I agree, Steven. When I watched it, I certainly had some of the brow-raising moments that caught me off guard and were easy to misunderstand on first take. But I don’t think they are problematic and I think that in the end they help teach a very profound lesson.

While it’s not overtly evangelical, I think it powerfully presents the primary way we are called to evangelize - through the example of our faith, hope and love…and especially to our enemies. For me, the movie deals primarily with our Christian response to evil in the world…and it does so beautifully.

I wrote up more thoughts on it here: http://www.fallibleblogma.com/index.php/of-gods-and-men/

irenic: tending to promote peace or reconciliation; peaceful or conciliatory.

Gosh, it seems to me that an Abbot living in a Muslim area would be very smart to have a copy of the Koran and be familiar with it. Really? This is what people worry about? That there was a copy of the Koran on the desk? Sometimes I think people forget that we’re supposed to be able to live with each other, despite our differences. I blame the internet and the echo chamber it feeds.

I watched it, and the first thing I noticed was the ‘interfaith’ nature of their mission. After that, I began to consider how their lack of ecumenical outreach sealed their doom. It’s one thing to be an isolated place of advanced theological study within a Christian empire, it’s quite another when you are located on the ragged edge of civilization. I was disgusted when their leader’s ideological detachment from reality caused him to reject the military’s offer to guard the monastery. This is what happens to Liberal Catholics: ideological suicide. Suicide because they lose themselves in whatever culture they happen to be in. Suicide because they don’t bother to instruct their neighbors in the one true faith, nor do they defend their Church. Such pathetic specimens would never have survived the early days of the Church, and they certainly would not have built churches in all the corners of the world.

@ Tillie: I agree with you about the Quran on the abbot’s desk: It’s no big deal. There are a few lines, particularly toward the end, that deserve some more considered thought, which I’ll be providing in a future post (this is part 1 of 3).

@ Paul Bennett: Where do I start? Your disgust with the monks’ refusal of military occupation is politically and tactically naive, for one thing. The military were not disinterested bystanders and peacekeepers, they were the instruments of a corrupt military government. To permit military forces within the monastery would have been a declaration of war against the insurgents, making not only them but the peaceful villagers targets for terrorist violence. Christian was much more politically aware than you give him credit for; to accuse him of “detachment from reality” suggests to me that you haven’t really made an effort to understand him.

That’s above and beyond the religious unacceptability of militarizing a monastery in the first place. A monastery is devoted not only to the Gospel itself but to the evangelical counsels in their highest form. The Gospel does not demand pacifism, but it has a strong preference for nonviolence, even sacrificial nonviolence. In a monastery, weapons and violence, even in self-defense, have no place.

We have a word for people not surviving in the early days of the Church: martyrs. Like the Tibirhine monks, they were often those who were most faithful to the evangelical counsels. There is a reason it’s been said once or twice that “The blood of the martyrs is the seed of the church.” The Tibirhine monks’ faithful witness even to death offers greater hope for opening hearts and minds, both Muslim and Christian, than the attitude you display.

Your comments about the monks “losing themselves in whatever culture they happen to be in” is merely crashingly wrong if you’re talking about the film; if you mean to indict the actual monks, it is calumny, although I’m sure they forgive you.

@ Matthew Warner: Nice post. I especially like the comments in your third paragraph:
 

It’s a great reminder that we are here for something much bigger than whatever little worries you have on your mind today and whatever activism you are pursuing. We are even here for something much bigger than the biggest of political agendas and more epic than the biggest world wars. And this small group of monks demonstrate that very powerfully as they very simply live their faith under very complex and difficult circumstances.

 
I’m glad you found the film as moving as I did, particularly Christian’s spiritual testament quoted at the end of the film, which just blew me away the first time and the second time had me bawling in my seat. I’ll be discussing that document in part 3 of this series—and putting it in the context of the full text of what Christian wrote, which is somewhat abridged in the film. though its essential power remains.

I havent seen the film , but have heard wonderful reviews all I can say is “God Bless the Monks their lives were a testimony to Faith and Love, Faith and Love for Christ and for man”, so strong was their Faith and Love that they died for it. May they pray for us in heaven !!!

Your review has not yet been posted at Rotten Tomatoes. More people MUST READ IT!

@ Benchwarmer: Thanks for the reminder! Added to RT.com.

Note that the locals would not lift a finger to save the monks. That is the result of their “evangelical counsels in their highest form”, or rather a lack of it. Selling honey is not evangelical labour. Singing along with the Quran is not ecumenical outreach. I see everywhere parallels with how the Church deals with the 33,000 Protestant denominations. They assail the Church and we are expected to pray with them, not for them to return to the Church.

Monasteries were always defended by military forces, throughout Europe and in the Middle East. The Crusades might ring a bell. There is no strategic value in having the military presence locked up with the walls of the monastery, and I doubt it was ever seriously considered. On the other hand, sticking your head in the sand is not much of a strategy either. Catholics are thinkers, and we should not be swayed by emotional appeals like penticostals and baptists. Faith should not make us stupid.

@ Paul Bennett: Now you rashly judge the villagers as well as the monks. What evidence is there either that they “would not lift a finger to save the monks” or that they had any means of resisting the armed insurgents? Did you see any local bystanders on the nocturnal occasions when the terrorists stormed the monastery? Given the speed and stealth with which the terrorists moved, would villagers have been able to make the considerable ascent in time to be of any use? Finally, were the locals able to defend themselves when the terrorists struck the construction site?

If selling honey is not an evangelical labor, neither is St. Paul’s tentmaking in Corinth, yet St. Paul still boasts in Corinthians of not needing to be supported by the Corinthians even though he had a right to be. There’s a long history in the Benedictine tradition (which includes Cistercians and Trappists) of monks supporting themselves with such daily labor, by making beer and liquors, jams and jellies, clothes, soaps and lotions, and so forth.

Do you think the monks should have lived as mendicants, going down to the village every day to beg? In spite of not being a mendicant order? In Algeria? Do you think the locals didn’t respect the monks more for supporting themselves? What are you even saying?

I’ve seen the film twice and don’t remember any singing of the Quran, either with or without the monks. At the circumcision party we see the monks clapping to music outside (no Quran singing that I remember), and later inside the house we hear someone, possibly an imam, reciting from the Quran, but I don’t recall singing or the monks singing along.

The military’s offer of protection clearly involved military presence inside the monastery. Christian makes that explicit: “Who wants the army present in the monastery?”

If you think Christian’s strategy was burying his head in the sand, you missed the whole film, up to and including his spiritual testament at the end. Christian was alert and clear-eyed; he knew exactly what he was up against. If anything is clear from the film, it’s that. In fact, Christian specifically addresses your opinion at the end of the film. Didn’t you notice?

The wild accusations you throw in all directions remind me of radical Traditionalist accusations against John Paul II, e.g. being blessed by a Hindu priestess, when in fact the photo in question shows the pope receiving a traditional Indian sign of welcome from an Indian Catholic woman, etc. You see everything in the film in the worst possible light, to the point of distortion. Could the problem be in the eye you turn to it?

We can agree that faith should not make us stupid. It also should not make us quick to condemn. That is because faith is not opposed to love.

To understand a film, or a person, we must exercise empathy—we must see through eyes other than our own. After that, we can critique what we have seen through our own eyes. But if we leap straightaway into criticizing without truly making that empathic leap of understanding a world other than our own, we will never understand, and our criticism will be misleading at best, if not altogether worthless.

P.S. Let me share a true story about the abbott Christian that is not in the film, from John Kiser’s book The Monks of Tibirhine: Faith, Love and Terror.

Before he became a monk, Christian was a police officer, a lieutenant assigned in Algeria during the Algerian War of Independence in the 1950s and 60s. While in Algeria in 1959, Christian befriended an Algerian policeman, a Muslim named Mohammad whose company Christian enjoyed because he could talk to him about God freely, whereas in France religion was an awkward subject. The Muslim officer nettled Christian by suggesting that Christians didn’t know how to pray, and asking why he never saw French soldiers praying.

Nevertheless, when rebel soldiers fell upon the French policeman and his Muslim friend in the countryside, Mohammad physically stood between Christian and the attackers’ rifles, vowing that Christian was a godly man and a friend of Muslims. The rebels let them go.

However, the next day Mohammad’s throat was slit near his home where he lived with his wife and ten children.

This episode strikingly resonates with the story-arc of the film, though much more compressed (the Christmas Eve episode in the film occurs years before the monks are finally murdered).

I think the world needs more friendships like Christian’s and Mohammad’s. (The names are so fitting as to border on allegory.) Such friendships will surely be misunderstood, criticized and attacked by both Christians and Muslims, and there will be more tragic violence against Muslims and Christians who try to reach out to one another—violence committed, I hasten to add, by Muslims, not Christians. Still, that doesn’t mean that the effort is not necessary and worthwhile.

Steven,

I’m looking forward to your upcoming thoughts! I saw the film last night and came away with the thought that for people of mature or at least solid faith, it is a tremendous, profound, and challenging film, but that for people of immature or weak faith, or your average secular Joe, it could be potentially dangerous.

I remember when I first watched the movie “Fireproof” with a group of friends I complained that the acting was bad, the plot had many problems, and some of the issues were dealt with naively or too simplistically. Some of the people there told me that that’s all true, but it was the big picture theme or atmosphere of the movie which really mattered and was so good, and I could agree with them on that. I think in this case, the acting, directing, pacing - everything technical in the movie - is just wonderfully done, but the overall theme or “taste” of it is pluralistic.

If your faith and understanding can see past that or understand the subtlties of how these monks may be speaking and acting, then it’s a great film. Otherwise, I think it may reinforce you in your secular pluralism.

Didn’t St. Francis himself meet with the Sultan of Egypt?

OK, my last comment. I don’t want to fight over this, I just wanted to present an opposing viewpoint (perhaps unique, judging by the near universal praise). “We can agree that faith should not make us stupid. It also should not make us quick to condemn.” And I thought we were critiquing a movie! I feel free to judge a movie where I would not condemn the man.

“The military were not disinterested bystanders and peacekeepers, they were the instruments of a corrupt military government.” This is a rather bald assertion, taken from the mouths of the movie monks. Yet perhaps the soldiers were simple Catholics, eager to defend the weak against the brutality of the strong. At the core of this anti-militarism is Liberation Theology, and the final end of the monks mirrors the results of all revolutions, whether suicidal or victorious.

The brutal have no respect for the weak, and we Catholics are not weak. We have only begun to act weak. We now think in weak ways. Being a martyr is not necessarily to be effete. St. Thomas More showed his mettle in the teeth of a truly corrupt king, but he was acting in obedience. He tried his best to avoid martyrdom by remaining silent on touchy subjects as long as he could. These monks were, in contrast, reckless and foolish. There is no honour in inviting disaster to prove a point.

And what point in the end did they prove? That they were gentle enlightened liberals and the fundamentalists were brutal? Was it ever in doubt? The real question is, did their deaths save any souls? Is the movie likely to? Perhaps you would say yes; I think not.

Steven—would you consider responding to Roger Ebert’s critique of the film, either here or in a separate post? He concluded his review: “Did they make the right choice? In their own idealistic terms, yes. In realistic terms, I say no. They have the ability to help many who need it for years to come. It is egotism to believe their help must take place in this specific monastery. Between the eight of them, they have perhaps a century of life of usefulness remaining. Do they have a right to deprive those who need it of their service? In doing so, are they committing the sin of pride? I found myself resisting the film’s pull of easy emotion. There are fundamental questions here, and the film doesn’t engage them. I believe Christian should have had the humility to lead his monks away from the path of self-sacrifice.” Obviously, Ebert’s current atheistic perspective comes to bear here; but he frames the question in the language of his native Catholicism—sin and pride—so I think it deserves a Catholic answer.

Great comments, everyone. Responses forthcoming.

” ‘The military were not disinterested bystanders and peacekeepers, they were the instruments of a corrupt military government.’ This is a rather bald assertion, taken from the mouths of the movie monks.”

No, it is a fact about life. The government of Algeria at the time was a military dictatorship not above doing some bad stuff in the name of suppressing the Islamist rebels.

“Yet perhaps the soldiers were simple Catholics ...”

In Algeria?

Thanks to all for the comments so far. Responses herewith to Shane, Leslie, Paul Bennett and John Takis (and shout-out to Victor Morton).
 
@ Shane: Thanks for your comments, thoughtful as always. I think you’re right to say the film is challenging fare for solid Christians—and certainly also for thoughtful Muslims.
 
I also think many really secular viewers may benefit from exposure to a much more positive and attractive picture of religion than their default picture. Indifferentism is a significant obstacle in the modern mind, but it’s not the only obstacle, and there is much good in the film that may be of benefit to many secular viewers.
 
It may be that some in between, either with weak faith or the “spiritual but not religious” crowd who see all religions as the same, could interpret the film in a less wholesome way. There is a flip side to St. Paul’s maxim that “to the pure all things are pure.”
 
Even so, there’s such liturgical and doctrinal specificity here that I can’t help but think that even these folks may be somewhat challenged.
 
The movie is a plea for pluralism. Pluralism is a reality of the global village. It is not, in itself, a bad thing; it is not tantamount to indifferentism. I can’t say that no one will take the movie in a bad way, but all in all I think the movie is a Very Good Thing that will tend to have a good effect on practically everyone capable of receiving it in any significant way.
 
@ Leslie: Yes, St. Francis met with the Sultan al-Kamil, who was greatly impressed with his holiness and courage. However, since his mission was explicitly evangelistic, to critics like Paul Bennett this would be a point of contrast, not convergence.
 
@ Paul Bennett: Thanks for the moderate tone of your latest post. Believe me, I’m more than happy to engage opposing viewpoints and other readings of films—I have no objection in the world to that. Film commentary is a discussion, and no one’s point of view has preference over anyone else’s. My strong responses were not to your negativity, but to what struck me as dismissive and judgmental comments.
 
Yes, we’re critiquing a film, but a film based on fact, and when you toss around phrases like “pathetic specimens,” “singing along with the Quran,” “sticking your head in the sand,” etc., it sounds as if you are, if not condemning, at least contemning human beings, at least potentially (i.e., to the extent that the film is based on fact). Ditto for your comments about the locals not being willing to lift a finger to defend the monks, etc.
 
If I had no other evidence one way or the other, it would be reasonable to take the monks’ comment about Algeria’s corrupt military government as the proper context for judging the monks’ actions within the context of the film. If the movie gives us nothing else to go on, then we can take it as a movie about that scenario; in any case, that’s certainly how the monks see it, so their decisions must be judged in light of their own understanding of their situation. If you believe your situation to be X, then X is the context in which your moral reasoning takes place, even if your real situation is a bit different.
 
As it happens, though, to the extent that I know anything about the history of the Algerian Civil War (very little), it tends to support the monk’s point of view. What Victor Morton writes above is correct.
 
For example, a retired French general has testified that the monks were actually beheaded, not by the terrorists, but by Algerian government forces which had accidentally killed them while firing on terrorists and covered it up by framing the terrorists. In spite of this, the GIA has claimed responsibility for the monks’ deaths, and the general’s testimony may not be correct. Either way, the Algerian government was apparently not above that sort of thing.
 
I can’t fathom why you level a charge of “weakness” against the monks. Didn’t you think Christian was magnificent in one memorable encounter with the terrorists? Wasn’t the terrorist leader himself justifiably impressed with Christian’s courage, uprightness and directness, just as the Sultan was with St. Francis’s?
 
I honestly think you have completely misunderstood the monks. The very things you accuse them of they specifically discussed and rejected. Just because they were French does not make them effete (even if effete is a French word). Their deaths were not to “prove a point.” That is not what the film was about.
 
I don’t know that the “real question” is whether their deaths saved any souls—other than their own, of course. Salvation of souls is in God’s hands, not ours; we are called to faithfulness, not success. Still and all, yes, I do think God will use their work and legacy, including this film, will be for the good of the Kingdom and the salvation of souls.
 
@ John Takis: In the opening of my review of the film I noted in passing, “Seldom have I read so many reviews justly genuflecting to a film amid such inability to explain why, or with such unconvincing rationalizations for critical discomfort.” Ebert’s take on the film doesn’t fall into this camp, but the same issues of misunderstanding are there. Yes, I would very much like to write an entire blog post on why and how the critics, including Ebert, have got this film wrong. In Ebert’s case it’s like his review was based on notes taken during the first act of the film and he didn’t notice how the case for the monks’ decisions developed over the course of the film. If I get a chance, I will certainly write that post—though it won’t be for at least a week or two, as I’m going away.

Thanks for the reply, Steven! I look forward to any future thoughts you might have on the film.

From Canada - And a Catholic: One of the best films I have seen. It was beautiful in regards to how these men faced terror and stood up to it.  The terror we are facing in the world from Islam will not end unless the Western world is prepared to face them full force. Praise to the Canadian Armed Forces in Afghanistan, the U.S., British, Germans, Danish, Australia, New Zealand, France, Italy, Spain, Turkey, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Georgia, Belgium, Czech Republic, Norway, Bulgaria, South Korea, Azerbaijan, and Singapore armed forces.