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I see that “Eat, Pray, Love” has attracted the ire of some Catholics who have expressed their dissatisfaction with its kiss off of our faith. I get the point. The movie tracks the story of a woman who sets out on a journey all across the world after it dawns upon her that she is not getting want she wants out of her life. And soon she is being told that God is everywhere and to look within.
I saw the move last night and, well, it is awful, full of forced melodrama, mid-age yet adolescent introspection, and cheap spirituality with a nod in the last minutes to any communal religious dimension whatsoever.
My reaction was not that this is an “anti-Catholic” move, as some have suggested. Rather that it, curiously, affirms the need for something more substantial in religion than is offered up while the principle character (Julia Roberts) meanders her way into, I guess, a kind of Hinduism. If that’s indeed what the movie was trying to portray.
Catholics, fear not. “Eat, pray, love” is an evangelical experience. If anything, it affirms the need for substantial religious experience, rather than the soft, soapy, groundless, and narcissistic superficiality that passes for spirituality in the movie.
Yes, give me that old time religion. Not the variety in “Eat, Pray, Love.”