Hand of God, Fist of Truth
This week, PBS’s FRONTLINE series showed an incredible documentary about the clergy sex abuse crisis, Hand of God. What made this show stand out from others about the topic, is first of all, it’s intimacy.
Joe Cultrera, the filmmaker, is the younger brother of the victim, Paul, and he wisely captures in the film not just the family dynamics, but how they fit into the larger family of the parish, and how, in the end, what happened to his brother was not just abuse of him but of that entire social world. And it shows, with devastating clarity, how that abuse was perpetuated even more by the bishops than by the pervert priest, Fr. Birmingham. For these men not only permitted, enabled, and in effect, blessed his thirty-year crime spree, at the end, as if in cold revenge, they close down the parish to pay for their sins.
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