Sister Mary Ignatius Explains It All For You

Sister Mary Ignatius: People who ate meat on Fridays back when it was a mortal sin are indeed in hell if they did not confess the sin before they died. If they confessed it, they are not in hell, unless they did not confess some other mortal sin they committed. People who would eat meat on Fridays back in the 50s tended to be the sort who would commit other mortal sins, so on a guess, I bet many of them are in hell for other sins, even if they did confess the eating of meat.

Baby with the Bathwater

Nanny: Wrong, right, I don’t where you pick up these phrases. Didn’t they teach you about Darwin in public school? The fish came out of the water, covered with a viscous substance, and then bones and vertebrae were evolved, and then male and female, and then the egg and the ovum and the testicles and the semen, and then reproduction, and then dinosaurs, or maybe dinosaurs before that, and then local governments, and then the space program, and then nuclear power plants and now cable television and Home Box Office. Where do you find right and wrong in all that???

The Marriage of Bette and Boo

Father Donnally: The wife cooks the bacon, and the husband brings home the bacon. This is how St. Paul saw marriage, although they probably didn’t really eat pork back then, the curing process was not very well worked out in Christ’s time, which is why so many of them followed the Jewish dietary laws even though they were Christians. I know I’m glad to be living now when we have cured pork and plumbing and showers rather than back when Christ lived. Many priests say they wish they had lived in Christ’s time so they could have met Him; that would, of course, have been very nice, but I’m glad I live now and that I have a shower.

Laughing Wild

Man: You know it was nice to believe in God, and an afterlife; and I’m sometimes envious of the people who seem comfortable because they still have this belief. But I remember when everybody won Tonys for Dreamgirls, and they all got up there thanking God for letting them win this award, and I was thinking to myself: God is silent on the holocaust, but He involves himself in the Tony awards? It doesn’t seem very likely.

Miss Witherspoon

Veronica: Did you ever see Stop the World I Want to Get Off? That musical with Anthony Newley, I think Rex and I saw it together – and I was married to him, don’t tell me I knew him when he was a coal miner in some previous century – anyway that musical’s title was prescient, wasn’t it? Who thought Anthony Newley knew anything?