Valerie Bertinelli is a Tempted Nun in Shattered Vows

Valerie Bertinelli’s Shattered Vows, a 1984 TV movie about a young nun romantically drawn to a priest, feels three hours long. Its run time is actually only around 90 minutes, much of it devoted to Bertinelli’s Mary Milligan and David Morse’s Father Tim looking disturbed and conflicted.

“When I was 16 years old, I had a calling to serve God I thought would last the rest of my life,” Mary tells us via voice-over. At other times it’s mentioned she knew her calling by 14. When her family tearfully hands her over to Sister Agnes (Caroline McWilliams), who is also Mary’s aunt, her mother says “She’s in your hands now.” Agnes corrects her: “She’s in God’s hands.” Soon enough, she’d rather be in Father Tim’s.

Sister Carmelita (Patricia Neal) oversees her formal training, intoning “You have answered Christ’s call. Like him, you must die. On his altar, you lay the life you might have lived. You have left all things to begin to live in the spirit of the vows.” It’s the early 1960s and grim rules abound. Mary and her friend Bonnie (Leslie Ackerman) are separated and punished for having a close bond. As Sister Carmelita explains, “A good nun loves others as God loves—impersonally. Particular friendships destroy community.”

Bonnie opts to leave the convent rather than submit to a final sacrifice: the loss of her hair. “They’re smothering us! […] The joyful, life-giving parts,” she insists to Mary during an illicit meeting. But it will take a bit more time, and some Special Feelings, for her friend to come around to that way of thinking.

Mary meets idealistic, liberal Father Tim in the spring of 1965, a season of change for her order because of Vatican II. Assigned to spend weekends at his youth center, she’s immediately jolted by his presence. During the workweek she’s a teacher who challenges her teenage students to be engaged and thoughtful. “Why does suffering prove to God that you love him? Can’t you love God and still be happy?” she asks them.

Father Meyer (Michael Ensign), stuffy and conservative, disapproves of how she runs her classroom. “You were hired to teach basic Catholic dogma,” he tells her, denying Tim’s request for her to operate the center in his absence when he moves to New York. Before Tim leaves they have a quasi-date, complete with him telling her he had “a lovely time” afterward. When Mary awkwardly heads back to the convent, he calls after her “It’s all right. I feel exactly the same.”

If you’re expecting a grand love story to blossom when Mary heads off to grad school in New York on the archdiocese’s dime, Shattered Vows isn’t quite that trite. Emboldened by her feelings for Tim and her own personal growth as she studies psychology, Mary separates from her order and doesn’t take her final vows. Despite Tim’s inner struggles, he’s reluctant to follow, setting up the best exchange in the film.

Mary: You encouraged me, you sent me so many mixed signals. What were you doing?

Tim: I don’t know!

Mary (yelling): Well, I do! It was fine as long as I was the little nun and you were the priest bringing enlightenment. But now I’m an equal and you’re afraid of that. Tim, I love you! And I can admit that and I can be enriched by it. You can try and save the entire world but you can’t have one close relationship? Go ahead, hide behind your collar. Don’t worry, you’re safe with me.

Shattered Vows (1984)

Shattered Vows is ultimately about Mary’s independence (she gets her own place and even her first boyfriend, played by Tom Parsekian) and the general misery of many nuns — and some priests — in a prohibitive era. The most interesting scenes aren’t about forbidden feelings but rather the ways the church devalued its most promising nuns.

There is, for example, a friend of Mary’s who is anguished that Vatican II arrived too late to afford her extra time with her dying mother. There are Sister Carmelita’s parting words: “We are losing so many of you. I guess we didn’t understand soon enough.” And there is Mary’s determination to escape a life of “selling raffle tickets in the homeroom” by pursuing higher education. That’s all much more interesting than Tim’s noncommittal navel-gazing, though Morse gives a fine performance.

Shattered Vows, when it captivates, is all Bertinelli. Mary is disarmingly personable and, unlike many teen girls in TV movies, her emotional growth feels organic. She matures not because she’s forced to but because she isn’t blind to the world around her. When she tells her new boyfriend “I have a lot of growing up to do. I’m looking for my first boyfriend, not my last,” you breathe a sigh of relief. She has too much potential to waste it all on a dopey guy.

Streaming and DVD availability

You’ll have to go looking for grainy copies of this one on YouTube; it’s not been released on DVD and isn’t currently streaming on any subscription or ad-supported platforms.

… But wait, there’s more!

Shattered Vows was adapted from Mary Gilligan Wong’s memoir, Nun, by Audrey Davis Levin. As you may recall, Levin also wrote the execrable Fatal Memories, recently reviewed here, about Shelley Long’s dubious repressed memories sending her dad to the slammer.

Bertinelli and Long had previously costarred in yet another TV movie, The Promise of Love, in 1980. We’ll get to that one eventually. In the meantime, if it’s more rebellious nuns you’re seeking, Kristy McNichol played one who’s knocked up in the Rue McClanahan ensemble dramedies Children of the Bride and Baby of the Bride.