Letter to a Priest

Part of this blog's mission is to promote the creative endeavors of other Catholics outside the mainstream, of whatever medium. To that end, I present to you Letter to a Priest, a marvelously done short film by Clayton Long, a longtime friend and patron of this blog. This short, touching story about a woman's struggle to come to terms with Catholicism on the issue of marriage garnered a lot of attention and even premiered at World Youth Day on July 25th.

Letter to a Priest is a twelve minute film that tells the story of a young woman struggling to come to terms with the Church, particularly its teaching on a very sticky point: the validity (or invalidity) of marriage. The protagonist begins in a spirit of outright hostility to the Church's teaching but through a chance encounter with a priest, comes to a humble recognition of the spiritual riches hidden within the bosom of Mater Ecclesia. One strong point about this film is that the protagonist does not come to accept the Church in an intellectual, dogmatic fashion; rather, her conversion is presented in mystical terms, in context of an undeniable encounter with a supernatural reality - not in any miraculous sense, but in the simple weekly Benediction of a parish Church. This highlights the ordinary working of grace, which is often lost in modern apologetical approaches to the Faith that can place an undue emphasis on the work of the intellect at the expense of grace or mystical elements.

The video is currently making the rounds at the film festivals and is not yet available in its entirety on the Internet, but you can view the trailer here: