17 The Play’s the Thi Conditions were right again when my mother was a little girl, when quite a few Catholics directed movies that were brilliant works of art. How did that happen? Men like John Ford and Frank Capra didn’t graduate from film school. There wasn’t any such. They had their hard education in human joy and suffering. They and their comrades knew what it was like to go down a coal mine, or sweat ten pounds a day in a foundry, or haul freight on the docks. They also knew what it was like to fall to their knees in worship. Even if they strayed from the Faith, they felt in their bones that only a holy day can ever really be a holiday. Back in my mother’s time, there was a tiny theater on Main Street, called the Grand, a few blocks from the church, Saint Thomas Aquinas. I like to think that Thomas would have gone to a movie once in a while, especially if, as in You Can’t Take It with You, we see love and merry folly defeat avarice and self-regard, or, as in Sergeant York, we see a humble and peace-loving farm boy become a hero in wartime, putting his life on the line for his fellows in the field. But did Thomas ever see a play? Sure he did. A new holiday for an ancient truth In 1215, at the Fourth Lateran Council, the Church re-affirmed the real presence of Christ in the Eucharist, Body, Blood, soul, and divinity. It was a cause for great rejoicing, and to mark
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