There were a few moments while watching Only the Lonely (1991) that I wanted to write it off as being awful.  Much of this has to do with Rose Muldoon (Maureen O’Hara).  She is the mother of Daniel “Danny” Muldoon (John Candy), a Chicago police officer who is forced to choose between Rose and the woman he loves, Theresa Luna (Ally Sheedy).  The city mentioned in the last sentence is one reason I reserved judgement.  It was difficult, though, because Maureen is basically a racist.  Her off-color remarks about various people’s ethnicity, and the stereotypes that go with them, may have been humorous to some in the early 1990s, but are jarring to hear today.  Please keep that context in mind as you continue reading.  Ultimately, what tipped my mental scales in the other direction is the fact that this is one of the more Catholic films I have seen in a while, excepting the racism, of course.

Though it is supposed to be set in a South Side locale, I immediately recognized the North Side Chicago opening shot of Only the Lonely.  Danny is returning home from a late-night shift, following what appears to be a routine of picking up some items from the store and getting the morning paper before having breakfast with Rose.  He is thirty-eight years old.  During their meal, we get the first sense of the control Rose exercises over her son when he informs her that he will be going to a White Sox game Wednesday night.  A mildly shocked mom reminds him that this is the day during the week when they play bingo at the parish church, a long-standing Catholic tradition.  Though she eventually assents, he pictures her unsuccessfully navigating the construction going on around the church, falling into an open manhole, and dying.  He imagines her last words being that she hopes he had a good time at the game before he decides to forego his plans in favor of bingo.  There are a few of these dream scenarios, a mental exercise about which, ironically enough, my spiritual director recently warned me.  After the evening of legalized gambling (who says the Church does not know how to have a good time?), Danny and Rose go to their local Irish pub for a drink.  In the course of their consumption, a couple of overserved individuals tote in a corpse.  This is morbid, of course, but they claim it is to honor a promise the living had made to the deceased to share one last cold one.  Before this can happen, the owner of the funeral home, Joey Luna (Joe Greco), comes to retrieve the body for the grieving family.  Tagging along is his daughter, Theresa, and this is the first time she and Danny see one another.  You can say that it is love and first sight because she becomes all he can think about, much to his mother’s horror.  Eventually, he works up the courage to go to the funeral home to ask her on a date.  She agrees and they have one of the most Chicago evenings ever: a picnic on the infield grass at Comiskey Park.  It is no Wrigley Field, but it will do for cinematic purposes.  Their interactions, though, are one-sided, with him nervously doing all the talking.  As he walks her back to her door, he is surprised to hear that she had a good time.  She goes on to explain that the reason for her relative muteness is that she is an introvert.  As such, she asks for patience with her on future dates.  This is when the rest of the family begin to interfere.  One key contributor is Danny’s younger brother, the successful lawyer Patrick Muldoon (Kevin Dunn).  Patrick is content to let Danny continue to take care of their mother, and proposes that Danny and Rose move to St. Petersburg, Florida (again, ironically enough, as this is where I currently live), where Patrick thinks they will be more comfortable.  Given the budding romance with Theresa, Danny is not keen on this idea.  The biggest hurdle, of course, is Rose.  Remember what I said in the introduction about her being a racist?  This attitude comes to the fore when she learns Theresa’s Sicilian heritage, Rose believing they are all criminals.  Danny plunges ahead anyway, enlisting the help of their neighbor, Nick Acropolis (Anthony Quinn), who is sweet on Rose (despite her views), to help keep mom unaware of Theresa staying over one night when mom visits Patrick in the suburbs.  The worst comes out, though, when Danny tries to have dinner out with Rose and Theresa.  Theresa reveals that she is also of Polish stock, which brings more jokes from Rose.  So much for global Catholic unity, I guess.  Danny spends most of this time explaining away Rose’s awful behavior until Theresa’s angrily leaves.  Theresa is upset that Danny did not stick up for her.  That comes when Danny and Rose return home.  Rose’s defense is that she “tells it like it is,” but Danny points out how she does not care who she hurts.  This is underscored when he brings up how she had once made his late father cry.  With that, he pulls some favors (another oft-repeated phrase is that sometimes it is good to be a cop), obtains an engagement ring, and proposes using a fire truck’s lift crane to get to her window.  The night before they are to get married, though, while watching their cake being assembled, Danny has another vision of Rose dying out of his supervision.  He excuses himself to call mom, but Theresa sees it as a sign that they will always be under Rose’s thumb. Hence, neither Danny or Theresa shows up for their wedding.  Eventually, Danny accepts the offer for him and Rose to relocate to Florida.  The day before they are to get on the road, they are at a funeral of a local friend, a man who died alone.  It makes Danny realize that Theresa was right, and that he wants to be with her.  Thus, he sends Nick to Florida with Rose and tracks down Theresa on a train headed to New York.  His offer to go with her convinces her that he is finally free of Rose.

For Danny at the end of Only the Lonely, it is envisioning Rose on the plane beating up potential hijackers, then having her tell him that she will be fine, that convinces him to emotionally and mentally let her go.  These visions can be seen in a Catholic manner, though there are a number of other components on which I could focus.  For example, at the height of the tension between Danny and Rose, they go to see their pastor.  I am not fond (to say the least) of much of what she has to say, referring to the priest as a “Polack,” but I did chuckle over her reason for consulting with him.  She says that atheists and protestants see therapists, but Catholics go to a priest.  This is funny, though my training as a spiritual director had me cringing.  While what Danny and Rose seek is not advice about the Faith, too often people conflate the two.  Put simply, spiritual direction is not therapy, yet it can have that effect.  Let me be clear (especially if any of my friends at the House of Prayer in Clearwater, Florida, are reading this): it is not up to the director to provide what is often referred to as healing.  That is God’s purview.  Instead, what we encourage is that people take what is troubling them to prayer, using the Scriptures as a tool to be led by the Holy Spirit.  This has a basis in Ignatian Spirituality, which utilizes all the senses as a tool for communicating with God.  This can include the imagination.  What Danny does for most of the film, however, is not Godly.  His mind gives him all sorts of images to tell him that everything is not okay with his mom.  Even if she died as a result of one of the insane scenarios he concocts in his brain, he is taking on a responsibility that is not his to bear.  He is not in control of his mother’s fate, and the same can be said of her for him.  Believing otherwise is not Christ-like.  Danny deserves credit for the concern he displays for his mother.  What he eventually learns is to be the person God created him to be rather than what others expect him to be.

I want to say that I was pleasantly surprised by Only the Lonely.  It is set, and primarily filmed, in Chicago, it has Catholic imagery throughout, and it is always great to see Maureen O’Hara.  I just wish she had been coaxed out of retirement for something better than a racist character like this one.  Otherwise, it is a good film to watch.