Is "The Mission" a good Catholic movie?

[guernz]

I was wondering if the Jesuit priests in the movie, The Mission, made the right moral choice in staying. I believe that since the cardinal was not asking them to commit a mortal sin like killing somebody, they were obliged to abandon their mission, and were excommunicated for not doing so. Is this a good Catholic movie?

 

[Michelle_Arnold]

I recently saw The Mission for the first time and thought it a great movie, although difficult to watch at the end. While there are sound theological reasons why some of the Jesuits should not have participated in armed combat to protect the natives, the characters’ choice to do so demonstrated the tough choices with which real human beings are faced when trying to do what they believe to be right. Their superior took the more difficult and courageous road of leading the natives into martyrdom with the Blessed Sacrament held high.

As for the cardinal, he did not order the Jesuits to kill anyone, true. But he did ask them to abandon vulnerable people both to the elements (by being tossed out of their homes and returned to the forests) and to the capricious whims of the colonialists (who had proven their desire to force the natives into slavery). The demand to abandon those people who had entrusted themselves and their families to the spiritual and moral care of the Jesuits was an unjust demand and therefore not binding in conscience.

For more analysis of The Mission, which made the Vatican’s 1995 list of best films, see
this review by Catholic film critic, Steven D. Greydanus.