Sin #43: Devil in the Church

Father Olive O’Grady is a devious predator who began his sexual molestation rampage back in the seventies whilst living among naïve catholic families that trusted him. For decades he abused their trust, engaged in sexual activities with young children and moved to different parishes in California, hiding behind the hypocritical veil of the holy church. For them pedophilia remained merely a nuisance and not a sin or even a destructive force among families; it’s almost an ancestral tradition for the clergy, after centuries of enforcing a ridiculous celibacy oath, to take children and “touch” them as they simply put it. Frankly, all this is sickening and disgusting.
“Deliver us from Evil” gives faces to the victims of pedophilia and to its perpetrators making the movie a devastating document against the attitudes of the church and the conspiracy to cover up and even protect members of its organization. These charges go all the way to Pope Benedict XVI who is, even today, receiving criticism for his choices on the matter. Can the church survive this scandal? I hope not, since they need to account for the thousands of molestation cases all around the world.

Watching this documentary I was confronted by a series of conflicting emotions. Hearing O’ Grady’s confessional made me angry and enraged; here’s a man that’s clearly damaged and somewhat detached from his terrible actions and yet he is a monster that enjoys hiding in plain view, whose regrets are clearly insincere and who remains a cold and evil human being. As for the victims, I felt compassion and utter sadness since this man ruined their chances of happiness forever; their stories are the hardest parts to watch.

There’s also another movie related to the subject that’s more ambiguous about the moral implications of abuse. That’s “Doubt” starring Meryl Streep, Phillip Seymour Hoffman and Amy Adams, in which a priest is accused by a nun of molesting a child in her school; of course she doesn’t have definitive proof but she senses something wrong and becomes transfixed in punishing him. People around her think it’s merely a personal vendetta and that the priest has always been exemplary in his behavior but she sees behind his lies.

Of course, the audience can draw their own conclusions about the characters in “Doubt”, but after watching “Deliver us From Evil” they acquire another layer of complexity. One might be a stimulating and intellectually challenging movie but the other is simply heartbreaking and unforgettable. It’s a shame that justice will never be served as these men roam around in their cloaks and betray the faith people bestowed on them.