Benedictine sister kissed Elvis, votes on Oscars

by Sr. Rose Pacatte on Feb. 21, 2011

A totally engrossing article by Entertainment Weekly Online writer Thom Geier was posted Feb. 11 about Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences voting member Benedictine Mother Dolores Hart. She is a former movie star and Tony-nominated theater actress who once kissed Elvis Presley ("Loving You," 1957).

The article recounts her journey faith journey and decision to become a cloistered nun. At the age of twenty, already fatigued by her fast-paced career, she visited the Abbey of Regina Laudis in Connecticut at the suggestion of a friend. She resisted at first, but once there the nuns let her be, and let her sleep. She returned, again and again. She entered in 1963.

And she watches all the screeners the Academy sends her so she can cast her vote.

Hart, a convert to Catholicism who attended Catholic school in Chicago and then Marymount College in Los Angeles (now Loyola Marymount University) has some wisdom to share about difficult or "R" rated films. She says the nuns in her community are not shocked by "R" rated films when she shares some interesting ones with them; they are mostly bored by them.

But she says about films such as "Black Swan": "Movies reflect the time. It's not so much that movies are ugly, it's the ugliness of the time that is reflected. To me that indicates what we have to pray for and pray about."

So it's possible for a

Submitted by Antonia Weston (not verified) on Feb. 21, 2011.

So it's possible for a pre-Vatican II form of religious life to give one access to the modern world? What will Eugene Kennedy write about now??

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