This is the outline for two classes I taught as a substitute for Fr. Alan Deck, SJ, at Loyola Marymount University, Los Angeles, November 2013. The course explored "the nature of and the connections between culture, faith, and spirituality … in the context of cultural, ideological, and religious pluralism and secularism using popular film …"

1. Ways of seeing
Sr. Rose Pacatte, FSP

2. THINK THEOLOGICALLY
“You will need to know what you believe
about God as well as God’s ongoing, eternal
communication with us”
-
Meredith Gould “The Social Media Gospel”

3. THINK SACRAMENTALLY
• Sacraments are outward signs of invisible
grace
• Cinema reveals inner realities through
outward visual and aural signs
• What inner, transcendent, transforming
grace, signs of the divine, are being revealed

4. Common beliefs between the three
Abrahamic (monotheistic) faiths:
theology
• One God
• Personal
• Transcendent

5. Attributes of God
• Common
– Omniscinece
– Omnipotence
– Omnipresence
– Omnibenevolence
– Eternal
– Immaterial
– The source of morality

6. How we understand – and appreciate –
cinema depends on
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Age
Education
Life experience
Human development
Faith formation
Moral and ethical imagination
Expectations

7. Values
Values are overarching ideals that
guide our lives
What are the three most
important values that guide your
life?

8. Existential questions
What is really going on deep in the collective
human psyche?
What does it truly mean to be human? How can
we live transformatively?
Is God present here?
- N. Usslemann

9. Catholic Christians believe
What is truly human is truly of the Gospel and
what is truly pf the Gospel is truly human
Cf. Gaudium et Spes

10. Existential
• These existential questions are always present
to humanity but sometimes it takes a cultural
parable to make us aware and attentive to
these very questions.
• - N. Usslemann

11. Character
 Empathy
 What you do when no one is looking
 “How would you feel if someone did that to you?”
 Character education = human formation
 The spiritual is built upon the human

12. Character
Sow a thought and you reap an action; sow an act
and you reap a habit; sow a habit and you reap a
character; sow a character and you reap a destiny.”
– Ralph Waldo Emerson

13. Content vs context
• Not what’s “in” the movie
• It’s what the movie MEANS

14. Jesus’ Family Values
• Not
– Sex
– Violence
– Bad language
– Drugs
– Violence
– Alcohol

15. What are Jesus’ family values?
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To feed the hungry
To give drink to the thirsty
To clothe the naked
To give shelter to the homeless
To visit the sick
To ransom the captive
To bury the dead.

16. More of Jesus’ family values
The spiritual works of mercy
• To instruct the ignorant
• To counsel the doubtful
• To admonish sinners
• To bear wrongs patiently
• To forgive offences willingly
• To comfort the afflicted
• To pray for the living and the dead

17. Morality
• Why does morality matter?
• If you believe, then you believe what God tells
us is right and good
• Ten Commandments
• The Commandment of Love
• Principles & Themes of Catholic Teaching

18. Conscience
• Conscience is out true home

19. Conscience
• Not to live by one’s conscience is
homelessness

20. Dilemma and Drama
• The most interesting movies deal with the
dilemma between following or not following
one’s conscience
• The consequences of one’s choices on one’s
life and the lives of others

21. Which religions
believe in these ideas?
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Human dignity
Common good
Solidarity
Option for the poor
Rights and responsibilities
Family, community, participation
Care for the earth
These are themes of Catholic social teaching

22. Ways of seeing
Part II
Sr. Rose Pacatte, FSP

23. Spirituality
• Relationship with God and others that flows
from religious belief
• If you are “spiritual” but not “religious” it’s like
looking for freedom without responsibility
• Communication
• Encounter
• Way of seeing, way of believing, way of
being, way of doing

24. The face of God
Cinema and the face of God

25. Homework
World cinema can enable profound learning
experiences for audiences about the lives of
others
To the extend that these are about the human
experience, they reveal people’s faith

26. Global film
• The meaning of the films rises from the
relationships of the characters with one
another, their society, their environment, their
beliefs
• It is in these stories’ exquisite expressions of
human love that God is revealed for the
characters and for the audience.

27. Trailers from selected films
• As suggesetd By Fr. Deck

28. Let us remember that the world
is permeated by grace even
when it does not seem so
(cf. Karl Rahner)