Daily Inspiration Quote by Daniel Berrigan

The line lands like a sly confession from a man who spent his life turning institutions inside out. Daniel Berrigan isn’t bragging about proximity to fame; he’s puncturing it. He starts with the mundane CV flex ("several films") and then undercuts the glamour of "the big blockbuster" by reframing his role as essentially pastoral mischief: an advisor trying to "make Jesuits out of them". The joke works because it’s impossible. You don’t convert actors into Jesuits on a set between takes. That impossibility is the point.

Berrigan’s subtext is a critique of performance itself. Actors are professionals at adopting a role; Jesuits, in his telling, are meant to be people whose role is a discipline, a vocation, a way of being that resists the easy costume change. By pairing Hollywood’s most visible artifice with the Society of Jesus - famous for rigor, intellect, and obedience - he highlights a cultural hunger for authenticity that cinema can mimic but not supply.

Context matters: Berrigan was a priest-activist who treated public life as a moral stage, from civil rights to the Catonsville Nine and antiwar resistance. That history gives the quip an edge. He’s not naive about spectacle; he knows how movements, martyrdom, and media all become narratives. So the humor isn’t anti-art. It’s a warning about how quickly conviction gets turned into "content" - and a reminder that his real project was always formation, not fame.