Video Out

The Calling

The dream of every Catholic mother is for her son to dedicate his life to the Church, i.e. to receive the Calling and become a priest. After having four daughters, my mother made a pact with the Virgin Mary that, if granted a son, she would give him up to God, and that was how I came to be and what I was destined to become.
Employing a collage of evocative film clips from classic priest movies such as "The Thorn Birds," "The Exorcist," "Diary of a Country Priest," and "I Confess," I filter the "sacrifice" of my mother through the experiences of these cinematic men of the cloth, entangled in the apron strings of their own mothers. These priests all suffer from the classic symptom of Catholicism: a guilty conscience, enacted through secrecy, hiding, and Satanic possession, which are also alleged symptoms of another malady: homosexuality.