Rush, who is non-Catholic and newly married to Ed (David Boreanaz, Bones), discovers that the team has no uniforms or a gym to practice in and that the school itself may soon be sold. But she takes on these challenges with sheer determination. Ed thinks that she is just trying to find a way to spend her time, but becomes confused by her dedication and their marriage suffers.
Sister Sunday (Marley Shelton, W.) is questioning her vocation and wants to request a leave of absence from the community. But Rush notices her interest in basketball and invites her to be the assistant coach. They become friends, and the young nun grows in her understanding of her own calling.
With the energy and talent of the team, coaches and nuns, the Mighty Macs power their way to the first AIAW (Association for Intercollegiate Athletics for Women) national championship in 1972. They would subsequently win in 1973 and 1974, as well.
The Mighty Macs is based on a true story, and the Immaculate Heart of Mary Sisters were consulted on the film. The story was developed for the screen by first-time writer/director Tim Chambers and producer Pat Croce.
Themes of hard work, faith, character and heart permeate the film. Coach Cathy tells the girls before a game: “’Do you know that in a race all the runners compete? But only one receives the prize. So run, that you may obtain it’—Corinthians. You’ve earned the right to run the race tonight and it’s O.K. to want the prize. Do you know why teams get to championships?”
A player answers, “Trust.”
Rush continues, “That’s why they get to the championships. But do you know why they win championships? I want all of you to point to yourselves. That’s right. Look where you are all pointing [to their hearts]. This is why championships are won. One team, one beat, one heart.”
Though the film gives off a low-budget vibe, the feel is authentic and consistent with the story. The acting is frank, open and moving. Cathy Rush, a breast-cancer survivor, was inducted into the Basketball Hall of Fame in 2008 with Pat Riley and Dick Vitale, and the little college is now Immaculata University.Mature themes.
Here is an article I wrote for this month’s St. Anthony Messenger about a man’s search over five years and three countries to find his birth mother and the nun who helped him. Magazine publishing is so interesting: you have to turn in articles six months in advance! But here it is and I get goose bumps every time I read it – and I wrote it! The story has a B.K. rating (bring Kleenex).
The photo is of Sr. Mary Joan Baldino, FSP, and Patrick Ferraro.
This is the view from the back of the Staten island ferry on its way to the island. But the view from Victory and Forest was magical; you felt like you could reach out and touch it on a clear day
I grew up in San Diego listening to my Connecticut born-and-bred mother praising the wonders of New York City. Her parents took her and her siblings there often to visit an aunt who lived and prospered there. For some reason the Museum of Natural History was the place she most often described for us kids.
After three years in the convent in Boston, we novices went by car to New York in November, 1970, to have an experience of our apostolate of evangelization with the media and to see what convent life was like in a smaller community than that of the provincial-novitiate house.
We drove in our van down the Hudson Parkway and under the George Washington Bridge, with the Cloisters to our left, and the shrine of Mother Cabrini, Sister Anthony, our driver, told us. Born in Everett, MA, Sr. Anthony’s family returned to Italy when she was seven years old; then as a young nun she returned to the U.S., to New York, where her name became synonymous in our community with the place and its people. But I fell into something that must be like ecstasy as Manhattan was revealed via the view from the then elevated West Side Highway. It wouldn’t be closed until 1973 and completely closed and demolished until 1989. Sr. Anthony also told us that the Sixth Avenue El (elevated) train that used to go up and down the middle of Manhattan was dismantled and the iron sold to the Japanese as scrap and they gave it back in bullets. Learning history from our older nuns was always an eye-opener (this allegation has been always denied by city officials but myths live long and die hard.)
Manhattan took my breath away. It looked old and dirty, yes, but the Empire State Building was a visual magnet of promise and wonder. I loved the sense of history that came from the worn and torn look of old buildings and streets. The West Side Highway alone was scary to the first-timer; it was old and narrow and rickety. How many people, from every country on earth, how many cars, had run this road?
On the right, the piers, though dilapidated, were still working, and the nose from one of the passenger ships from the Italian Line seemed too close to the highway. I wanted to touch it.
As we neared the tip of Manhattan to take the ferry to Staten Island, Sister Anthony explained that there, on the left, where there lay an over grown field, several blocks large, with one or two produce companies stood, was where the World Trade Center would be built. What was that? Two big office buildings, the biggest in the world. Aren’t there other produce companies than those two over there? Yes, they just built a new market at Hunts Point in the Bronx. These are going away, too, she said. I don’t recall Sister Anthony mentioning Mother Seton’s house on the battery; even if she had, it would have just added to my sense of awe.
Although ground had been broken for the WTC in the late 1960s for what would become a seven building complex, that chilly Sunday afternoon, there was no hint of what was to come.
Over the next three years, though, construction started in earnest; first they dug very deep and then for the next two Christmases construction workers put Christmas trees on top of the twin towers, marking their ascent to heaven. The North Tower was topped off in December, 1972 and the South Tower in July, 1973. I was in New York for both.
I lived and carried out our apostolate in New York for almost thirteen continuous years, from 1970 – 1980 and then from 1990 – 1993. I cannot tell you how many times I went to the World Trade towers for mission or convent business, to the Customs House (WTC 6) to clear cargo imports, to take the PATH train to New Jersey, and to take visitors to the top. In 1992, my ten-year-old niece dropped a glass bottle of some sticky colored beverage on the floor of one of the buildings where the airlines had their counters. Do you have any idea how far 16 ounces can splash and glass shatter on a terrazzo floor?
Up in the towers it always seemed like there were a thousand secretaries typing, but the tap-tap-tap was from the buildings swaying with the earth and wind.
I was at home in Staten Island the day the bomb went off under the North Tower on February 26, 1993. It was shocking, but things went back to normal so soon. The incident made me recall the story one of our older Italian nuns, Sister Sira, used to tell about a wayward B-25 bomber that crashed into the 79th floor of the Empire State Building at 9:49am, July 28, 1945 – right into the War Relief Offices of the Catholic Welfare Conference. Eleven office workers were killed and three crewmen.
After my assignment in New York ended in 1993, I went to Guam and then to London to study for a graduate degree until late 1995. Then Boston was my home until 2002, so I was working in our media studies center on 9/11/01. I was taping the film “Restoration” from television to use a clip in a workshop I would be giving in Toronto, departing on September 12. I have no memory of what that clip was or how I was going to use it. Sister Marie came in and told me to turn on the news, a plane had hit the World Trade Center. I didn’t want to interrupt the taping so I went across the hall to check the television there. I thought this had to be like the plane Sister Sira told us about; I stayed for a while and went back to work.
Not long after, Sr. Marie came racing back in, yelling “You have to turn on the television; a plane hit the other tower!” Then I knew. This was not wayward plane; this was an attack. I turned off the video recorder, and turned on the news. I knew the borders would be closed between the US and Canada and flights would stop. There would be no trip to Toronto, long planned a year ago.
A group of our sisters were at our General Chapter in Rome so for weeks I became a correspondent, watching CNN and other outlets and simultaneously typing reports into my computer to send email, including local reactions, and news from our sisters in Staten Island. The sisters at the Chapter had some television access, but they could not glue themselves to the television so email and Internet was best.
Somewhere, I have two big red binders of all the emails I sent and received from all kinds of people in the weeks following 9/11.
That Sunday after 9/11, day five after the attacks, I went to our local Barnes and Noble bookstore at Chestnut Hill and found the friendly server at the coffee bar. His usual cheerful demeanor was toned down and when he handed me my coffee, he said, “Sister Rose, the FBI was here. Three terrorists stayed at that motel there; they found their car there – see?” and he nodded toward the window. “Parked right there, and they thought we might have seen them, or that they might have come in here. They questioned all of us. We saw nothing – the FBI doesn’t even want us talking about it. Now people are coming in and asking me, ‘So, did you serve coffee to a terrorist?’ How can they be so cruel? We were just doing our jobs and how would we have known anything?” I thought I saw tears in his gentle eyes.
As the investigations began and blame assigned, I remembered something that happened often at Logan International Airport since carry-on baggage scanners were installed. Whenever I took the shuttle to New York from Terminal A (the old one; it has now been rebuilt), I would put my carry on through the scanner, but the people running it were always laughing and talking. Maybe five or six months before 9/11, I was waiting at the new and comfortable U.S. Airways gates at another terminal, going I don’t remember where, when a very nice lady approached me and asked if I would fill our an airport survey. Sure, I said. I always have an opinion. I don’t recall if there were security questions on the form, but when she came back, I gave her an earful about how the nuns at the convent often talk about how safe Logan is when the people at the scanners never look at the baggage; they are just laughing and talking to each other. She looked rather surprised at my concern, thanked me, and took my survey. I wonder whatever happened to that survey or if that nice lady passed on my observation. Guess not.
There’s a magical place on Staten Island, where Victory Blvd. and Forest Avenue meet. It’s not always there; it comes and goes depending on the winds. So often I would drive home, taking Victory Blvd and stopping at the traffic light, or turn left slowly from Forest Avenue so as to take in the view. It was there, but only on a rare crystal clear day, that Manhattan; that New York, New York, tattooed itself on my soul over and over again. The Twin Towers articulating its place in the history and culture of the world, like an optical illusion that I could reach out and touch. Oz. The Emerald City. New York, New York.
I don’t think I ever took a photo of this view, but artist Sarah Yuster painted, what I now find so deeply moving, a pre-dawn image of it
New York is a tough place to live and work. It’s hot, smelly, and freezing cold. Everyone is in a hurry. The ferry schedule dictates your life. Our house was the revolving door for the province; we were always at the airport. I remember telling sisters newly assigned to our community in New York: “It’s hard work here, and you’ll be exhausted most of the time. But if you can make it in New York, you can make it anywhere.” I thought that was an original insight. Ha! I must have heard it from Liza Minelli – still, it is so true.. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rgusCINe260
Our nuns told me that on September 11, 2001, that they left our convent in St. George (near the ferry) as usual to go by car to our bookstore in Edison, NJ. But they were turned back at the Outerbridge Crossing; the bridge was closed. They turned on the radio and learned that one plane, then another, had crashed into the towers. They were stopped at the light at the corner of Victory and Forest just as the first tower fell at 9:58am. It took their breath away.
I have not been back to Manhattan, to the World Trade Center site, since 9/11. A month after the attacks, one of our older nuns in the Staten Island community died suddenly (she lost a good friend in one of the towers, and had been an adolescent in northern Italy during World War II; her heart could not bear it all), and I took the train to Newark for the funeral where a relative of one of the sisters picked me up. You get into Staten Island the back way through New Jersey. That’s as close as I have gotten to the World Trade Center in ten years.
Ever since I first set eyes on Manhattan all those years ago, I have considered myself a spiritual New Yorker. I love New York, the people, the crazy but brilliant drivers, the way New Yorkers share a special language, an understanding of humanity that lets them do great things, incredibly bad things (sometimes at the same time) and ordinary things with such gusto for life. I don’t know why I do not wish to go back; that I avoid every opportunity.
I think I am still waiting to get my breath back that you took away, New York, the minute I laid eyes on you.
On this day in 1992, four Los Angeles Police Department officers were acquitted of the beating of Rodney King and Los Angeles erupted in rioting. The beating of King, which had been video tapped, the trial and acquittal were seminal events in the history of race relations in this country.
Last year I interviewed the Rev. Scott D. Young about his annual pilgrimage to the site of the flash point of the civil unrest following the acquittal of the police officers in the Rodney King case.
One thing that religious give up is the sense of touch and being touched. Sure, we hug when we greet family and friends, and we buss with the best, but unless we go for regular massages for a medical reason, we give up the pleasure of being touched.
When I stayed with my sister last year for vacation, she took me with her for a pedicure. She is a regular there and the ladies, all Vietnamese immigrants, greeted us warmly. We removed our sandals. I climbed into the throne-like seat and when the water was warm, the attendant invited me to put my feet in the water. The water was shooting at my feet and swirling.
Several minutes later, the pedicurist took my right foot and began to massage it with oil or lotion. She placed it back in the water and took my left foot.
I thought I had died and gone to heaven.
She dried each foot with care using a very soft white towel and then she trimmed my nails and sanded the calluses from the bottom of my feet.
I wonder what the apostles felt when Jesus washed their tired, dusty feet. I imagine those who were married had been long from the embrace of their spouses as they journeyed on foot with Jesus. Peter resisted because it was a lowly task to wash the feet of another, and he thought he should be washing Jesus’ feet.
Several years ago I was at a Maronite parish for Holy Thursday and the priest washed the feet of men, young and old, and three boys who could not stop laughing. I think they were embarrassed, but they made me laugh, too.
Two nights ago a sister of my community went to the parish where she sings in the choir. They had invited her to have her feet washed during the mass on Holy Thursday, and they wanted to have a dry run, literally. She is happy to be included.
Earlier this week I reflected on feeling the comfort of the cross for the first time .Today I am thinking of the first Eucharist, yes, but also the washing of the feet and what it means for the body and soul, the whole person. Jesus probably didn’t rush through the washing for pastoral reasons. He who loved the disciples must have taken the time to truly wash their calloused, tired, perhaps neglected feet that had been everywhere, and perhaps unwashed for more than a day, taking each foot into his hands, and gently washing it and drying it before moving on. Perhaps he anointed their feet as well. It was Jesus’ way of showing them that they, too, must carry out this humble, comforting, and refreshing task for others, in order to approach the Cross.
In the documentary The Saint of 9/11: the True Story of Father Mychal Judge, (that I reviewed in 2007) there is a part where he talks about ministering to men dying of HIV/AIDS in the hospital. Many were angry at God and wanted nothing to do with the Franciscan priest. But as he spoke with them, he would start to massage their feet, and this would calm them. In those first years of the pandemic, few people were willing touch a person with HIV/AIDS. I can only imagine what Fr. Judge’s care might have meant to them who were treated as pariahs and outcasts. It was the comfort of a loving God shown through the ministry of a priest.
My sister paid for the pedicures and I know she added a generous tip for the ladies. I felt and wonderful and I think I heard my feet laughing for the sheer joy of it.
A couple of Saturdays ago I received a call from Soozie Eastman, Director of Programs for the Humanitas Prize. For the second year I was going to be one of the script readers to decide on which ones will receive this prestigious award trophy and cash prize. All the readers for television and film scripts were having dinner together that evening to pick up the parcels and share some inspiration. Soozie asked me to say grace.
I thought I would share this on my blog so that everyone could join in prayer to support the good work of the Humanitas Prize and to support film and television writers who seek to explore the human condition and promote human dignity in the stories they tell.
Paulist Father Elwood “Bud” Kieser (1929 – 2000) founded the he HUMANITAS Prize in 1974 “to celebrate television programs which affirm the dignity of the human person, explore the meaning of life, enlighten the use of human freedom and reveal to each person our common humanity.” You may remember Fr. Kieser as the producer of the films Romero(1989), Entertaining Angels: The Dorothy Day Story (1996) and the “Insight” series (1960 -1983) for television.
I accepted Soozie’s invitation and did a search for “dinner grace” and guess what came up? A link sponsored by Target that wanted to sell me the DVD Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner. That’s appropriate, I thought, since the readers come from various cultural and faith background. But since Target wasn’t giving anything up on the prayer front, I decided to draw on my favorite cinema genre for inspiration: food movies.
Here is my prayer:
Dear God, come and be with us as we gather here from our Places in the Heart , at a restaurant that is a step above a Diner, to East and Drink as Men and Women, let us be kind to the Waitress , enjoy Tortilla Soup, Ratatouille, or the Mystic dimensions of Pizza, or whatever we choose; bless this Feast and those who prepared it with the generosity and totally outpouring of self of aBabette; may it to become Soul Food, that will give us strength to confront the ducks in our lives as Julie&Julia Child admonished us; help us make this a Big Night for writers and all creative people, knowing that , as Primo said in the film, “to eat good food is to know God”. May this meal be capped by just a little Chocolat as we begin the Humanitas Prize process once again this year with No Reservations. And whether we are Mostly Marthasor Marios, give us the grace to slow down and savor the fruits of the labors of these writers to choose the very best stories.
Thank you Lord for your blessings! Bless us, bless this food, and no SidewaysBottle Shock please – and be with us always!
(Here is an article about Humanitas director Cathleen Young and the Humanitas New Voices initiative written by Neely Swanson in the WGA journal “Written By”; click on “Cathleen Young”)
Cathleen Young, director of the Humanitas organization, Brian Oppenheimer and Barbara Gangi, screenwriters, at the dinner to launch the Humanitas Prize process for 2011. Photo courtesy of Frederic Charpenier
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