The traditional monastic rule against particular friendship is the great bogeyman of the cinematic representation of religious life. Who can forget, once seen, the dreadful episode in The Nun’s Story (1959), where the nun befriended by the protagonist confesses their attachment in the chapter of faults, and both are asked to scrub the floor in atonement?
[Dumb comment deleted. I misread this! I am so accustomed now to seeing singular “they” and “their” that I read it here when it didn’t exist. It’s not “the nun’s attachment” but “the attachment of the two women.” Duh. I do think, though, that while this certainly bears witness to my dim-wittedness it also bears witness to the ways that the overuse of singular “they” and “their” — overuse, I say, because it’s perfectly appropriate in many circumstances and always has been — sows confusion among readers.]
