• “Over 100,000 victims of clergy sexual abuse have come forward in the United States alone”: The 2004 John Jay study, the most comprehensive study ever done on the issue of Catholic cleric abuse in the United States, found that only one tenth of that number, 10,667, have made such allegations. And the study included all accusations going back to 1950, a period of over a half a century. And in that same period, there were less than 110,000 men serving as Catholic priests in the U.S. For the film’s outrageous claim to be true, there would be one victim for nearly every priest who ever served in that period. Berg’s claim is preposterous for sure.
• “President Bush granted the Pope immunity from prosecution”: President Bush didn’t “grant” anybody anything. The United States has recognized the Holy See as a state since 1984. As the head of state, the Pope cannot be called to a trial in another country in the same way that a lawyer in another country cannot simply call in our President. Heads of state have immunity.
• “Oliver O’Grady is still roaming free in Ireland”: The claim on its surface is true, but the implication is that the Church should have an eye on him. The truth is that the Church laicized O’Grady. (It means that he is no longer a priest, that he is just a regular citizen. This is a common request by abuse victims.) The Church has no oversight over O’Grady than it has over any other private citizen in the country. The fact that O’Grady is “roaming free in Ireland” should be a criticism of the Irish government, not the Catholic Church.
• “Cardinal Roger Mahony is still in office fighting sexual abuse allegations against 556 priests in his (Los Angeles) diocese”: “556”? Try 254, less than half of Berg’s claim. And those are 254 priests with accusations dating back to 1930. Nearly thirty percent of the 254 priests were deceased at the time of their accusation.
• “The Catholic Church declined to be interviewed for this documentary”: If the topic of the film weren’t so sickening, this line would be comical. “The Catholic Church”? “Declined”? Reviewer Grant Gallicho for Religion News Service rightly asked, “Which part?” The Pope? A cardinal? A bishop? Amy Berg doesn’t tell us. Gallicho asked the chairwoman of the Church’s national lay review board, which has spent as much time as anybody addressing abuse cases, if filmmakers had contacted the group. They had not. But judging from the final product of the film, any Church officials would surely have been portrayed unfairly and in the most unflattering way.

Yet probably the most unprincipled contrivance in the film is when the filmmakers and their accomplice, Fr. Thomas Doyle, cajole now-adult victims of O’Grady into thinking that they can travel to the Vatican unannounced and meet Church “hierarchy” (the Pope, maybe?). Preying on the terrible pain and awful abuse that O’Grady caused, Berg and Fr. Doyle lead the victims into thinking that they could simply write a letter to the Vatican, show up at the front doors, and possibly meet the Holy Father. Needless to say, this doesn’t happen. The film catalogs the disappointment, and the victims are pained even further.

This is Hollywood exploitation at its ugliest. As a Catholic priest, Fr. Doyle would know more than anyone that citizens cannot merely show up at the Vatican without an appointment and meet high-level administrators. This would be about as likely as walking up to the White House uninvited, being escorted inside, and being able to meet with the Vice President. When Doyle’s maneuver fails, he claims that the Church “rejected [the victims],” “abused them,” and “[made] them out to be enemies of the Church.”

The obvious goal of Berg was to anger viewers further in their distaste for the Catholic Church for “turning away” abuse victims. But any clear-thinking viewer would direct his or her anger at Berg for exploiting people’s hopes, vulnerabilities, and pains.

PART I: Serious Problems With Facts

PART II: A Fallacious Attack on Cardinal Mahony

Then there’s Berg’s dishonest use of editing. A portion of the film features videotaped depositions of the O’Grady case given by Church officials, including Cardinal Roger Mahony. (Mahony was Bishop of Stockton for a period of time that O’Grady worked there.) A number of lawyers question the Cardinal about the O’Grady case, and Berg craftily cuts off answers, removes sound, and re-frames the screen in order portray Church officials in the worst light imaginable. Anyone who has seen a Michael Moore film should be familiar with these unscrupulous techniques.

For example, Berg features a 1980 letter from the father of an abuse victim written to a Stockton diocese monsignor. When one reads the entire letter (which would be impossible for a viewer in a theater to do), one clearly sees that the major issue of the father’s missive was that O’Grady was spending so much time with his wife. (The man and his wife were separated.) The man was also angry at O’Grady’s dissenting views towards the sacrament of marriage. However, through the use of deceptive framing, Berg craftily highlights a line of the letter in which the father wrote that O’Grady “took our 2-year-old son for a ride.”

“Aha!” the film implies. “Here’s more evidence that they knew that O’Grady targeted children!”

But the contents, tone, and entirety of the actual letter make no such claim or implication. Berg clearly misleads her viewers.

A clear target of Deliver Us From Evil is Los Angeles Cardinal Roger Mahony. While O’Grady served 21 years in the diocese of Stockton, Mahony was the bishop from 1980 to 1985, a fraction of O’Grady time there. Yet the film deceives viewers into believing that just about all of O’Grady’s disgusting abuse happened under his watch. Two of the adult women featured in the film tell harrowing stories of child sex abuse by O’Grady. While the film bends over backwards to connect Mahony to this abuse, a study of their cases reveals that the incidents took place before Mahony even arrived in Stockton.

In another portion of the film, a series of interview subjects air their frustrations that O’Grady was allowed to continue as a priest. Then Berg places an ominous graphic and caption on the screen: “1982: Roger Mahony moves Oliver O’Grady to another parish 52 miles away.” The clear implication is that Mahony “shuffled” the molester O’Grady off to another unsuspecting parish.

Although the film suggests otherwise, the movie fails to note that during Mahony’s entire tenure in Stockton, not a single victim or family member came to him to complain of child abuse by O’Grady.

In fact, the film also fails to disclose that during his tenure in Stockton, then-Bishop Mahony removed the faculties and assignments of two priests who were accused of child abuse. It’s no surprise that director/writer Berg left this out. It would rebut her implication that Mahony let molesters “run wild” in his diocese.

PART I: Serious Problems With Facts

PART III: Even More Factual Errors

To make matters worse, after the school granted her permission, Berg filmed children with their name tags clearly identifiable. A member of Berg’s crew later admitted that they neither sought nor were given permission to use pictures of the children. When the filmmakers later informed the school that their footage would be used for a film about O’Grady, the school “categorically refused” the request. But what did Berg do? She used the footage anyway.

Especially slanted were interview segments in the film when they dealt with Church and theological issues. The film includes several troubling interview segments with Fr. Thomas Doyle, an alleged Catholic priest. His presentations on issues such as the structure of the Church (a “monarchy”?), the history of the Church, the role of the laity, the training of seminarians, and the Eucharist are simply wrong and are not in alignment with official Church teaching. For example, Fr. Doyle states that the Church’s requirement of celibacy – a big target of the film – “is not justified anywhere in the Gospels or in the life and times and sayings of Christ.” Yet the Bible clearly quotes Jesus praising the gift of celibacy in the Gospel of Matthew (Matt. 19:12), and Paul unequivocally encourages celibacy in his First Letter to the Corinthians (1 Cor 7). That a man espousing to be a Catholic priest could air such a blatant falsehood (in a “documentary,” no less) should be disturbing to any serious Catholic.

Meanwhile, California attorney John Manly airs a number of falsehoods. For example, he claims that the Church teaches, “[I]f you are not in communion with the church you are damned to hell.” A cursory look at the Catechism of the Catholic Church, paragraphs 846-848, rebuts this assertion. Meanwhile, the “theologian” of the film, Patrick Wall, doesn’t bother correct Manly. This is no surprise, however, because Wall is actually one of his employees.

PART II: A Fallacious Attack on the Cardinal Mahony

PART III: Even More Factual Errors