This coming year, I hope at long last to draft a story that I have been brooding over for nineteen years, since I completed the 2002 Act One writing program in Chicago. It’s a narrative about a young man and an aging nun navigating the tempest of American Catholic seminary life in the 1990s – it’s part Dead Man Walking, part Doubt, part Peanut Butter Falcon. Rather than going directly to script, I’m drafting it as a novel, then deciding if it merits going to screenplay.
The story is set in an arena I know intimately – namely, an American Catholic seminary in the 1990s. Given recent developments in the scandals in the Church, the story seems timely. This is not a documentary, or a scandal script, per se, but really intended as a theological thriller in the vein of Charles Williams’ novel Descent Into Hell.
As you might imagine, this is rather highly charged material, that has to stare squarely into the face of some very uncomfortable realities. As Flannery O’Connor once wrote in an essay entitled The Church and the Fiction Writer:
A belief in fixed dogma cannot fix what goes on in life or blind the believer to it…. If the Catholic writer hopes to reveal mysteries, he will have to do it by describing truthfully what he sees from where he is. An affirmative vision cannot be demanded of him without limiting his freedom to observe what man has done with the things of God….
It is when the individual’s faith is weak, not when it is strong, that he will be afraid of an honest fictional representation of life; and when there is a tendency to compartmentalize the spiritual and make it resident in a certain type of life only, the supernatural is apt gradually to be lost. Fiction, made according to its own laws, is an antidote to such a tendency, for it renews our knowledge that we live in the mystery from which we draw our abstractions. The Catholic fiction writer, as fiction writer, will look for the will of God first in the laws and limitations of his art and will hope that if he obeys these, other blessings will be added to his work. The happiest of these, and the one he may at present least expect, will be the satisfied Catholic reader.
I’ve hesitated for a long time to move forward with the project. Only recently have I felt ready (personally) to address this subject in a way that I hope will be redemptive for the audience. At least I know that the story, as it is unfolding, has been redemptive for me.
I plan to first draft the project as a novel, and then work on its adaptation for the screen. (I understand that Graham Greene took this approach with The Third Man).
I’d be grateful if you’d consider keeping this in your prayers.
The operative title for the project is Saint Judas. Pre-work reading includes:
The Third Man – Graham Greene
Goodbye, Good Men – Michael Rose
Ungodly Rage – Donna Steichen
Trojan Horse in the City of God – Dietrich von Hildebrand
Descent into Hell – Charles Williams
The Chocolate War – Robert Cormier
The Power and the Glory – Graham Greene
Story – Robert McKee
Praying over you over this project, Clayton. The undertaking of it is already a redemptive story. I’m excited to hear the stories of the journey of the script. Godspeed!
I’m so grateful to Flannery for her wisdom. Leaning on this passage:
“If the writer uses his eyes in the real security of his Faith, he will be obliged to use them honestly, and his sense of mystery, and acceptance of it, will be increased. To look at the worst will be for him no more than an act of trust in God; but what is one thing for the writer may be another for the reader. What leads the writer to his salvation may lead the reader into sin, and the Catholic writer who looks at this possibility directly looks the Medusa in the face and is turned to stone.
By now, anyone who has had the problem is equipped with Mauriac’s advice: “Purify the source.” And, along with it, he has become aware that while he is attempting to do that, he has to keep on writing. He becomes aware too of sources that, relatively speaking, seem amply pure, but from which come works that scandalize. He may feel that it is as sinful to scandalize the learned as the ignorant. In the end, he will either have to stop writing or limit himself to the concerns proper to what he is creating. It is the person who can follow neither of these courses who becomes the victim, not of the Church, but of a false conception of her demands.
The business of protecting souls from dangerous literature belongs properly to the Church. All fiction, even when it satisfies the requirements of art, will not turn out to be suitable for everyone’s consumption, and if in some instance the Church sees fit to forbid the faithful to read a work without permission, the author, if he is a Catholic, will be thankful that the Church is willing to perform this service for him. It means that he can limit himself to the demands of art.”
https://www.doxaweb.com/assets/fictionwriter.pdf
I’ve recently learned that the priest that found my screenplay idea upsetting has been spreading concerns about me and my writing project with his friends, including a bishop, the rector of a cathedral, and the founder of a religious community.
As a result, I’ve offered to end my formal association with The Christopher Inn International after nineteen years, in order to protect its mission of service to priests and bishops. This will give me more freedom to do what I feel called to do, without worrying about any negative impact on the work of the CI International apostolate.
I’ve been without a spiritual director for eight years, and am seeking to remedy that soon. There are turbulent waters ahead that I’m not likely to navigate successfully without some solid spiritual counsel. Your prayers are most welcome.
Very exciting! May creativity and free flowing expression overwhelm you!
xo Marcy and Mac
Thanks! I’m excited to begin putting it down on paper.