least to some extent, influenced his ideas about how a pastor and his wife might discuss with each other their concerns about how their teenage daughter might be endangered by a sudden, new exposure to sexy dancing.

In order that such reasonable and modern parents might have an understandable basis for their fear of dancing, Pitchford wrote into his story a previous tragedy –“five or six years” earlier, their son and several other high-school seniors had died in a drunken car crash after a school dance. Therefore the town council had banned all future dances, and therefore much of the small town’s population supported this pastor in his stubborn advocacy for a continued ban.

I suppose that Pitchford did most of the writing work on his script during about 1981 and 1982, which was five or six years after 1976 or 1977, which were the years when Carter was elected and became President. If Pitchford did, perhaps subconsciously, use the Carters as his model for the pastor and his wife, then he started his story with an event that had happened “five or six years earlier” – with the beginning of the Carter Administration in the case of the Carters and with the tragic car accident in the case of the pastor and his wife.

I am not saying that the Carter Administration was like a car accident. Rather, I am saying that Pitchford was imagining how a devout but modern Christian couple might discuss between themselves a re-assessment of their situation after a certain time period – a period short enough that they still were very emotional but long enough that they should be objective.

In each case the husband (Jimmy Carter and the pastor) was still emotional and stubborn after five or six years, whereas the wife (Rosalynn Carter and the pastor’s wife) had become objective and flexible. The wife gently persuaded the husband to reconcile himself to his loss and to look forward to new perspectives and rethinking.

In the 2011 movie version, the time since the fatal car accident has been changed from five-six years to only three years. I think the shorter interval improves the story, because Ariel would have been a high-school freshman (not a fifth grader) when her brother died in the accident.

---

Since the story is about a high-school-senior prom, the pastor’s daughter in the story is a high-school senior – now the same age as her brother who had died after a high-school-senior dance several years earlier. This coincidence confronts her with her own mortality. Just as her brother died suddenly in his senior year, so she too might die in this year.

Along with her brother, several other classmates died in that same car accident. Therefore the pastor’s daughter is not alone in her own senior class in her premonition of her own possible death during this year. On weekend evenings, many of her classmates gather in a shed close to a nearby railroad track. When a train approaches, they stand in the middle of the tracks until the train almost hits them, and then they jump away. They are excited by the danger, and afterwards they lie along the tracks and make out with each other.

Some of the young people also play dangerous games in which they race and almost crash large vehicles – in the 1984 movie they do so with tractors and in the 2011 movie they do so with old school buses. The pastor’s daughter becomes involved sexually with an older boy -- about the same age as her deceased brother -- who plays such games. She is passionate more about the dangerous games. She would prefer not to engage in sexual intercourse with this older boy, but she does so that he will not dump her.

Of course, she conceals all such activities from her parents and she lies to them constantly. She resents them because she feels they still grieve more about her dead older brother than they care about her. She feels that other young people in the town blame her family for the town’s prohibitions against dancing and for the curfews. As soon as she graduates from high school, she wants to leave the town forever.

Then during the middle of the senior year, a new boy – his name is Ren McCormack – comes to live in the town and is introduced to the pastor’s daughter – her name is Ariel Moore – after a church service. In the following days, during and after school, Ariel flirts with Ren in an effort to attract him. She shows him the place at the railroad track, and she stands on the track as a train approaches. She arranges for him to participate in the other dangerous game with the large vehicles. She drops her older boyfriend so that she is available to Ren, but Ren is keeps his distance from her because he is dismayed by her dangerous behavior.

In the 1984 movie, the characters Ren and Ariel were played by the actors Kevin Bacon and Lori Singer.




In the 2011 movie they are played by the actors Kenny Wormald and Julianne Hough.

---

Ren’s mother grew up in the small town and then moved away to a large city (Chicago in the 1984 movie; Boston in the 2011 movie; the actor Wormald speaks with a delightful, native Massachusetts accent). In that big city, she gave birth to Ren (the story does not say whether the pregnancy began in the small town or in the large city). Then, when Ren was a school boy, the father disappeared, leaving the mother and Ren alone and without support.

In the 1984 movie, the mother returns to the small town with Ren. In the 2011 movie, the mother dies in Boston after suffering for a long time from leukemia, and so the orphan Ren comes to the small town to live with his mother’s brother (Ren’s uncle).

Although Ren is dismayed by the dysfunctional manner in which the small town’s young people have been dealing with the emotional trauma caused by the fatal car accident, he himself is dealing with several emotional traumas of his own. He had grown up without his father, and now he had been taken away from his friends and surroundings during the middle of his senior year and had been thrown as a stranger into a small town’s senior class, where newcomers were hassled. In the big city, he had excelled in gymnastics, a sport that essentially was unknown in the small town. The 2011 movie adds the trauma of his mother’s recent death from leukemia; he was orphaned and had come to the small town to live with his mother’s brother.

Trying to adjust to his new life in the small town, Ren sometimes becomes frustrated or upset, and he deals with his emotions by going to an empty warehouse, where he performs gymnastics and dances. His own recognition that his own self-therapy is more sensible and healthy than the local young people’s dangerous games motivates him to encourage the local young people to dance and to lead a protest against the small town’s restrictions on dancing.

Ren’s efforts lead him into a conflict against the pastor, who is the town’s main advocate for maintaining the restrictions on dancing. The screenwriter Pitchford has mentioned in an interview that his story features a conflict between two protagonists: 1) a boy who has lost his father, and 2) a father who has lost his son. This relationship becomes obvious once it is pointed out, but it is not depicted as an explicit factor in the two characters’ eventual resolution of their conflict. Each character seems to be chronically obsessed with his own loss, and I myself did not perceive that either Ren or the pastor recognized the other as a potential replacement for his own loss. This particular element (fatherless boy vs. sonless father) of their interaction is quite subtle in both movies, and I think it passes below the attention of most viewers.

However, Ren’s loss of his own father does explicitly motivate his own actions. Both movies include an incident in which Ren is asked why the dance issue has become so important to him. What real difference does it make to him whether or not the school can have a dance? Why is he investing so much time, effort and emotion into this controversy, when he probably will leave the town immediately after graduation anyway?

In both movies, Ren’s answer is similar. Since I have a transcript of the 1984 movie, I will quote it:

When Dad first threatened to leave, I thought it was because of me. I thought it was something that I wasn't doing right. And I figured there was something I could do to make it like it was, and then he'd want to stay. But when he left, just like that, I realized that everything I'd done -- hoping that he'd stay -- didn't mean shit. And I felt like: ''What difference does it make?''

But now -- now I'm thinking I could really do something. You know, I could really do something for me this time. Otherwise I'm just going to disappear.

In other words, life has meaning for a person when he can exert some positive effect on other people. The opportunities to exert such influence are limited, because eventually we disappear – we leave or we die. So, seize your opportunities to exert positive influence while you do still have them.

In the 1984 movie Ren’s father disappeared by abandoning his family. In the 2011 movie Ren’s mother disappeared too, by dying of leukemia. So, Ren was very aware that we all eventually will disappear from the lives of the people close to us and around us.

Ren realized that he could make a valuable contribution to the small town, by enabling its young people to relieve their stress and anxieties by dancing rather than by acting-out in self-destructive behavior. He found himself in the right place at the right time with the right potential contribution, and that is why his efforts in this controversy had become so important to him.

This is the movie’s main moral lesson: Help other people when you have the opportunities.

---

During the Carter Administration, there were four successful movies about dancing. The Turning Point (1977) depicted lives of professional ballet dancers, All That Jazz (1979) depicted the lives of professional musical dancers, Saturday Night Fever (1977) depicted the lives of semi-professional dancers who competed in dance contests, and Fame (1980) depicted the lives of students in a special school for future professional dancers.

In the decades before the Carter Administration there was a long series of musicals in which dancing was an artificial device inserted into stories that were not essentially about dancing. For example, gang members in West Side Story would dance and sing during their knife fights. The movie Grease (1978) was a musical in which the story revolved around a high-school dance, so the characters danced for a story-related reason and so also the characters danced with ordinary skill.

Thus, Pitchford began writing Footloose during a period when there was a development of realistic movies (not traditional musicals) about skilled, competitive dancers. These movies featured expert dancing, because the stories were about characters who danced expertly. Footloose was the first realistic movie (Grease had been a musical) about ordinary people who were learning to dance for pure fun and so did not dance expertly.

One character, Ren, did dance with extraordinary skill, because he had been a gymnast at his previous school. Both movies include a scene where he has become upset at school and so he goes to an empty warehouse and does a solo dance with many acrobatic movements.

Footloose also was perhaps the first movie that featured country-western dancing. The story includes a scene where several of the town’s young people drive to a city where there is a big place with country-western music and dancing.

Both movies include amusing scenes showing the small town’s young people clumsily and shyly learning to dance. Then during the prom at the movie’s end, all these young people dance well and confidently. Because of this surprising improvement, the movie ends excitingly and inspirationally for the audience.

---

The movie includes three sermons preached by the pastor. The first sermon is when Ren attends the church for the first time, right after he has moved into the small town. The second sermon is in the empty church on a Saturday evening, when the pastor practices for the next Sunday sermon he plans to give on the next morning. The third sermon is on the next, Sunday morning, when the pastor delivers a changed sermon (not the practiced sermon) in which he informs his congregation that he has adjusted his attitude toward the dance controversy.

The first two sermons in the 1984 movie are substantially different from the two corresponding sermons in the 2011 movie. In the 1984 movie, the two sermons are angry-God sermons, but in the 2011 movie the two sermons are kind-God sermons.

In the 1984 movie, the Sunday-morning sermon threatens the congregation with God's wrath and punishment:

He [God] is testing us. Every, every day, our Lord is testing us. If He wasn't testing us, how would you account for the sorry state of our society, for the crimes that plague the big cities of this country, when He could sweep this pestilence from the face of the earth with one mighty gesture of His hand?

If our Lord wasn't testing us, how would you account for the proliferation these days of this obscene rock and roll music, with its gospel of easy sexuality and relaxed morality? If our Lord wasn't testing us, why, He could take all these pornographic books and albums and turn them into one big fiery cinder like that!

But how would that make us stronger for Him? One of these days, my Lord is going to come to me and ask me for an explanation for the lives of each and every one of you. What am I going to tell him on that day? That I was busy? That I was tired? That I was bored?

No! I can never let up! I welcome his test. I welcome this challenge from my Lord, so that one day I can deliver all of you unto his hands. I don't want to have to do any explaining! I don't want to be missing from your lives!

In contrast, the 2011 movie's Sunday-morning sermon calls on the congregation to turn away from modern, big-city life in order to appreciate and return to old-fashioned qualities of traditional, small-town society. Ren has just arrived in this small town and is sitting in the congregation, and so he himself is being challenged by the sermon to adjust himself to this small-town society.

We have computers in our pockets, phones in our cars, money on a plastic card. How many people here remember going inside a bank to get your money? Remember Old Mr. Rucker? Every time you made a deposit, he’d give you a piece of Bazooka chewing gum. I’ve never met an ATM that made me feel special like Mr. Rucker did. Is that progress?

Why take a family vacation when you can watch TV together on the couch? They claim that the television is a portal to the world, but don’t be fooled. That television is a portal of lies, morally degrading music videos, reality television? 

What reality? I see nothing but the most base human cruelty and dysfunction. I see a celebration of unholy wealth that does nothing to reward hard work, but simply feeds off the sinner’s desire to be seen, to be noticed, to be used.

If that’s a portal to the world, then I want no part of it.

These [pointing to the congregation] are the people we have to tune in to -- everyone in this church. This is our social network. And we don’t need Facebook to do it

There’s only one book [picking up his Bible] we need!

And in the 1984 movie, the Saturday-evening practice sermon is heard by Ariel when she comes into the empty church in order to confront her pastor father:

And I beheld and heard an angel flying through the midst of Heaven, saying with a loud voice: “Woe, woe, woe to the inhabiters of the Earth.”

And I saw a star fall from Heaven unto the Earth, and the angel was given the key to the bottomless pit. And he opened the bottomless pit, and there arose a smoke out of the pit as smoke of a great furnace. And the sun and air were darkened by reason of the smoke of the pit.'

The pastor interrupts this practice sermon when he notices that his daughter Ariel is watching him, and then they have a conversation about their entire situation.

In the 2011 movie, the pastor’s Saturday-evening practice sermon is seen by Ren (instead of by Ariel), when he comes into the empty church. In a preceding scene, Ren had tried his best to convince the town council to permit dancing, but he had failed. The town council voted to maintain the ban. Now when Ren walks into the empty church, he sees the pastor practicing a sermon about how faith can overcome all obstacles. Faith is like a mustard seed that can grow into a tall tree. Faith can move mountains. Ironically, the pastor’s practice sermon inspires Ren to continue his efforts to remove the town’s prohibition against dancing.


The pastor's Saturday-evening practice sermon also expresses the pastor's own hopeful desire to overcome his own daughter's rebellion and to resume raising her to become a proper Christian adult. 

The two sermons in the 2011 movie are more characteristic of modern Christianity in the USA, and they also support the movie’s story and theme more intelligently.

After the Saturday-evening practice sermon, the pastor gives the movie's third sermon before the entire congregation on the following Sunday morning. This sermon is similar in both movies. In the 2011 movie, the pastor says:

I’m standing before you today with a troubled heart. I’ve insisted on taking responsibility for your lives. But I’m really just like the first-time parent who makes mistakes, learns from them as he goes along. And, like that parent, I find myself at that moment when I have to decide:

     Do I hold on?

     Or do I trust you to yourselves?

     Do I let go and hope that you’ve understood my lessons?

If we don’t start trusting our children, how will they ever become trustworthy?

I’m told that the senior class of Bomont High School has secured the use of a warehouse in nearby Bayson for a senior dance. Please join me to pray that our Lord will guide them in their endeavors.

---

The movie has a further moral lesson, which is that helping other people requires personal virtues – such as good judgment, effective communication, willingness to compromise, and accommodation of other people’s concerns.

After all, the pastor and other older people in the town banned music for a well-intentioned reason. They wanted to prevent other tragedies that might be consequences of future dances. They did not want any more pregnancies, any more drunken automobile accidents.

The eventual compromise on this issue was accomplished between the pastor and Ren. The pastor had lost his son, and Ren had lost his father, and so they instinctively reached out to each other, overcoming their initial hostilities toward each other.

Ironically, Ren turned out to be the most well-behaved and constructive young person in the small town, although he has come from a big city and has decided to challenge the dance prohibition. Ren  wore a tie to his first day of school. He rejected a school-mate's offer of some marijuana. He rejected Ariel's seductive advances.

Ren followed proper procedures to change the dance policy. He collected signatures on a petition and he addressed the town council. He used the Bible as a source of arguments in favor of dancing. When the town council nevertheless maintains the dance ban, he decided to organize his dance legally in a neighboring town rather than violate his own town’s ban. Then, he asked the confounded pastor's permission to take his daughter to the dance, saying he himself would not go if the pastor still disapproved.

In every step of this dispute, Ren complied with the rules and mitigates his adult opponents’ concerns, and therefore he gradually was able to prevail. His dance took place, and everyone was happy at the end.

Likewise the pastor is proper, thoughtful and respectful in every step of the dispute. These virtues are apparent in both movies, but are much more apparent in the 2011 movie. The pastor listens to his wife, to his daughter and to Ren, and eventually he adjusts his opinion The pastor does not approve the dance, but he agrees not to oppose it. He then exerts his influence in a sermon to his to persuade his church congregation to adjust their own opinions likewise.

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One of the soundtrack songs, “Holding Out for a Hero”, the lyrics of which were written by Pitchford, expresses female desire for males who are courageous -- who are invigorated by struggle, who are "fresh from the fight":

Where have all the good men gone
And where are all the gods?
Where's the street-wise Hercules
To fight the rising odds?
Isn't there a white knight upon a fiery steed?
Late at night I toss and turn and dream
Of what I need.

[Refrain]
I need a hero.
I'm holding out for a hero 'til the end of the night.
He's got to be strong,
And he's got to be fast,
And he's got to be fresh from the fight.
I need a hero.
I'm holding out for a hero 'til the morning light.
He's got to be sure,
And it's got to be soon,
And he's got to be larger than life.

Somewhere after midnight
In my wildest fantasy,
Somewhere just beyond my reach,
There's someone reaching back for me.
Racing on the thunder and rising with the heat,
It's going to take a superman to sweep me off my feet.

[Refrain]

Up where the mountains meet the heavens above,
Out where the lightning splits the sea,
I could swear that there's someone somewhere,
Watching me.

Through the wind and the chill and the rain,
And the storm and the flood,
I can feel his approach,
Like the fire in my blood.

In this song, a young woman yearns for a male hero whom she can admire as a god. She does not compare this ideal man to the God of the Christian religion, but rather to a god of the Greek religion – Hercules, riding like a white knight on a fiery steed. The young woman feels she should hold out for such a hero, despite her impatient passion. 


One irony of the Footloose story is that the pastor's daughter has been sexually spoiled by a local boy who dislikes dancing, not by Ren, the city boy who has come to the small town and who will overturn the dancing prohibition and will organize the first dance. Furthermore, when the pastor's daughter approaches Ren seductively, he refrains from involving himself sexually with her. 


At the end of the movie, just as the dance is beginning, this local boy comes to the dance and tries to disrupt it. However, Ren, with some help from Ariel, beats him up and chases him away. 


This scene resonates with a scene earlier in the movie, when Ariel physically attacked this local boy, but he beat her up decisively. Ariel alone was not able to eliminate this local boy, this sexual mistake, from her life until she found her real male hero who actually deserved her admiration and love.


Ren deserves Ariel's admiration and love not only because he is courageous, but also because he is virtuous. Ren has won the admiration of her parents, of her school-mates, of her entire community. 

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The movie Footloose treats the Christian religion in an intelligent and interesting manner. A Christian family's eldest son has died in a car accident several years ago, and the pastor father and daughter still have not reconciled themselves to the finality of that death. The pastor father compensates by trying to over-control the town's youth, and the daughter acts out in risky misbehavior that includes sexual promiscuity. The mother is ineffective in dealing with her still troubled husband and daughter.

Several other young people died in that same car accident, and so the entire small town remains troubled. Every annual graduation of students from the local high school is associated emotionally with the idea that many of the new young adults will die suddenly. This premonition of death causes many of the young people to engage in risky misbehavior.

This troubled Christian family encounters a young man who has come to their religious small town from a large city and upbringing that has made him rather uninfluenced by Christianity. This young man too has suffered losses in his own family. His father abandoned him when he was a small child, and (in the 2011 movie) his mother has died of leukemia. This boy still suffers emotionally from these family losses, although he is able to relieve his stress temporarily by dancing in private. 

 The boy decides to give his own, mortal life meaning by exerting himself to make a positive change in the small town, even though he still is a semi-stranger there. He campaigns to overturn the town's dance prohibition, but he does so in a manner that is cooperative and respectful. 

Eventually the boy positively influences the Christian family. The pastor father learns to trust the town's youth, and the daughter stops her rebellious, promiscuous misbehavior.  

The audience can foresee that he will marry into and join that Christian family and will to some extent replace the son who died in the car accident. 

Essentially, the movie addresses the fear and eventual certainty of death to which young people must reconcile themselves as they leave their families, schools and communities and go out as new, young adults into the outside world. Mortal life becomes meaningful for a person when he leads a virtuous, courageous, proper social life, making positive contributions and changes for other people around you. Such a life, despite eventual death, becomes joyous and can be celebrated my means of dance and other arts. 

Memories of Kathy Lange Brakke

My family moved to Seward, Nebraska, in 1964, the summer of my 11th birthday. We moved from Cincinnati, Ohio, where my father had been a pastor in an old urban congregation, to Seward, where he had accepted a faculty position to teach theology.

I liked Seward from the start. I loved the size because of the tremendous freedom. I could ride my bike from one side of town to the other, which was a huge advantage for making new friends. My first friends were Debi Schipull and Rose Radford who I met in Sunday School at St. John. Having a few weeks to get to know them made starting a new school less scary. I spent a lot of time exploring my new surroundings by bike, which was great exercise.

My sixth grade class was much larger than my Lutheran school class in Cincinnati. I liked being part of it and I liked being able to walk to school. It sure beat the hour-long bus ride I had been accustomed to. As I reflect on those days I see them as an incredible blessing. The adult we become is influenced greatly by all the people who have been part of our lives. For me, Seward was a very safe and secure environment and I will be forever grateful for those individuals who were my peers.

One of the things I remember about 6th grade was that we had to memorize the Six Chief Parts of Luther’s Small Catechism, with meanings, and recite them for our teacher, Mr. Schmeiding. If we could do that with three mistakes or less we were given the privilege of calling our parents from the principal’s office.

I also remember that Mr. Schmeiding liked a quiet classroom. He was often tapping a desk with a ruler saying, “the feet, children, the feet” which meant, Sit Still!!

Many of us ate hot lunches at school. My mom appreciated not having to pack bag lunches so strongly encouraged us to take them. My own children have a very difficult time believing that one of the favorite meals was the St. John Hot Dish. It was a layer of hamburger, a layer of sauerkraut and a layer of mashed potatoes.

Being assigned to St. John’s for student teaching was only for the bravest. As students, we were very accustomed to having student teachers and we did not believe in making life easy. Many a note was passed around to instruct classmates to drop a pencil at 10:06, etc. If an individual survived the St. John experience they were ready for any classroom. I’m sure that environment was part of the reason I never wanted to be a teacher.

My family lived in a beautiful old house owned by the college. Our address was 445 North Second which was on the corner of Moffit, a brick street, and Second. It was located half way between Concordia campus and downtown. Everything in Seward was walking distance and it was nothing to walk downtown. Being a shopper at heart it was a frequent trip for me.

An incentive for spending money in Seward was the practice of retailers giving Movie Money with each purchase. I think it was a penny for every 50 cents spent. It wouldn’t be long before you could buy a 35 cent movie ticket at the Rivoli. Of course any serious shopping was done in Lincoln. My mother, being a city girl, was only too happy to take us on shopping trips to Lincoln during school vacations.

We spent much of our time playing outside especially in the summer. We literally lived at the pool with lessons in the morning, swimming in the afternoon and after supper. Many of our evenings were spent playing Kick the Can with the Blomenbergs, who lived a block from us. Since we didn’t have air-conditioning it was probably pretty easy for the adults to keep track of their kids from the noise we made. I like to think they were happy sounds. Having six kids my parents were probably glad to have it outside. One of my favorite winter activities was ice skating on Plum Creek.

Most of us did not have a lot of material possessions but we didn’t think much of it because everyone was in the same boat. In our family we had what we needed with plenty of love.

We did learn to be self–sufficient, and for a female wanting a bigger wardrobe, that meant learning to sew. I learned much about sewing from Mrs. Middendorf. Her daughter, Marcia, and I made matching sleeveless shifts when we were 12. We wore those dresses with pride and for me, it was the start of many garments to come. Those days of mini skirts allowed me to sew an A-line skirt from a half yard of fabric. Paired with a sweater from the Sears catalog, a new outfit was created. Having five daughters, my dad never really complained about buying fabric. With the help of lessons learned from 4-H, I became a fairly good seamstress, good enough to sew my wedding gown years later.

It has been fun to think about those days in Seward. I could probably write more, given the time. High school would be another story and that too has lots of fond memories. My daughter went to college at Concordia Seward. It was fun to see the town through her eyes. I feel I had the advantage -- living there when I was young. It was a great place to be a child and I am so thankful Seward was part of my life.

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Following are some excerpts from messages that Kathy sent to me before she sent the above article:

Just want you to know I enjoyed reading your blog. My brother [David] found it and passed on the info to his sisters.

Recently my mom shared a story about a conversation she had with your dad many, many years ago. We were talking about going to church in Weller Hall. Our family consisted of five girls and one boy so she proposed to your dad one Sunday that he could trade a couple of his boys for a couple of her girls. He replied with a straight face, "You take one, you take them all".

I noticed in your profile that you are involved with home care. You might be interested in our business Indianapolis Senior Living. We've been open about a year and it has been an incredible journey.

My sister Ruth was in [your brother] Steve's class and has retired from teaching.

My sister Mary was in John Luebke's class. I plan to ask her about him. That must have been a class of free spirits. Mary was the most adventurous of our family. She spent two years in the Peace Corp in Africa.

Your blog has generated some interesting discussions among us [in my family]. It is so interesting to see how people take different paths in life. My family is pretty spread out. None of us live in Wisconsin, where my parents live. My own children are in Florida, California and Bogota, Colombia. We all live pretty traditional lives.

I do think Seward gave us strong roots and it is wonderful that you have taken time to record that. Keep it up. Maybe some college student will use it for some kind of sociology paper.

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Below is a message that Kathy's brother David Lange sent to me before Kathy contacted me:

I stumbled upon your blog tonight, and now three hours later I just want to thank you for the great effort you've put into it. Very fond memories.

I think you are a year ahead of my sister Kathy, and Ruth was the year younger. Our family was loaded with five girls plus me...sort of the reverse of your family! Your brother Larry was my classmate, and I was in your house way out on Columbia Avenue. seemed like 10 miles out in the boonies when I was a kid. My dad was a theology prof at Concordia from 1963-1977.

I'm currently a professor of civil engineering at the University of Illinois. My wife Rise and I have three kids, one of whom works at Concordia today. Rise's parents still live in Seward --her maiden name is Sloup.

Kathy and her husband Paul are in Indianapolis. Ruth and her husband Scott are in Loveland, Colorado. My other sisters are Mary, Lois and Ann.

Next Monday, April 4th, Concordia is dedicating a new stained glass window in the Weller auditorium which serves as their chapel. My sisters and I sponsored the window as a gift to Concordia in honor of mom and dad. Mom and dad are attending but none of us kids are able to make it. You can see the window at the Center for Liturgical Art blog.

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I did not find the item in the Center for Liturgical Art blog, but I found an article about this window gift on this webpage.

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Seated L-R: Ruth Sprain, Mary Zbikowski, Carol & Harvey Lange, Lois Rentschler. Standing L-R: Kathy Brakke, David Lange, Ann Barber.

The Final Resting Place of Mark Lemke

[The following is a letter that was written by Lee Meyer on October 31,2007, about the funeral of Mark (Gonzo) Lemke, who died on May 14, 2007. Other information about Mark's life and death was provided in an earlier post.]

I thought I would write a short letter here about my recent to trip to South Texas and the funeral of Mark Lemke. As you know he died last spring and the funeral was delayed until this fall because many of his friends were River people like Gonzo and returned to the Terlingua area after a season of leading river rafting trips in other places and rivers in the United States. Please pass this along as you see fit.

[Six photos of the funeral are in Lee Meyer's Picasa album.]

Jeff Taebel and I arrived early enough to allow to two full days of hiking in the Big Bend National park and the adjacent State park. The landscape is high desert with mountains that range up to 8,000 feet. The valleys and plains are covered with desert fauna and the higher altitudes look more pine forest like. It is a wide open area, including deep narrow water cut cannons, distantly remote, (the nearest decent grocery store is a 100 miles away) and a hard and wonderful setting to be in and as I learned a place to live a life.

His name was Gonzo -- with the name Mark and the place of this birth, Seward, unknown to most who knew him in this town. As I mentioned information about his background to some of the friends in Terlingua, they seemed polite but generally uninterested for it seemed it was irreverent to what they knew the person who was Gonzo. It matters more what he was than where he came from. These details and facts were not important to those living in the moment.

He was a powerful personality with a love of fun, the people around him and living fully. I was told about this wild blond hair, his wonderfully colorful sweaters, about adventures and experiences and enthusiastic friendliness toward all. He may have epitomized this place for, in my experience, every conversation and encounter with the people of Terlingua was full of friendliness and kindness. One woman told me how she threw herself at him only to be spurned because he had a girlfriend.

One Buddhist told me he was Buddhist-like, with a strong spirituality. It was a place where some of the assumptions of living in United States -- including organized religion, life as a consumer and a health-insurance-dependent culture -- are to some degree to be thrown asunder prior to settling down here. Other virtues of self-reliance -- the importance of knowledge and doing something well -- are in evidence.

At the same time the attendance at his funeral was a monoculture, for it was completely white, high-tech yet oriented to a low-impact life, heterosexual in its orientation, mostly childless, more than likely at least 2nd or 3rd generation born to the United States, oriented toward marijuana use combined with herbal medicine with the common element of beer. While the area had a large population from Mexico, as we had seen the pervious night at the Friday night dance at the Boathouse, that part of the population was not present for his funeral.

Gonzo lived on the other side of a small range of mountains from the town of Terlingua on a 40-acre tract of land, down a long gravel road adjacent to several of his friends who lived, it seemed, in other single shelters spotted around his local.

His place included a roof-covered parking area that was mainly for rain catchment, a small outbuilding, a covered eating area and a structure that was called a Yurt by those gathered with us, but really appeared to me be a high-tech tent-like structure, 20 feet in diameter and 18 feet tall with a frame of wood and a skin of rubberized fabric that included screened flaps for ventilation. With the inclusion of a solar-panel system, the yurt featured both air conditioning and heating and a refrigerator. The furnishing included a Lemke-family cast-iron frame bed, table, old wonderful dressers and storage units for food and the other essentials. The deck located on the east side included wonderful desert plants and a built-in hot tub. Friday evening out at his land we enjoyed many stories about Gonzo and the life, the setting sun and rising of the full moon.

The service was straightforward and untangled with any religious rituals that are the basis of most funerals. It started around 5 p.m. in front of the Starlight Bar with people gathering on the porch and adjacent parking lot. Gonzo’s cremated remains were placed in a life jacket in the middle of his large rubber raft set on a trailer pulled by his white Toyota truck. His brother John drove. The sound of the tires crunching on the gravel was the only signal beyond the slowly moving truck that the procession was on its way down the main rocky road of the town to the ghost-town cemetery, a five-minute walk from the Starlight Bar.

About 200 folks followed the raft. Once at the gates of the cemetery, his closest friends lifted the raft. I joined in but was feeling more like a representative from the life Gonzo came from than a member of this community. One of the raft carriers was a woman by the name of Kelly who was holding a brilliant display of red roses. In response to my inquiry, she told me with a passion in her voice that she loved Gonzo as so many of us did. I could feel her love and loss.

After John's reading of a few e-mails from friends of Gonzo that recalled events in his life, a few lines of remembrance by others, a reading of Be Here Now from Dama Ras and the singing of a sweet ballad by James Taylor, the assembled group took turns placing handfuls of the rocky clay earth over the created remains, which were placed in a small hole had been dug the pervious day by one of his friends named Taz.

People then moved off to the Boathouse Bar for a potluck dinner with music, Keg beer, fireworks and a personal highlight of a “ring of fire”. A Ring of Fire is a riverboat tradition to entertain your customers at night. It consists of stuffing steel wool in the fat end of a kitchen whisk, attaching a long string to the handle end, soaking the whole thing in lighter fluid, lighting it up and then spinning it to make the ring of fire. In this case there were a dozen or so people doing this at once on the exterior dance floor so that it appeared to be a field of fire all at once. It was a commemoration to Gonzo. A long evening of eating and drinking ensued but ended for us by 10 p.m. since we needed to leave by 5 the next morning so I could be back in the Twin Cities by Tuesday morning.

Gonzo choose a path in life that was completely different than anything I could have remotely imagined. It did seem like that life his father led in Seward, which included a man with a friendly manner, given to good times, lots of puns and jokes and a goal of living life to the fullest.

A Visit from a Concordia Gift Officer

Last week I was visited by Mike Mettenbrink, who serves as a Major Gift Officer in the Development Department of Concordia University. He had written to me in advance:

I have been sharing your “blogspot” with many friends, alums and supporters of Concordia that have close ties to the university and the Seward area as I travel around the country.

I talked with Mike for about three hours, and I enjoyed the conversation and learned a lot from him. He is one of four members of the Development Department who travel around the USA to tell potential donors about Concordia and to arrange for those who do decide to donate in large or small amounts, as single donations or as periodic donations.

Mike attended Concordia during the 1980s and was one of the first students to graduate with a major in Business Administration. He worked for many years as a sales representative for private industry and then about four years ago accepted an offer to return to Concordia to work as a gift officer for the college.

He lives a short distance north of where my family lived on North Columbia Avenue. His wife manages the university bookstore, and they have three children who attend St John Elementary School, grades two through seven.

Mike said that St John School is growing and improving. The faculty, the families and the university are optimistic about the school's future. Recently one of the teachers departed, and there were 20 applicants who applied to fill the vacancy.

Although Concordia is no longer a teaching college, its Education Department still collaborates with the elementary school. The university still sends its students to observe and to serve as student teachers, just like in the olden days when my Dad managed that program.

Some of St John's graduates continue their Lutheran educations by attending a Lutheran high school in Lincoln. That is not a boarding school, but the commute is reasonable, and the families carpool.

Concordia University's enrollment has grown to 1,700 students and includes graduate students who attend classes in Lincoln. The selection of study majors has become much broader. Many students major in business, science, information technology, mass communications and even forensics.

Many students still are majoring in subjects that prepare them for careers in Christian education and the ministry. The university still offers courses in theology and other religious subjects (including Hebrew and Greek languages), music, art, drama and athletics. About 20 students are preparing to transfer to a seminary after graduation. A larger number are preparing for careers in Christian education and music.

Mike gave me the current issue of the Broadcaster alumni magazine and promised to arrange a subscription (which is free). The magazine has improved since I saw it the last time. In this issue I was interested particularly by the articles about former art professor Reinhold Marxhausen (I babysat his sons), retiring athletic equipment manager Stan Schlueter (older brother of my classmate Jane Schlueter) and journalism professor Toby Beck (my childhood neighbor on Faculty Lane; I never will be able to call him Tobin.)

The concluding two paragraphs in the article about Toby, who came to teach at Concordia after a long career as a journalist, made an impression on me:

I talk [to my journalism students] about what it means to have a Christian world view, dealing with people as Christ would have us deal with them, based on Scripture, and about the various world views that people around the globe may have.

As a journalist I often thought about Martin Luther's explanation of the Eighth Commandment, to "put the best construction on everything". Not to gloss things over inappropriately, but to be honest and fair and make sure in the reporting of stories that all relevant sides were told in a way that was accurate and in proper context.

That kind of thinking is a good example of the education that was and still is instilled by Seward's Lutheran schools.

When I asked Mike Mettenbrink about the donors' motivations, he remarked that several extremely generous individual donors never attended or even visited Seward's schools, but were deeply impressed by some of the school's graduates who had moved to the donor's own towns and "let their lights shine" in the local schools and churches. These graduates were not only smart and effective, they also were moral and inspirational. These donors knew Concordia from its fruits and so they donated a lot of money in order to preserve and develop that educational orchard.

Reunion of the 1970 Class of Concordia High School

My Concordia High School class, which graduated in 1970, will enjoy a reunion in Seward during July 9-11. The only reunion of that class that I have attended was the one in 1990. I intend to attend this reunion. Contact me if you need details.

Here is a picture the students who attended in 2000. Click the picture to see the Flickr page, which shows the entire photo in different sizes and which names the people in the picture.

The Meaning of the Movie "Doubt"

The movie Doubt premiered in October 2008, but I watched it for the first time a couple of weeks ago. The movie's story takes place in a Roman Catholic parochial school in about December 1964 and focuses on the eighth-grade class that graduated in 1965. Since I was a student in the eighth-grade class that graduated from a parochial school in 1966, I watched the movie with attention toward similarities from my own experience.

The story includes a mention that the assassination of President Kennnedy (November 22, 1963) had happened in the previous year and includes some mentions that the school now was preparing for its annual Christmas pageant, so the story takes place in about December 1964.

I noticed some details of the story, set, props and costumes that reminded me of my own experiences at St John. There were a few scenes showing the students preparing for the Christmas pageant. The classrooms, desks, school books and various items were familiar to me from that time. There is a scene where the boys are practicing basketball, and the gym shorts looked like what we wore at St. John.

Since the faculty of the school in the movie were Roman Catholic priests and nuns, their clothing and celibacy made them different from St John's faculty in obvious ways, but I perceived that both faculties were devoted similarly to religious education of children.

On a higher level, I perceived that the movie dealt with the experience of doubt, which is an important concept in religion and perhaps especially in the Christian religion as it was taught to me. Doubts about one's religion are a natural and common experience, but they are suppressed and so cause private anxiety.

I thought that Doubt was a superb movie. This essay reveals the entire plot, including the surprise ending, but I do not think that reading this essay would spoil the experience of watching the movie for the first time afterwards.

Several critics placed Doubt in their lists of the best ten movies of 2008.

James Berardinelli, ReelViews - 2nd best

Joe Neumaier, New York Daily News - 2nd best

Kyle Smith, New York Post - 8th best

Peter Travers, Rolling Stone - 8th best

David Edelstein, New York - 9th best

Michael Rechtshaffen, The Hollywood Reporter - 10th best

Shawn Levy, The Oregonian - 10th best

All four of the movie's main actors were nominated for Academy Awards:

Meryl Streep for Best Actress

Philip Seymour Hoffman for Best Supporting Actor

Amy Adams for Best Supporting Actress

Viola Davis also for Best Supporting Actress

Also, the screenplay writer John Patrick Shanley was nominated for Best Adapted Screenplay. None of those actors receive an Oscar for this film, but the Critics Choice Award contest gave its award for Best Actress to Meryl Streep.

The movie depicts a situation where a Roman Catholic priest is suspected of sexually molesting a boy, but the movie is not anti-Christian or anti-Catholic. All the characters are intelligent, admirable people, whose religious beliefs and motivations are depicted in a respectful manner.

The Plot

The movie takes place in a Roman Catholic parochial school in The Bronx, New York, in the year 1964 and focuses on the eighth-grade class, which is taught by a young nun, Sister James (Amy Adams). The school's principal is an old nun, Sister Aloysius (Meryl Streep), who is subordinate to the parish's young priest, Father Flynn (Philip Seymour Hoffman).

Practically all the school's students are of Irish or Italian ancestry. During the middle of this school year, however, an African-American boy, Donald Miller, joins the eighth-grade class and becomes the first such child to attend the school.

In addition to being African-American, Donald is also homosexual. The movie does not show him to be effeminate, but his mother Mrs. Miller (Viola Davis) eventually tells Sister Aloysius that she had transfered Donald to the Catholic school from a public school where he had been beaten frequently -- mostly by other African-American students -- because they perceived that he was homosexual. At home, Donald is frequently beaten by his own father for the same reason.

Father Flynn gives special attention and friendship to Donald and makes him an altar boy. Donald admires Father Flynn and tells him he would like to become a priest. Sister Aloysius notices this close relationship and suspects that Father Flynn is seducing Donald.

One day while Sister James is teaching her eighth-grade class, she receives a note telling her to send Donald immediately from the class to the office of Father Flynn. When Donald returns to the class, he seems to be upset, and Sister James smells alcohol on Donald's breath. Sister James reports this incident to Sister Aloysius.

Sister Aloysius invites Sister James and Father Flynn into her office to confront Father Flynn about his relationship with Donald. At first Father Flynn refuses to discuss the matter with the two nuns, but eventually he explains that the janitor Mr. McGinn had caught Donald drinking Communion wine and reported the offense to Father Flynn. Therefore Father Flynn had called Donald out of class in order question and reprimand him. According to Father Flynn, Donald confessed to drinking the wine, but Father Flynn decided to forgive Donald and remain silent about the offense, so that Donald could continue to serve as an altar boy. Since the two nuns had compelled Father Flynn to tell this incident, however, Donald now would have to be removed from the position of altar boy.

Sister Aloysius does not accept Father Flynn's explanation. She still suspects that Father Flynn called Donald out of class in order to give him some alcohol to drink and to molest him. Father Flynn challenges Sister Aloysius to question Mr. McGinn and thus to confirm the truth of Father Flynn's account.

Father Flynn leaves Sister Aloysius' office, and Sister Aloysius and Sister James talk some more. Sister James says she believes Father Flynn's explanation. Sister Aloysius indicates that it would not be worthwhile to question Mr. McGinn, because she would not believe him either. Sister Aloysius says she is certain that Father Flynn is molesting Donald and that she intends to get rid of him from the parish and school.

Sister Aloysius invites Mrs. Miller to her office, and Mrs. Miller explains that she realizes that Donald is homosexual. Mrs. Miller does not care much that Father Flynn might be sexually molesting Donald. She is grateful that at least Father Flynn is being nice to Donald. She figures that if Donald graduates from this school's eighth grade, then he can get into a good high school and then later get into a good college.

The hostility betwen Sister Aloysius and Father Flynn grows, and eventually they meet again in Sister Aloysius' office to argue about the situation. She tells him that she phoned a nun in the previous parish where he had served as a priest, and the other nun had informed her that he had been compelled to leave that parish because of some sexual misbehavior. He denies this accusation, but he avoids answering several direct questions that Sister Aloysius asks. He says that everyone has sinned, but he does not specify any sins that he committed in this regard.

Although Father Flynn continues to deny that he molested Donald, he himself asks his church superiors to remove him from his assignment in the parish and school. He tells his congregation that he is departing to a new assignment, and then he does depart immediately.

Afterwards, Sister Aloysius and Sister James have a conversation in which Sister James says that she still believes Father Flynn's explanation completely and believes that he was innocent in the matter. Sister Aloysius admits that she had not really phoned any nun at Father Flynn's previous parish. She had made up that story, but she considered Father Flynn's immediate resignation from the parish to be proof that he indeed did have a history of homosexual molestation.

Then in a suprise ending, Sister Aloysius breaks down and weeps and admits that she has doubts about the matter.

The movie's plot is described in much more detail on this webpage and on this webpage.

The Meaning

Father Flynn's evasive answers in his last argument with Sister Aloysius and his immediate resignation indicated to me that he indeed did have a history of molesting male students. I think, though, that he was trying to control himself in this parish and that he had not molested Donald. Father Flynn's experiences with his own homosexuality had given him a special sympathy for Donald, and so he sincerely wanted to protect and help Donald and did not intend to seduce him.

The mystery of whether or not Father Flynn had sexually molested Donald was not, however, the major question that the movie raised for the viewers. Rather, the major question is how anyone should deal with a situation in which he doubts that he is following a proper path in life.

At the beginning of the movie, Father Flynn gives a sermon to his congregation about that very theme. He points out that in the previous year President Kennedy had been assassinated, and afterwards the entire population of our country shared common doubts about whether we were following a proper path. Father Flynn then contrasted that feeling of a shared doubt with the feeling that an individual feels when he is suffering severe problems and thinks he might be following a wrong path in life. Father Flynn ends his sermon by reassuring his congregation that in those situations of individual doubt, they never are really alone. He implies that such doubts are shared by other people and also that God accompanies and is available to every individual in such a situation.

If Father Flynn did have a history of homosexual misbehavior in his previous church assignments, then he was aware that his special relationship with Donald might lead to trouble. On one hand he intended to help Donald, but on the other hand he might become involved in a sexual relationship with the boy.

Then when Father Flynn was confronted and accused by Sister Aloysius, he had to decide whether to continue to dispute her accusations, which still were false, or to give up and quit the parish and the school. He felt that if he stayed, then he could modernize the school over the old-fashioned, strict discipline and mindless, arbitrary rules that were imposed by Sister Aloysius. On the other hand, he feared that if he continued to resist the accusations of Sister Aloysius, then he as a modernizing priest eventually would be discredited in an embarrassing scandal. In the end, he decided to leave this assignment so that he could try anew in a different assignment.

These were decisions that Father Flynn had to make alone. Perhaps he confessed to and consulted with his superior priest, but ultimately he himself decided first to develop a close relationship with Donald and then to quit the parish and the school. Father Flynn essentially was alone in this doubt and in his decisions.

Likewise, Sister Aloysius was alone in her doubt and decisions. Early in the movie, she remarked that in previous years the church had a senior priest who had dealt with a similar situation where a junior priest was molesting students. Now, however, the nuns themseves had to deal with this situation, and she was the only nun with the insight, experience and personality who was capable of dealing with the situation.

I was surprised at the end when she broke down and wept under the strain of dealing with her own doubt about the situation. This seemed to end the movie with a false note, but afterwards as I thought about it, I felt a richer appreciation of her personal mental and spiritual struggles with the situation.

Likewise, Sister James was alone in her doubts and decisions. She admired Father Flynn, and it surely was a very difficult for her to report her suspicions to Sister Aloysius. Then, as she changed her mind to thinking that he was innocent, she had to deal with the disapproval and contempt of Sister Aloysius and with the resentment of Father Flynn.

Likewise, Mrs. Miller was alone in her doubts and decisions. Her husband added to her difficulties in dealing with the problems caused by her son Donald's homosexuality. Her husband beat and rejected Donald, so she alone made the decisions and efforts to help her son try to succeed in life.

These four characters each struggled alone with their doubts and decisions. Their paths crossed in this situation, but there was practically no helpful cooperation among them, and their was no happy ending for any of them.

Nevertheless, each of them found the inner resolve to make important, thoughtful decisions and to accept the consequences.

Father Flynn had ended his sermon by reminding his congregation that when they as individuals suffered through doubtful situations, they were not alone. He did not mean, though, that they always would receive advice and help from other people or even from God. He meant only that they were not alone in such suffering, because we all suffer through such situations. We always should appreciate at least that consolation.

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In a religious context, the concept of doubt usually applies to doubt about the religion itself. The person doubts that God exists or doubts that God is good or doubts that his religion is true.

That kind of doubt did not appear in this movie. None of the characters expressed any doubts about their religious beliefs.

However, people who are suffering profound doubts about their religion probably will relate the movie to that concern. When Father Flynn preaches that each of us suffers doubts individually that we are on a proper path, many viewers of the movie will think about their own doubts that they are wasting their lives on a religion that might be foolish and false. Father Flynn's assurance, at the beginning of the movie, that they are not alone in such individual doubts should engage them in the further story of the movie.

For those viewers who are suffering severe doubts about their religion, I think that the movie at least gives a good impression about people who have committed themselves to very religious lives. All the characters have admirable qualities and deal with their problems in an intelligent manner. They all are comfortable in their religious lives. They all are striving to raise children to become religious adults. The movie brings the viewers into the lives of these religious people and develops the viewers' sympathies toward them.