Page 198 - What They Did to the Kid

186 Jack Fritscher

Hank the Tank sailed by. “He is Maureen O’Hara.”
“No, Father,” I said.
“I once met a movie star,” he said, “during the war. Ann Sheri-
dan. She rode in my jeep.”
“My uncle,” I said, “also met Ann Sheridan. Their picture was
in Life. ‘The priest and the movie star.’”
“Your uncle is,” Father Gunn said, “a true marvel.”
“About tonight’s film,” I said. “Could we send away for some
quality films? Some European films. You know, Bergman, Anto-
nioni, Fellini. For the older seminarians. Real movies might be help-
ful in our study of philosophy and moral theology. We could show
them through the winter on Sunday after noons when there’s too
much snow to play or work outside.”
Gunn looked at me in astonishment. “They’re not even in
English.”
“Exactly. A chance to use all our Latin, German, French, and
Greek.”
“Don’t try to intellectualize simple entertainment.”
Some of the seminarians around me, including several of Tank’s
vigilante altar boys, nodded me on with guarded approval, fearful
we’d sound like the disappeared Dryden.
“We might raise the standard of viewing,” I said. “There’s
immense psycholo gy, real religious psychology at that, behind a
director like Bergman. He won the Academy Award. Did you see
The Virgin Spring?”
“How high did she go?” Hank the Tank asked.
The room exploded in laughter. Humor, St. Thomas Aquinas
wrote, is the unexpected juxtaposition of opposites.
“No more suggestive talk,” Gunn said.
“Films examine interpersonal relation ships.” I was coming on
strong, surrounded by classmates who were quite happy for me to
climb out on a limb that allowed them to watch more movies.
“Interpersonal relationships?” Gunn recoiled visibly.
My long-contem plat ed chance, my opening, my plan to catch him
in public, where he was on the spot, had found its natural moment.
“Priests are supposed to be educated. The most educated of all. This
seems a perfect chance for broadening vicarious experience.”

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