Last Thursday evening, I found myself at Los Angeles’ Academy of Motion Picture and Arts on Wilshire Boulevard.   There, a battle-front of cameras fired volley after volley at the prestigious actors and actresses about to enter the premiere screening of their soon-to-be famous movie.  I had already seen the epic historical drama at a publicity preview in Modesto.  But this would be different.  Seated among benefactors, nuns and missionaries, priests and a few bishops, I took in, tearfully and with tremendous gratitude, the story once again.  The film: “For Greater Glory”.  The topic: the Mexican Catholic resistance, first peaceful, then armed, to President Calles’ fanatic program of suppression against the Roman Catholic Church from mid-1926 to mid-1929.

Next to me sat a person who flew down that afternoon from Sacramento, just to be present for the event with the likes of celebrities Andy Garcia, Eduardo Verastegui, Catalina Sandino Moreno, Santiago Cabrera, Eva Longoria and Peter O’Toole.  I was also on fire.  But my hero, and the only one with whom I requested a photograph afterwards, was Mauricio Kuri.  He had played the child-martyr Josecito, whose heroic, unflagging courage drives the story.

I’m not going to repeat what you can read online or in other reviews.  Suffice it to say that a huge but hidden piece of American history has been pulled out of the mothballs, dusted off, and brought to life in two hours and fifteen minutes.  Although the flow suffers from spanning such an immense amount of activity and political maneuvering, the movie not only works, but is an epic of enduring value.  In other words, please do yourself and all of us a favor: go, see the film from the very beginning to the end, and let God speak.

Some reviewers find the religious message and the repetition of the Cristero motto “Viva Cristo Rey!” too heavy-handed.  Christians, Catholics and non-Catholics alike, will I believe feel quite differently.  The substance of the Mexican counter-revolution was religious.  And even if the Catholic Church as an institution took a very distant stand on the Cristero resistance, at one point finally obliging Catholics to accept the American-brokered treaty, the power of faith driving action for justice and human dignity shines on through the rising dust of the bloody war.  One day we, too, may have to lay down our lives in defense of our religious freedoms.  For Greater Glory is, then, a masterful accomplishment which should be required viewing for all who contemplate the cost of taking a stand.  I’ve seen it twice; I’ll see it again.



At Brendan Theaters in Modesto and Downtown Regal Cinemas in Stockton

Fr. Dean McFalls, St. Mary’s Church, Stockton, CA 95202.     June 1, 2012.