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  Dramatizing a Scandal That Rocked the Church

By Jacques Steinberg
The New York Times [New York NY]
April 11, 2005

lan Horne and his family had just finished Easter dinner at his home in a suburb outside of Boston when his 82-year-old mother made a request: she wanted to watch the DVD sitting atop his television, titled "Our Fathers."

Neither was a disinterested viewer.

The movie, which will have its premiere on Showtime next month, represents the first attempt by Hollywood to use real names and events to dramatize the sexual abuse scandal in the Boston archdiocese. And among the stories it tells is that of Mr. Horne, now 45, who as a boy was repeatedly molested by a parish priest, the Rev. Joseph Birmingham, who has since died.

Mr. Horne had confided the abuse to his mother for the first time several years ago, but as she watched an advance copy of the two-hour movie, she began to boil as never before. This was particularly true as Cardinal Bernard F. Law (played by Christopher Plummer) was shown struggling during a withering legal deposition. Under questioning by a lawyer (Ted Danson) representing many victims, the cardinal acknowledged that he and his deputies had shuttled priests like Father Birmingham from one parish to another while suppressing accusations of abuse made against them.

"It lit her up like a Christmas tree," Mr. Horne said of his mother's reaction to the film. "She sat there and she started to ask me questions, questions she had never asked me before.

"She said, 'I still have trouble understanding how they could do what they did.' "

"Our Fathers" - which includes several close-ups of boys' faces wincing, in response to gropes always depicted outside the film frame - is intended by its creators to provoke outrage and disbelief in viewers of all faiths. But its impact is expected to be most acute in the Roman Catholic communities of metropolitan Boston. It is there, beginning in 2002, that a team of reporters from The Boston Globe - also characterized in the film - helped to pry loose a trove of sealed church documents that eventually brought to light accusations by hundreds of people against dozens of priests across Massachusetts. Soon, similar charges were being leveled against hundreds of other priests across the nation.

That the filmmakers and Showtime are mindful of the incendiary nature of "Our Fathers" was underscored on April 3, when the network announced it had postponed its first public screening - originally tomorrow at Faneuil Hall in Boston - in deference to the death of Pope John Paul II. (It has since been rescheduled for May 3.)

The pope himself is a character in the film, and he is portrayed in a manner that is more tempered than reverential. In one scene, for example, the actor who plays him (Jan Rubes) defies a top aide and spurns an offer by Cardinal Law to resign.

"Holy mother the church does not make sacrifices at the altar of public opinion," the pope is shown telling a weeping Cardinal Law. "Go home, Bernard. Work to solve the problem. And know you have my support and my prayers."

While Cardinal Law later resigned from the Boston archdiocese under pressure, he remained in good enough favor with Rome to be chosen last week to preside over one of the funeral Masses for the pope.

While the Boston screening - including a panel discussion with Mr. Horne and several other victims - was put off to distance it from the pope's funeral, Showtime intends to broadcast the film, as scheduled, beginning May 21.

In an interview last month, just before the pope's condition turned grave, Robert Greenblatt, president of Showtime, said, "The good news for us is we don't have advertisers, so we don't have to worry that certain companies are going to worry about being associated with this movie."

"The upside," added Mr. Greenblatt, whose premium channel has more than 13 million subscribers, "is that maybe we can shed some light."

Among the reasons that "Our Fathers" pulsates with such palpable anger is that many of those involved in the production were brought up as Catholics.

They include Mr. Greenblatt; Thomas Michael Donnelly, who wrote the script; Brian Dennehy, who plays the Rev. Dominic George Spagnolia, a priest who was sharply critical of Cardinal Law; and David Kennedy, an executive producer of the film. (The director, Dan Curtis, perhaps best known for the epic mini-series "War and Remembrance" and "The Winds of War," comes from a Jewish family.)

It was Mr. Curtis and Mr. Kennedy who brought the project to Showtime, after reading a cover article in Newsweek in February 2002 by David France, then a senior editor at the magazine. That article would later evolve into a 650-page epic, also titled "Our Fathers," that was published last year by Broadway Books and is the main source for the screenplay.

"I really understood the culture that was at work here," said Mr. Kennedy, 63, who described both his parents and grandparents as devout Catholics. Though he experienced no such abuse as a child, nor knew anyone who had, Mr. Kennedy said, "I understood how it could happen."

Mr. Kennedy, president of Mr. Curtis's production company, added, "I remember saying, 'Someone's going to make this movie, and they're going to do it wrong.' "

The result is a film that is sparing in its re-enactment of actual abuse but instead spends much of its time on the cover-up within the archdiocese, using as its model the treatment by "All the President's Men" of the Watergate burglary.

Among the first actors to sign on was Mr. Dennehy, whose elementary and secondary education was in Catholic schools on Long Island.

"I hope this has an effect," Mr. Dennehy said of the film. "I hope people watch it and get mad as hell all over again. And I hope the church gets in trouble again because the church needs to be reminded it made enormous mistakes."

What makes "Our Fathers" especially gripping is that it frequently seeks to hew closely to actual events.

In the film, for example, Mr. Horne, who helped found a group called the Survivors of Joseph Birmingham, is shown heaping a stream of profanities on Cardinal Law, whom he addresses as Bernie, in a private meeting at the cardinal's residence. That actually happened, Mr. Horne said.

Mr. Horne also said that, after going public with his accusations against Father Birmingham, he endured numerous public humiliations - including by a store clerk who slyly brandished a salami at him, just as is depicted in the film.

"Our Fathers" is not, however, intended as a documentary. One of its main characters, Mitchell Garabedian, who is played by Mr. Danson, is indeed the lawyer who deposed Cardinal Law and who later won a multimillion-dollar settlement from the archdiocese on behalf of nearly 100 plaintiffs. But one of his main clients in the film, Angelo DeFranco (Daniel Baldwin), is a composite character.

There are also several scenes - like those between Cardinal Law and his lawyer - where the dialogue is invented because neither Mr. France nor the filmmakers were privy to what was said. And though the churches and streets where the film was set last summer are intended to evoke Boston, they are, in fact, in Toronto.

No matter, Mr. Horne said. What he most relishes, he explained, is the possibility that the film will afford him an opportunity to have conversations with people - from acquaintances, to other family members - who have been reluctant to engage him about what he went through all those years ago.

"I have in-laws who've never discussed this with me," said Mr. Horne, who has been married more than two decades. "There's still a stigma."