A Rectification of Catholic Guilt: Yes, God, Yes (2020)

For those who attended Catholic schools, this film is sure to feel reminiscent of the good old days when adults would police your outfits for being “inappropriate” and being taught abstinence only sex-ed, worded entirely with vague euphemisms (I myself have a fond memory of being forced to wear a horrendous sweater to hide less than an inch of my visible midsection, because it was inappropriate and distracting). Yes, God, Yes follows the sexual awakening of Alice – a sophomore who is confronting her newly discovered sexual desires and ensuing feelings of Catholic guilt (due to being conditioned into believing that such feelings are inherently sinful, and that acting upon them is damning). While this film is categorized as a raunchy comedy, it portrays a much more genuine account of coping with Catholic guilt and sexuality than I anticipated. 

One of the preliminary plot points is the stigmatization faced by our main character, as she has fallen victim to the notorious nature of high school students- specifically regarding their aptitude to spreading false rumours. Branded as being sexually deviant due to a rumour about her hooking up with a boy named Wade, students and faculty alike begin to treat Alice differently (and deviantly). This is the catalyst into her confronting her own relationship with her sexuality. While attempting to find a concrete understanding of the sexually explicit rumour circulating about her, she inadvertently engages in cyber-sex with a stranger online. This experience leads her to feel ashamed of her actions – especially because she thinks she’s an outlier. Her wrongful assumption that nobody else is struggling with feelings of desire is proven false when she attends Kirkos, a religious school-affiliated retreat, where she witnesses hypocrisy. Alice discovers that both students and faculty who claim to live their lives in accordance with their understandings of the bible are not, in fact, living their lives in those terms. Among these discoveries of hypocrisy, the most jarring and impactful for Alice is the revelation that even the school’s Father, a man who is meant to exist in a position of “positive” influence and authority, engages in similar so-called deviant behaviours to those that she herself felt guilty for engaging in. The end of the movie is incredibly satisfying, as Alice confesses the father’s own “sin” to him while in confession, but from her perspective. Without concretely calling him out on his duplicity, Alice forces Father Murphy to consider his own actions and provide an account of what he deems to be appropriate penance. After this moment, Alice appears to have shed the shackles of scrupulosity. 

My absolute favourite part of the film was Alice’s lesbian bar adventure. After running away from the retreat, she finds herself in a quaint lesbian bar, where she bonds with a middle-aged woman named Gina about religiously rooted guilt after absolutely demolishing a wine-cooler. Gina confides that she is an ex-Catholic and has dealt with parallel issues to the ones Alice finds herself facing. This is a true moment of revelation for Alice, as she finally feels less alone. Relatable, radical, and perhaps just the slightest bit raunchy, this film is a definite must-add to your watchlist!