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It is based on a true story, won last year's Golden Lion award at the Venice International Film Festival, and was snatched up by Miramax for distribution. And now that it is opening in theatres across the country, mainstream critics are raving that The Magdalene Sisters is one of the year's best films.

But not everyone is so pleased. Director Peter Mullan's film about the abuses suffered by young women at the hands of some harsh and unforgiving Irish Catholics has the Catholic League and many other religious press media critics calling it exaggerated, unfair, and cruel in its own right.

According to The Washington Post, the Walt Disney Company's board of directors received an appeal from the president of the Catholic League last September. William Donohue demanded that the company break off ties with Miramax. He continues to insist that the movie is driven by an anti-Catholic agenda. But a Miramax spokesman showed that the company would not budge. "The film portrays something that actually happened," he said.

Movies that vilify people of faith usually get mixed reactions from the religious media. Frequently there are some who take offense, preferring to have believers shown in a flattering light. Others recognize that religious folk are as capable of sin as everyone else, and find honesty to be the best policy. In the case of The Magdalene Sisters, almost every critic agrees that "the Maggies," as they were called, were indeed mistreated by the church. But they also agree that the movie unnecessarily exaggerates the situation, rigging the movie to provoke audiences toward outrage instead of productive, balanced, and redemptive understanding.

Movieguide's critic says the film "is a painful expression of a twisted system. That this film was made to show the injustice and cruelty of the asylums is understandable in that they should never happen again, but it is regrettable that the many good deeds of godly, kind, self-sacrificing sisters are not shown. Regrettably, this movie will turn many people who see it away from the loving God who wants to save them from this evil." The film is given a rating of "Abhorrent."

Steve Parish (The Film Forum) calls protesters daft. "There are plenty of feel-good movies in theatres," he says. "But if you need to feel bad, particularly at the inhumanity of the Christian church—in this case Irish Catholicism—then The Magdalene Sisters will certainly work."

Finding himself harassed and accused of anti-church attitudes, Rex Reed (New York Observer) defends his admiration for the film: "Why is it that every time I write objectively about movies or plays or museums courageous enough to take on religious infractions, question the sanity of religious myths and mind control, or treat anything involving the Catholic church with a sense of curiosity or humor, I am suddenly deluged with volumes of organized hate mail? When do these people get a life and focus on the real world? The Catholic Church has a lot to answer for … [Magdalene Sisters] is a great film that deserves genuflection. For others, it may be disturbing enough to turn church suppers into heavenly hash."

Film critic Steven Greydanus (Decent Films) responded to this article in an online discussion: "The [Roman] Catholic Church has shown itself able to deal with decidedly mixed and even highly critical depictions of hierarchy and religious figures. The Vatican list of notable important films includes such hierarchy-indicting titles as The Mission, The Passion of Joan of Arc, and Andrei Rublev. Somehow I can't imagine many other groups officially endorsing films similarly depicting their leadership in such critical terms. That Magdalene Sisters has been denounced on Vatican radio and in the Vatican newspaper, where these other films have been met with openness despite taking a hard look at members of the hierarchy, is due, not to a knee-jerk reaction against all negative depictions, [but] to the viciousness, exaggeration, and lack of nuance or moral honesty in this particular depiction."

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August (Web-only) 2003, Vol. 47