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  Showtime Airs Timely Story of U.S. Church

By Luaine Lee
Fort Wayne Journal Gazette [Fort Wayne IN]
April 30, 2005

Showtime couldn't have come up with a better time to air its controversial film "Our Fathers."

With the death of Pope John Paul II and the choosing of his replacement, Pope Benedict XVI, in the news, the church has been more visible than ever.

The show, which deals with the Catholic Church's cover-up of the sexual abuses in Boston, premieres May 21 on Comcast Channel 4. This film, based on David France's bestseller, "Our Fathers: The Secret Life of the Catholic Church in an Age of Scandal," takes a penetrating look at the actions of the church's hierarchy.

"One of the things we learned in Boston was that there's a corporate problem and that the corporate CEOs were responsible for the problem," France says.

These ecclesiastical leaders have not taken the responsibility of seeing to it that the malefactors were punished for their deeds, France says.

"We saw Cardinal Law, as kind of the sole bad guy, lose a really powerful job in Boston. And after a year of prayer and seclusion, he was given another really powerful job in Rome," France says.

Brian Dennehy plays a priest who wants the church to come clean.

"These things are said and done and acted upon, as for me, more in sorrow than in rage," says Dennehy. "Although certainly rage is a part of it. Right now I live in a small town in Connecticut and there's a family there … for whom these series of incidents were a source of particular grief. The boy, who grew up to be a man, killed himself when he was 40. Never recovered."

Bernie McDaid of Peabody, Mass., is one of the abuse victims depicted in the film.

He recalls, "My parents in 1969 … got this priest, Joe Birmingham, removed. The Catholic Church said they went and got him help. And they never did. … The fallout is huge," he says. "We need to talk about it more because the damage, as far as I'm concerned, they raped my soul. They took God from me at age 11."

Another victim, Olan Horne, was also abused by Birmingham. But Horne fought back, and was beaten severely by the priest.

Now he says he wishes he could have remained silent.

"My best friend, who I started the Survivors of Joe Birmingham Group with, is living in a trailer, has been incarcerated six times. He's in the middle of a divorce. We all would like to go back, because it was safer for us to live in our dysfunctional world."

Ted Danson portrays lawyer Mitchell Garabedian, who takes on the Archdiocese.

"I didn't have a huge desire to play Mitchell Garabedian," he says. "I had a huge desire to be a part of this piece because I think it absolutely serves a social (need). What we do to our children is horrifying."

Most of the dialogue is taken verbatim from France's book, which he gathered from reams of interviews.

"It's journalism, kind of a real-time history," he says.

"The aspects of the dialogue that aren't exactly represented by the interviews that I conducted are at least, they represent the substance and certainly the intent of the speaker."

"This is a crime that keeps on giving," adds Dennehy. "It's not just the kids. It's their families, their brothers and sisters, their uncles, aunts, wives or husbands, their children – generation after generation, person after person … For any church, any hierarchy to participate in the cover-up, in the concealment of this crime, so that the crime continues to be committed, is unspeakable."

 
 

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