The movie “Philomena” recently opened in movie theaters across the United States.
A half-century ago, an Irish woman gave birth to a son out-of-wedlock, and gave him up for adoption; he was born in an abbey, a venue that allowed the mother to avoid being stigmatized.
There is nothing particularly startling about this, other than the fact that film reviewers are now all aghast about the “horrors” these fallen women experienced; many are making reference to the Magdalene Laundries. As Donohue detailed earlier this year, it’s bunk. Those who are neither scholars nor principled observers have swallowed this propaganda, so debased is their appetite for anti-Catholic fare.
There was one reviewer who was exceptionally fair, Kyle Smith of the New York Post. He is worth quoting at length:
“The film doesn’t mention that in 1952 Ireland, both mother and child’s life would have been utterly ruined by an out-of-wedlock birth and that the nuns are actually giving both a chance at a fresh start that both, indeed, in real life, enjoyed. No, this is a diabolical-Catholics film, straight up.”
Kyle Smith’s closing remark says it all:
“A film that is half as harsh on Judaism or Islam, of course, wouldn’t be made in the first place, and would be universally reviled if it were. ‘Philomena’ is a sucker punch, or maybe a sugary slice of arsenic cake.”
