The Non-Catholic School Kid’s Guide to Lady Bird
There is a lot to love about Lady Bird, Greta Gerwig’s 2017 comedy about a young woman (Saoirse Ronan) dealing with heartbreak, her future, and a simultaneously tender/tumultuous relationship with her mother (Laurie Metcalf) during her senior year of high school. The film particularly strikes a chord for anyone who attended Catholic school: Lady Bird is packed with tiny, well-observed details that bring that world to vivid life. You can still enjoy it if you didn’t go to Catholic school, but you also may have found yourself baffled by some of what you saw onscreen.
Well, never fear! I’ve taken it upon myself, as a proud Catholic school grad and employee, to annotate some of the more esoteric Catholic references in the film. Hopefully some extra context will add to your enjoyment of the movie, and give you a better understanding of Lady Bird’s world.
Single-Sex Classes, Mixed Masses
Many Catholic schools are single-sex, like the two that Lady Bird centers on: all-girls Immaculate Heart of Mary, run by religious sisters, and St. Francis Xavier High School, the Jesuit-run all-boys school down the street. Like Immaculate Heart and Xavier, single-sex schools usually have a “brother” or “sister” school nearby (sometimes several), with whom they share extracurriculars — including theater programs, as portrayed in the film. Theater is a time-honored means for students at single-sex schools to mingle with members of the opposite sex and find prom dates.
The two schools also come together for Mass, which reflects the logistical realities of the Church. Sometimes there just aren’t enough priests to go around, and some schools have to share (an all-girls school might not have any priests on staff full-time, either, so they would need to bring someone in to offer the sacraments anyway). Lady Bird’s mixed Mass also shows that teens can turn literally anything into an opportunity for clumsy flirting.
“And Also With You”
During the Mass scene, the priest says “The Lord be with you,” and the students respond: “And also with you.” This is an older version of a common Mass response, and for Catholics it establishes Lady Bird as a period piece just as effectively as that book-on-cassette from the previous scene. In 2011, a new translation of the Roman Missal (the instruction guide for the Catholic Mass) updated the response to “And with your spirit.”
Arms Folded for a Blessing
During the opening montage, we see Lady Bird approach the front of the church during Communion with her arms folded over her chest. A priest lays a hand on her shoulder and offers her a silent blessing. This is a common practice at Catholic schools that serves two purposes. First, it prevents traffic jams during Communion by requiring all students, Catholic and non-Catholic, to exit their pews; second, it gives non-Catholic students an appropriate way to participate, since they can’t receive the Eucharist. Campus Ministry ingenuity at its finest!
Uniforms
Yes, most Catholic high schools have uniforms (or at least a dress code), and yes they’re as utilitarian and staid as Lady Bird’s. The uniform checks are real, too, including the measuring of skirt-hem-to-knee distance — the idea being that skirts that end above the knee are immodest. But like Lady Bird and her friends, Catholic girls across history have rolled their skirts above the approved length as an act of defiance (tailoring your skirt to a shorter length, as one girl does, is rarer).
Starting with Prayer
Prayer is essential to Catholic life. In Lady Bird we see the characters begin the year with liturgy (probably the Mass of the Holy Spirit, since Xavier is a Jesuit school) and begin class with the Hail Mary, an invocation as important as the Pledge of Allegiance. The theater kids even end their pre-show ritual with two shouted prayers. Speaking of which, that ritual contains traditions from two different breeds of Catholic schools. The first is how prayers usually end at a Jesuit high school: “St. Ignatius of Loyola!” “Pray for us!” (St. Ignatius is the founder of the Jesuits). The second — “Live, Jesus, in our hearts!” “Forever!” — comes from the De La Salle Christian Brother schools.
Cool Sisters and Priests
When it first came out, Lady Bird received a lot of deserved praise, especially from Catholic media, for its positive portrayal of priests and sisters. Religious (as they’re called collectively in the Church) are often reduced to stereotypes: the imperious, ruler-wielding sister or the scowling, rigid priest. In reality, one of the great joys of Catholic education can be meeting awesome religious who become invaluable teachers and mentors. Characters like Sister Sarah Joan (Lois Smith) or Father Leviatch (Stephen McKinley Henderson) are drawn with sensitivity and affection. Indeed, Sister Sarah Joan seems to be one of the few people to whom Lady Bird really opens up. I’m sure many Catholic school grads recognized a favorite religious in Sister Sarah Joan’s wry humor and easy compassion.
Snacking on Communion Wafers
Early in the film, we see Lady Bird and Julie (Beanie Feldstein) goofing off in the school’s sacristy, eating from a plastic tub of Communion wafers. This isn’t sacrilegious: as Julie notes, they aren’t consecrated. Consecration happens during the Mass, when, we believe, the wafers become the body of Christ through the mystical process of transubstantiation. Before that, they’re just wafers. As a side note, schools usually keep their sacristies locked; not because they’re worried about students eating all of the wafers (which are, generally, pretty dry and bland), but because they might decide to sample the altar wine.
Auditioning with a Hymn
Lady Bird’s friend Julie auditions for the fall musical by singing the hymn “Prayer of St. Francis” (“Make me a channel of your peace…”), which is a classic Catholic school theater move. You want to feel comfortable and confident with your audition song, so why not choose one that’s been drilled into your head from years of liturgy? For the record, I never used a hymn as an audition song in high school… though I did sing “We Are Called” for an audition in college.
Six Inches for the Holy Spirit
During the homecoming dance, a sister separates Lady Bird and her date, Danny (Lucas Hedges), admonishing them to leave “six inches for the Holy Spirit.” Although it sounds like a cliche, this does actually happen. A teacher at my alma mater used to literally insert a yardstick between couples who were too close together.
Multi-Purpose Priests
When Father Leviatch is unable to direct the spring play due to some personal struggles, he’s replaced by Father Walther (Bob Stephenson), a football coach who, though he tries, is baffled by the world of theater. Similar situations happen all the time: priests are often asked to be “all things to all people,” and find themselves taking on unfamiliar roles when the need arises. This is especially true for Jesuits, whose charism (the unique character or philosophy of a religious order) emphasizes obedience. Ideally, all priests approach sudden role changes with the same openness as Father Walther.
Ash Wednesday
Midway through the movie, we briefly see Lady Bird and her classmates receiving ashes for Ash Wednesday. This day marks the beginning of Lent, a forty day period when all Catholics are called to fasting, service, and repentance as we prepare to commemorate Christ’s suffering, death, and resurrection during the Easter Triduum. Catholic schools will hold a Mass or prayer service on that day, during which students receive a cross of ashes on their foreheads as a reminder of our mortality and a sign of repentance. Whether or not the ashes actually look like a cross is another matter entirely.
The Abortion Assembly
In keeping with the Church’s pro-life ethic, most Catholic high schools will plan some sort of special programming around abortion like the one that Lady Bird and her class attend later in the film. The story the presenter tells in the film, including the “twist” at the end that the young woman considering an abortion was her own mother, is typical for these types of programs.
During one of their conversations, Sister Sarah Joan says that Lady Bird must love her hometown of Sacramento, because she writes about it so beautifully in her college essay. Lady Bird, who has been planning on getting away from Sacramento through the whole film is baffled: “I guess I pay attention.”
“Don’t you think they are maybe the same thing?” Sister Sarah Joan asks. “Love and attention?”
Gerwig certainly knows how to pay attention, and thanks to her eye for detail, Lady Bird is a rich, nuanced, funny, and, yes, loving look at the world of Catholic high school.
Regardless of your own educational or religious background, I hope these annotations give you a deeper appreciation of Lady Bird. At the very least, use this as an excuse to go watch it again (or, if you never have, go check it out). Even if you don’t catch every Catholic reference, at heart it’s a universal story about love, growth, and grace. We could all use one of those.
