Come Out Of The Cloister

Early in Disney's The Hunchback of Notre Dame (Yes, I still plan to pull a total of at least twelve blog posts out of this movie), Judge Claude Frollo, the villain of the film, tells Quasimodo, in song, that the world is a cruel and nasty and terrible place and that he, Quasimodo, would be better off staying in the cathedral's bell tower, where he'll be safe from everyone else.

Naturally, that's not a valid option for us. We can't just cloister ourselves away from the rest of the world, neither for our sakes or the world's. We need to spend some time in this fallen world. These experiences, unpleasant as they are, are part of our spiritual growth. We have to face opposition in this world in order to become better people.

We also have to face opposition in this world to make it a better place. The world has lots of problems, and we can only fix them by facing them. If we retreat, the problems will persist and worsen. We have to engage with the world in order to improve both it and ourselves.

So, Frollo's plan for Quasimodo's comfort was really only a band-aid solution. Sure, Quasimodo could have avoided ridicule by staying in the bell tower, but he wouldn't have experienced much character growth. And if he stayed in the tower, he couldn't have helped make Paris a better place either. By the end of the film (because it's a Disney film), the people of Paris have become more accepting of Quasimodo than they had been, and he seems set to live happily ever after "out there," like he wanted to. That couldn't have happened if he hadn't built up the courage to go "out there" in the first place.

We need to get out of our comfort zones, both for our own good and for the good of the world. We need the world for our spiritual growth, and the world certainly needs good people like us. It's tempting to try to avoid the world and its problems, but it's much better for everyone if we engage with it and its problems instead.