The Shard in London was unveiled this week, a glass building so tall and sharp that it threatens to pierce God’s eye. Some think it’s preposterously phallic and ugly. I’m with those that see it as inventive and hopeful. South of the river, London is still dominated by rotting Victorian warehouses and modernist blocks. If The Shard is the sign of a brave new futurism, then so be it. I’d rather live in a city dominated by alien rhomboids and metal cathedrals than the tired slums of yesteryear, when the money was slight and the imagination lacking.

However, I was surprised by my old priest, Fr Ray Blake of Brighton, comparing The Shard to the Tower of Babel in the Bible. Quite what he means is hard to tell because the meaning of Babel is itself opaque. In the story, a united humanity builds a tower, “whose top may reach unto Heaven.” God sees the tower and says, “Behold, the people is one, and they have all one language; and this they begin to do; and now nothing will be restrained from them, which they have imagined to do. Go to, let us go down, and there confound their language, that they may not understand one another's speech. So the Lord scattered them abroad from thence upon the face of all the earth: and they left off to build the city.”

There are two ways of reading this story. One is that is simply explains why we speak different languages – man reached a certain point in his civilization and God decided, in his infinite wisdom, to mix things up a bit. Babel is thus an “origin myth” (which could be literally true or fable) that has no more moral weight than all those interminable lists of “begats” that we get in Genesis. This God seems rather capricious.

An alternative explanation is that man was punished for the sin of pride. He constructed a tower in celebration of himself (it was not a temple) and from manmade things. Realizing that man had the capacity to stop worshipping him and start worshipping themselves, God evens the playing field by scattering humanity across the continents. Later, Christians believe, God offers Christianity as a way of reuniting ourselves around the divine made flesh. Of course, we pretty much screwed that up, too.

So is The Shard the new Tower of Babel? I wouldn’t say so. It’s certainly built for the purpose of man’s enjoyment rather than worship of God, but then Christ is healthily contemptuous of such things and urges us to render material them unto Caesar anyway. “You can have your consumerist, wealth-obsessed civilization and keep it,” the modern prophet might say. “We are more interested in what happens next.” Critics of The Shard should adopt the Franciscan approach and wander through the opulent city in the rags of the poor. Be in the world, but not of it and chuckle at the follies of the rich.

But what the Tower story does remind us that the antithesis of monotheism – Judaic, Christian or Muslim - is worship of man. That might seem like a harmless assertion, but actually it contradicts the modern impulse to put man first, be it for benign or malign reasons. You find that in theology, where rules and teachings have been adapted to make it easier to be a believer. It sometimes feels like my own Catholicism only encounters orthodoxy for 60 minutes on a Sunday morning. The rest of the week is a constant negotiation over what is and isn’t the right thing to do. 

Within civil society, there was a trend in the 20th century to see man as the genius of his own invention, someone who could command his own destiny. Disease, environmental catastrophe, recession and the pitiless logic of war indicate that he cannot. Mankind is primed for self-destruction: only this species would behold a wonder like the split atom and then use it to murder hundreds of thousands at Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Love man – yes. But don’t worship him. It’s the failure to recognize a moral order beyond what men want that leads to the collapse of civilizations. 

Last week, I returned to the Baptist church that I grew up in for a wedding. It was quite a culture shock. Having spent ten years going to Catholic Masses – with Latin, choirs and enough incense to suffocate an elephant – I’d forgotten the simple joy of a few chairs slung around a table and a band belting out Shine Jesus Shine (the pastor’s wife was on keyboard). The bride was so overcome with emotion that she almost had to be carried down the aisle (“We finally did it, ma!”). The pastor gave a fine, Old Time Gospel sermon that struck the right note of love and wrath. And afterwards there was even a little wine, soaked up by fruit cake.

One of the greatest gifts we have in life is the sacred. Most of the human experience is mundane or tarnished by mundanity; the body rots, eye sight fails, friends let you down, temptation wins, the will saps and the mind slips. But then there are rules and rituals that help us transcend all of this and experience a moment of Heaven on Earth. Marriage is a good example.

Much of what I’ve seen of marriage has not been great. A good proportion of my family are divorced or raised by single parents, and everywhere else there is routine and bitterness. The closest relationship I’ve known is between my aunt and uncle. My uncle is one of those perennially, terminal ill men who has relied on my aunt for everything. And yet my aunt has never shirked her duty and never would. They are not in love, but they love each other. My aunt says, “He was a very good father and he always looks after us. So now we look after him.” It might not be romantic, but their partnership is rooted in a an old fashioned commitment to the marriage vows. And the vows are strict and unbending. The “in sickness and in health” bit terrifies me the most; I’m far too selfish to waste my time making chicken soup for the ill.

Looking over all the photos on my aunt's mantelpiece, the ones that are still polished and sparkling are the wedding ones. A woman clothed in white, like a princess; a man in top hat and tails like a Victorian gentleman. It says something about the meaning of marriage that no one ever dresses down for it. And why is everyone in tears? Remembering that some folks insist that marriage is purely a social contract designed to perpetuate the Capitalist patriarchy, why does it make people weep for joy? Is this a purely Pavlovian response bred by Hollywood and the Church?

No, the emotion is real and justified. The marriage ceremony takes the banal reality of a very basic human function – the desire to be with someone as much as possible – and elevates it to the divine. It’s a union blessed by God and what we’re witnessing is nothing less than a miracle: two individuals who are broken without each other becoming healed by each other's love. Life is best appreciated this way - as a series of miracles, of which these natural imperatives are among the most wonderful. Next will come conception, then birth, then baptism, and finally death. It isn’t just a biological cycle. It’s a journey every bit as challenging and rewarding as swimming the Sea of Tranquility.

But we have to be in the right frame of mind to appreciate the splendor, which is probably what accounts for the white dress and tails. I suspect that few people who get married nowadays are as virginal as the bride gown suggests. But romance is all about creating new states of being that take us closer to perfection. Much as the Tristan chord transports us to Valhalla, or the smell of strawberries evokes a perpetual summer, so the ritual of marriage makes us better prepared to receive and love one another. Again, that’s what the sanctification is all about: the transformation of something ordinary into something extraordinary. That experience prepares us well for a lifetime of dull holidays, long silences, arguments over the in-laws, and chicken soup.

How wonderful it is that we have the tools to make this happen, to experience the divine in this life. It's one of the great legacies of a Judeo-Christian culture, which preached that we could know God personally if we wanted. Plato would be jealous. For while he dreamed of imitating the “music of the spheres,” he could never hope to hear it for himself because it was only a metaphysical speculation. We, by contrast, live in an age of miracles. I only wish that we better equipped our people to seek and see them. Materialism and secularism blind us to how incredible ordinary life really is.

I will definitely die a Catholic. No doubt about it. A Catholic doesn’t just die – they reconcile. They accept their mortality and submit to the will of God, trusting that he will forgive them for all the evil that they have done. Like the Prodigal son, they come home. I have accepted the teachings of the Catholic Church and I have faith that the Last Rites, honestly sought and validly delivered, will see me to Heaven’s gate. In the final analysis, it is this faith that makes me a Catholic.

But I often find it hard to live like a Catholic. Part of the problem is that I am a convert. Going to Mass and sitting through dirge-like hymns, masticated liturgy, and boring sermons doesn’t come naturally. I was raised a Baptist, and although I rejected it in my teens, I am starting to realize what an impact it had upon me. As a personality type, I am a fire and brimstone evangelical.

I should stress that theologically I am strictly Catholic. But, o, what I’d give to hear a bit of gospel! A sermon with shouting! A tambourine! A bass guitar! And-a-one-two-three-four – “Majesty! Worship his Majesty! Unto Jesus, be all glory, honor, and praise!” To anyone not born within the sound of righteous clarinets, this probably all seems bizarre. But I was twelve years old when I saw my first demon being cast out. I am cut from a different polyester.

Much of modern Catholic culture lacks the certainty that I was raised with. As a child, I was taught that everything you need to know about God and man is found in the Bible. If the Bible had said Newt Gingrich was a virgin, we’d have believed it. Faith was a matter of black and white, right and wrong. Sunday School wasn’t a thoughtful flick through a “moral matters” textbook, it was a trial of fire. God was everywhere, always watching you. Failure to feel His presence was your fault – your lack of faith. There was no slowing down for doubters. 

The most ubiquitous phrase was “God willing.” It articulated an almost Islamic faith that God was behind every action and consequence. “I’ll pass my exams, God willing.” “I’ll get a job, God willing.” “I’ll be out in nine to ten months, God willing.” God willed it and it was done. And you didn’t ask any damned questions about it.

My upbringing made converting to Catholicism difficult – although not in the way that I expected. I accepted the theology totally and without equivocation. But without any ethnic link to Catholicism (my father’s family are Irish Catholics, but totally out of practice) I found it a bit of a culture shock. 

Baptism reinforces its tenets every day with aggressive proselytizing. Not so Catholicism. Catholicism is a religion of silence and contemplation. That’s fine and understood, but sometimes – and, yes, this is a subjective judgment – the modern Church is a little too quiet for my taste. Bishops, it can feel, prefer tolerance to truth. Many parishes have a limp sociability that papers-over cracks of disbelief. Priests bend over backwards to reassure people of other faiths but are reticent about pushing the validity of their own. Evangelism is a strict no-no. All too often, it is lay people who have to pick up the banner of social conservatism; the church hierarchy seems scared of it.

All of this is a long winded way of articulating why I’m so frustrated with polls that show that American Catholics are overwhelmingly in favor of contraception. Public Policy Polling reports that, “There is a major disconnect between the leadership of the Catholic Church and rank and file Catholic voters on this issue. We did an over sample of almost 400 Catholics and found that they support [Obama’s mandate for contraception coverage in Catholic healthcare plans] 53-44, and oppose an exception for Catholic hospitals and universities, 53-45. The Bishops really are not speaking for Catholics as a whole on this issue.”

This is the phenomenon of “I’m a Catholic but…,” and it really makes no sense to a former Baptist. No Baptist would ever say, “I’m a fundamentalist but I don’t believe in all of it.” That would be a contradiction and a rejection of faith and might even get you excluded from the church. But in the contemporary Catholic Church, it is something I hear from the laity all too often. It makes no sense. For what is a Catholic except someone who accepts Catholic doctrine? Isn’t that what defines us?

There are many complex reasons why the “I’m a Catholic but…” phenomenon is widespread. But a good insight into it is offered in a fine blog post by my friend and colleague Peter Foster. Peter is a Catholic, but he writes in the Daily Telegraph of his dislike of Rick Santorum thus: “I can’t escape the whiff of the witch-hunt about Mr Santorum, who is of a breed of Catholic unfamiliar to us English: a man of the strictest Catholic theology … whose message is transmitted through a distinctly evangelical amplifier … I’m afraid I can’t find much that’s terribly sympathetic or merciful in Mr Santorum, and I’m not sure that’s a particularly good quality in a man who wants to assume the awesome responsibilities of the US presidency.”

Peter’s problem with Santorum is partly his opposition to government funded pre-natal testing. Peter concedes that Santorum’s critique is “truthful”, but what disturbs him is the presidential candidate’s tone. He writes, “Perhaps it is because I was brought up as a middle-of-the-road English Catholic – show up on Sundays, eat fish on Fridays (more expensive than meat now, of course) and don’t ever sing the hymns too loudly (that’s a vulgar habit Anglicans have) – that I find Rick Santorum so, um, scary.”

I don’t find Santorum scary. In fact, I find his tone on moral matters refreshingly clear. But here is the likely difference between me and Peter. I was raised in an evangelical culture that is largely imported from America. He was raised in a cradle Catholic community that is steeped in the modern Catholic culture of sober reflection and ecumenical goodwill. Yet – acknowledging the cultural differences – I still struggle to empathize with Peter’s reaction to Santorum’s rhetoric. Do you believe that Santorum is right or not? If yes, then what’s the problem?

I can’t count the number of times that I’ve sat with Catholic priests, listened to them talk softly about the problems of the world, and wanted to scream, “What do you believe, man?! Identity it, testify it, and let’s save some souls!” But instead, everything is deadened by another cup of tea and a sleepy rosary by the fire. Naturally, there are priests who are thrilling and compelling – men who wage a permanent war on apathy and indecision. But there is, in many quarters, a scent of death about the Catholic Church. We are waiting for our extinction at the hands of barbarians or old age.

It wasn’t always like this. My new biography of Pat Buchanan explores an age when Catholics were confident and outspoken. In the 1950s, American Catholics filled whole stadiums to pray for the conversion of Russia. They believed that they were right and they weren’t afraid to say so. Santorum represents a revival of this spirit.

I shall close on a quote from Buchanan’s memoirs, Right From the Beginning: “There was an awe-inspiring solemnity, power, and beauty about the old Church, which attracted people who were seeking the permanent things of life … Not only did we proclaim ourselves to be “the one holy Catholic and apostolic Church,” under the watchful eye of the Holy Ghost – with all others heretical – we were gaining converts by the scores of thousands, yearly … Ecumenism was not what we were about; we were on the road to victory. Why compromise when you have the true Faith?”

Pray for me during the Lenten season, a sinner also.

_ Advent always brings out mixed emotions in me. On the one hand there is the thrill of Christmas’s approach – the promise of new life and rebirth. On the other, there is the niggling knowledge that some people will spend the holiday season alone. It’s a time for introspection, for asking “Have I done enough for others during the year?” The answer is almost always, “No.” The cold weather and the bare branches of the trees make it all so much worse. There’s a ring of finality about the season: “Ah well, another year of being an indolent, selfish layabout. Nothing you can do about it now.”

I’ve spent the last couple of weeks living in a monastery, largely to complete a book chapter (now uncompleted) but also to commune with God in the run up to Christmas. The guest house is about 300 yards from the chapel, yet that hasn’t stopped me from never entering it. I’ve spent most of the time curled up in a warm bed reading Margaret Atwood’s latest novel and watching reruns of Everybody Loves Raymond (I love that guy). The monks tell me that this is nothing to be ashamed of, that I’m here to rest as well as worship. But monks are like that: they never complain, never criticize.

At least, that’s how Benedictine monks behave. I’ve stayed with the Dominicans and it wasn’t such an easy ride. It was a silent order and services began at 5 in the morning. Conversation was restricted to an hour after lunch, accompanied by some bitter coffee and leaf raking. I managed to make one Mass at 7 am. The guest master came to my cell afterwards to invite me to breakfast only to discover that I had got straight back into my pajamas and into bed. It was a miserable week and, because I presumed they’d have internet (who doesn’t?!) I didn’t bring any entertainment. The result: seven silent days in the company of an Italian novel (unread) and a 1,200 piece jigsaw puzzle (unfinished). Needless to say, I never touched the Bible in the bedside drawer. Thankfully, the Benedictines are far more clubbable than that (and they drink wine).

My Protestant friends and family find my frequent stays in monasteries odd. They ask, why do you go and why do they let you in? I go because I can and they let me in because they should. There’s nothing contractual about it, no exchange of material things. Of course, I give whatever donation I can afford (not very much, thankyou George Osborne) but we approach the arrangement as autonomous individuals. I go because it is good for my soul. They let me in because they think it is good for theirs.

It occurred to me while on my retreat that the modern welfare system could learn a lot from the abbeys. Until the Reformation, the monastery offered alms to the poor and somewhere for people fleeing tyranny to hide. Post Reformation, the safety net was undone and people threw themselves on the charity of the local lay community. With the coming of the industrial era, the state started to take up the burden of poor relief. Dealing with ever bigger numbers, they resorted to systematization and control. Jeremy Bentham’s Panopticon provided the literal and mental architecture of the new age. Bentham conceived a structure that would allow an official to observe ("opticon") all ("pan") inmates of an institution without them being able to tell whether or not they are being watched. He settled on a circular structure with an inspection house at the center – from which said officials watch the inmates stationed around the perimeter. Bentham wanted his design to be used in hospitals, schools, poorhouses, and madhouses. Today it is still used to plan prisons.

Sociologist Michel Foucault correctly surmised that the Panopitcon represented the West’s evolution from a culture that punished the body to one that controlled it through subtle, but non-invasive, fascisms. What applied to penal reform also applied to welfare. Consider that the charity found in a Medieval monastery was personal: a beggar approached a monk and the monk made the individual choice to care for him. Today's Benthamite welfare state is impersonal: people “sign on” and collect benefits from employed civil servants. Visits from social workers are centrally coordinated (and sometimes unwelcome). Moreover, the Medieval monk never demanded anything of the beggar. In contrast, the welfare state has evolved from "contract" to tool of personal reform – the state expects dole recipients to kick the drugs, look for work, do a training course etc. Even our beloved NHS is now being used as leverage to get people to stop eating or smoking.

Fr Ray Blake has posted on his website some etches by Pugin illustrating the differences between Medieval and industrial public life. The most striking is his “contrasted residences for the poor” (see picture above). At the bottom is a monastery that is really a self-contained village: church, vegetable garden, place to eat, place to sleep, burial ground with Last Rites. At the top is a modern poor house that looks a lot like Bentham’s Panopticon. Residences are now cells, men are clapped in irons, food is meager, and inmates are buried in unmarked graves. Tellingly, the church is some miles from the poor house. This model of charity is really a method of control and reform. It is hard to believe that anyone’s soul benefits from it, including that of the wider society that tolerates it.

True charity must surely display "compassion", which means "to suffer with". Again, it is the personalized nature of monasteries which enabled them to show the appropriate degree of compassion. When the countryside was hit by famine, the monks starved with their flock. When plague came, they exposed themselves to the pestilence by taking in sufferers; whole monasteries were wiped out this way. What they could not offer in physical sacrifice, they provided in existential comfort. Plague bearers could pray to Saint Sebastian for relief. This was not a distraction for the gullible, but a way of reinforcing the physical reality that the Church suffered with its people. Sebastian was tied to a post and shot full of arrows. Like other martyrs, his story brings the comfort of knowing that pain is a universal condition – and that relief is available in the life to come. A lot of people think that the ritual of Catholicism creates distance from the laity. On the contrary, it is a very human faith.

I am not proposing that our welfare system is completely broken or that it should be replaced with the meager means of the modern Catholic Church. But across the West, there is a sense that social security has become detached from its original intention. Such a moral enterprise can easily descend into a tool of bureaucratic control. It is certainly no replacement for the unquestioning, boundless love of one brother for another.

Across the world, the Catholic Church is under siege. The Pope is protested wherever he goes, Catholic dogma is challenged by the New Atheism, and sex abuse scandals have diminished the reputation of the clergy. But hope can be found in the most unlikely of quarters. I've found it while re-watching a mountain of Seventies horror movies (like the marvellously kinky To the Devil a Daughter, pictured on the right). The shifting fashions of this particular genre reveal that public opinion is very fickle. In the 1970s, priests on film swung from being perverted guardians of the old order to mystical prophets of the next - sometimes in the intermission between double-bills.

In the 1960s, the Catholic Church fell afoul of the thirst for personal liberation. The reforming Catholic council of Vatican II shattered the Church’s confidence in its mission, while secularization – spurred on by liberalism triumphant – swept Europe. These changes were only felt at a popular level in the 1970s, when sexual freedom and a declining respect for authority finally trickled down to the masses. For millions of souls it was a heady age full of lingering regrets, like experimenting with LSD or voting for Jimmy Carter.

It was inevitable that the anti-clericalism of the decade would appear on film. Seventies horror cinema – best viewed with a keg of beer and lots of Monster Munch – is full of scathing critiques of the Catholic Church. Some of them are rather good. A typical example is Lucio Fulci’s Italian production Don’t Torture a Duckling (1972), in which a Catholic priest murders little boys before they can “come of age”. The priest is motivated by an obvious sexual lust for his charges, as expressed in a speech he gives while falling off a cliff: “They grow up. They feel the stirrings of the flesh. They fall into the arms of sin, sin that God easily forgives yes: but what of tomorrow? What sordid act will they commit? What sins will they enact when they no longer come to confession? Then they will really be dead, dead forever, dead for all eternity. They are my brothers … and I love them.” The priest’s killing spree is Lucio’s personal metaphor for a Church that won’t accept the social changes of the 1960s and let its congregation grow up into mature, self-governing adults. The message implied by having Barbara Bouquet appear naked throughout the entire movie is less clear.

But closer study of the horror genre shows surprising nuance in the handling of priests. Two movies that deal thoughtfully with priesthood in an age of flairs are What Have You Done to Solange? (1972) and House of Mortal Sin (1976). The latter was directed by the brilliant Pete Walker, who had previously made some surprisingly conservative horror movies satirizing social reform (in one of them a cannibal is given an early release from prison for good behavior and, predictably, becomes a recidivist). House of Mortal Sin stars the wonderful Anthony Sharp as Fr Meldrum, the ultimate Seventies symbol of Church hypocrisy. Meldrum’s a traditionalist priest who refuses to say the reformed Vatican II Mass. He tapes confessions and uses them to blackmail parishioners into attending rough therapy sessions at his house where he shouts at them for enjoying sex too much. We learn that his mother forced him into the priesthood and refused to let him marry his childhood sweetheart. Sexual repression twisted into religious mania and it’s not long before Fr Meldrum’s off killing buxom young wenches in a variety of symbolic ways (strangled with a rosary, poisoned with a wafer etc).

So far, so liberal a critique. But at the emotional heart of the movie is a younger priest called Fr Bernard who has shacked up with Stephanie Beacham (well done, sir!). He’s toying with leaving the Church and parades all sorts of hip opinions about sex and drugs. Drippy Bernard is established by Walker as the hero, the man always on the brink of doing the right thing. But at the end of the movie, Fr Meldrum convinces Bernard to help him cover up the murders. He reasons that if the public knew what was going on, faith in the Church would collapse and all its good works would be diminished. Walker’s movie may be scathing of moral traditionalism, but he is equally condemnatory of Bernard’s cowardice and cronyism. The message: the sins of the past are excused rather than corrected by the timid liberalism of the present. Given the willful blindness that many “progressive” bishops demonstrated towards sexual abuse in the decades to come, it’s a remarkably prophetic vision.

The more nuanced What Have You Done to Solange? argues that the problem with the Church isn’t hypocrisy: its moral emasculation in an age of excess. The eponymous Solange is the daughter of the headmaster of a Catholic boarding school. At the start of the movie she’s a gibbering, idiotic wreck and no one seems to know why – or care. The school’s gym teacher, Enrico, is having an illicit fling with an underage student (but it’s okay, because both of them are hot). The two are cavorting in a rowing boat when they witness the brutal murder of one of the schoolgirls. Later, Enrico’s sexpot girlfriend is drowned in the bath for what she saw, forcing him to go on the hunt for the killer.

Director Massimo Dallamano encourages us to think that it’s one of the priests at the school behind the kinky massacre. A rosary is glimpsed and it is implied that the killer picks his victims whilst hearing their confessions. But Dallamano has a surprise for us. Enrico realizes that the villain isn’t picking on random girls but rather on former friends of Solange. At the film’s climax, he discovers that all the victims were involved (very willingly) in a sexy sex ring. Solange got pregnant and the schoolgirls forced her to have an abortion, performed with rusty implements on a kitchen table. Solange was driven mad by guilt. Her father, the headmaster, took it upon himself to avenge her by slaughtering everyone involved.

Dallamano implies that the Church is partly at fault for not having chastised the schoolgirls and enforced moral order. The priests on screen are nice enough fellows, but presented as tired and confused; the schoolgirls regularly skip Mass and no one notices. The headmaster represents an outraged laity that must take order into their own hands. Given the awfulness of the abortion scene, the audience is prompted to sympathize. What Have You Done With Solange can be read as a sort of prolife response to It’s Alive!, a traumatic movie about a baby born with a taste for human flesh.

Solange and Ducking really belong to the early 1970s, when Freud’s influence was still felt in Europe's studios. But something changed in the horror genre mid-decade. Take the movies of Dario Argento, the master of Italian schlock. His early efforts (Bird with the Crystal Plumage, Deep Red) feature human villains motivated by sexual angst. By the end of the 1970s, he was making movies like Suspiria and Inferno, in which the culprits are witches. The popularity of the theme peaked in the mid-1980s with two movies he co-produced called Demons and The Church. Both feature literal demonic infestation, usually beaten back by cool black dudes on motorbikes. In the course of a decade, audience tastes had gravitated from Hitchcock to Edgar Allen Poe.

That slow change was reflected in the wider depiction of priests on film. In 1973, Warner Bros released The Exorcist. The movie depicted two priests; one modern and skeptical, the other a traditionalist mystic. It is the mystic, with his peculiar Latin rites, who is revealed to be correct about the demon possessing foulmouthed child actress Linda Blair. The hysteria surrounding the movie helped revive the Church’s reputation as a force for good. Its medieval understanding of pure evil, which seemed so anachronistic in the 1960s, was now terrifyingly hip. The release of The Omen in 1976, in which Satan is incarnated as a child, further underscored the triumph of Catholic mysticism. The movie features a batch of apostate priests, but there’s no doubt that it is Catholic dogma that holds the key to repelling the Antichrist. Both movies coincided with the American Fourth Great Awakening and a worldwide revival of religious evangelicalism that offered an escape from the economic miseries of the late 1970s. Alas, the Moral Majority typically campaigned against horror movies on the grounds of violence or explicit sexuality. They missed a trick. Many of the video nasties they opposed were infused with the religious sensibilities of the era. If only they had forced themselves to watch them, they would have realized that most were recruiting films for the Catholic Church.

Of course, individual movies and their directors don’t speak for the entirety of mass culture. But the improving screen image of priests does hold out hope for our current generation of clerics. History and culture don’t always progress forward; shocks to the system can spark social revolution, but they can also help resurrect orthodoxy. In the sexy, violent world of 1970s horror, everything old was new again.