I find the really interesting moment is when he (Karras) was talking in a bar. He was saying, you know, 'If I can get a transfer…I can't be here anymore'. Then he said something really interesting: "I've lost my faith."
I think sometimes we think of faith as a kind of intangible, irrational thing but in the context of Catholicism particularly, faith is evidence by a set of practices. It's, basically, faith is a kind of a theological term of expressing a certain way of living that's marked by things like confessions, the sacraments, etcetera.
So to say that you've lost your faith is not suddenly to say that you've woken up and undergone a kind of immaterial feeling. What he's saying is that "I don't know how to live like this anymore" which makes it an existential and material problem. To say that I've lost my faith is not a kind of abstract, it's something that you are living through. It's a material change to your condition. And I think that's what makes the ending so interesting and powerful.
[…] Religious faith or Catholicism and Christianity more broadly maybe, it's something that is more concerned with the abstract, the immaterial, the spiritual, the transcendence obviously but it's also concerned with, in practice it is debatable, but in its theology it's concerned with how do you actually live in the world. So this is why I find it really interesting that he (Karras) said that he's lost his faith, which is it is expressing a transcendence loss but it's also like, the way of living that I currently have is not existentially or materially functional anymore.
So your loss of faith, I don't want to say that it's something that everyone could understand but, I think this idea of being in a situation where you think 'My material conditions are no longer doing what I need them to do. I don't find any existential or social satisfaction from these practices of life that I have", I think this is something that is really common.
[…] And there's a flattening of the world, right? There's a scene where he's giving communion in the church, breaks the bread. So, in Catholicism that is not just bread. That's the host. It is sacred. It's laden with power. That is THE body and blood of Christ. But, put it down on the silver platter and it's just bread. It's that moment of going 'everything you thought you could do on day by day basis that would impart meaning and significance, not necessarily what you believe or what you do, is where I think faith is lived out. It's suddenly just action, it's just stuff, it's just an object. And you can see it in Karras' face, there's a colossal sense of loss.
