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The Nun Vs. The Priest

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SHANLEY: I think the great attraction that Viola is feeling, to be presumptuous, is community—she needs community, and I think that that is one of the great deficits in modern life. Now the Catholic Church has its faults, but these dioceses, these church schools, these centers, provided a gravity which kept people from flying off into outer space. And we haven't really yet come up with a great substitute. The best we have is the Internet, that's the new community. I mean, Meryl, do you suffer from a lack of community yet?

STREEP: I don't know.

DAVIS: Or is it just that you don't care?

STREEP: No, I mean I guess I'm in awe of and in love with what I don't know. All the certainties that are embedded in doctrines—I understand the solace they provide, but in a way, they also, for me, form a kind of fence that divides us from each other. I am pulled toward the ineffable and I'm trying to conceive why we exist and is there a greater purpose. But I'm a mother, and I have a purpose, and I have a place, and I deeply resent the idea that if you're not a member of a church, temple, ashram, synagogue or—what else is there?—that you are somehow denying your children the meaning of life. I have a deep reverence for life. I feel I'm a deeply moral person. But often religion is a club out of which people are excluded.