A key tenet of the
Catholic faith claims that in order to achieve salvation and dodge a
considerably less temperate afterlife, believers must have their relationship
with God mediated by the church–through Mass, through confession, and
especially through the sacrament of communion. So when victims and their
families talk about having their lives wrecked by a sexually abusive priest in
the forceful documentary Deliver Us From Evil, that destruction is as
much spiritual as psychological. There are compelling reasons to blame church
policy for manufacturing deviants, but even if pedophile priests can be said to
be wholly responsible for their actions, the spiritual betrayal is entirely
institutional, resting with cardinals, bishops, and other officials who close
rank and stonewall the victims.
A more wide-ranging and
heavy-handed treatment of the issue than Kirby Dick's recent Twist Of Faith, Deliver Us From Evil centers on Father Oliver
O'Grady, a priest who molested or raped dozens of children in several Northern
California parishes from the mid-'70s until his conviction in 1993. Whenever
charges arose that O'Grady abused his young parishioners, church
officials–notably Roger Mahony, then bishop and currently a cardinal who
participated in Pope Benedict XVI's election–simply moved him to another town.
O'Grady eventually served seven years of a 14-year sentence, but he's currently
free to roam in his native Ireland, and can even expect retirement annuities
from the Catholic church.
In a major coup, director
Amy Berg convinced O'Grady to appear in the documentary, and his testimony
reveals a man who's chillingly divorced from the full weight of his actions. He
freely admits his abuses, but couches them in clinical, lawyerly terms, and
seems to believe that a written apology, followed by (gulp) one-on-one sessions
with his victims, will tidy things up nicely. Berg also gets some powerful interview
footage with the now-adult victims and their families, but she pumps it up
needlessly with intrusive musical and visual punctuation. The film also follows
them on a Roger & Me-like stunt of presenting a j'accuse letter to the Vatican; of
course, it goes unanswered. From an institution that's made obfuscation part of
its policy, what else did they expect?