nobody hates religion as much as lapsed Catholics, huh? 

I suppose that’s the problem; if life is nothing but a test, it removes the beauty of a temporal, pointless and finite life and replaces it with the relentlessness of a score. might as well be sports of the spirit. enough points and you shall sup with heroes and prophets, too few points and you burn, scourged and scoured in the corners of oblivion. religion as a goad to behavior was always a more destructive instrument than religion as an institute for community and higher ambition. much like the hollowed out and reanimated corpse of american christianity as a decrepit institute that mostly operates as another political wing, what we have here is piousness as leprosy. evangelism as a curse. the hectoring, nagging priesthood of hypocrites and their foul assurance of holiness. 

this movie is one of those darkly thematic flicks that has a lot to tell you with the images, and very little to say with the story. so your mileage may vary. but it shouldn’t. 

“We have never heard the Devil’s side of the story; god wrote the whole book.” 
- Anatole France, of the Index Librorum Prohibitorum