The Turbulent Priest

This programme contains scenes which some viewers may find upsetting.

Father Brian D'Arcy is one of the best known Catholic priests

in the UK and Ireland.

'May you have fun and happiness, and although you won't need it,'

may the wind be always at your back.

Watch out, the Pope, if you're listening, -

I'm telling you, Father Brian is on your tail!

He's also one of the most controversial.

In a 50-year career as a broadcaster and columnist

in one of Ireland's biggest-selling tabloids, the Sunday World,

he's repeatedly questioned the Church on many issues.

Why does Rome think it can provide the answer,

when we know it is part of the problem?

But now, Rome has had enough of such dissent.

TRANSLATED FROM ITALIAN

The Vatican has officially censured Brian.

He must stay on message or be dismissed from the priesthood.

To be treated as some sort of deviant

is, frankly, the most insulting

and devastating thing that has ever happened me.

Brian D'Arcy faces the biggest dilemma of his life -

continue to speak out and risk expulsion, or toe the Vatican line.

Is the price of being a priest that you stay quiet,

that you don't be a whistle blower?

The price of dying a priest is that...

you don't...speak the truth?

Good morning, cows.

Hello, are you doing well?

I have to get the church open as usual for the people to come,

one of my normal duties here.

For the past 12 years,

Brian's been in charge of the Graan, a monastery in Fermanagh.

He belongs to a religious order called the Passionists,

which means he doesn't have a parish.

But he's on call for people in search of spiritual help

at key moments in their lives, big and small.

Be with you now.

You wanted something for a car, did you?

We're off to bless a car.

The lady here has a nice car, to be blessed.

How are you?

What sort of car is it?

A Jetta.

Oh, a Jetta! A lovely looking Jetta. We'll do the wee blessing here.

Keep them safe on the roads.

May they never be hurt. May they never hurt others.

Father, Son and Holy spirit, amen.

-You go to England to buy her?

-No, just in Skea.

-Oh, you bought it in Skea.

-I've been searching for a while now

-so I saw it and I thought, "That's the one."

-That's the one.

Well, more power to your elbow.

-It's a lovely car. Diesel, is she?

-Yeah, yeah, 1.9.

1.9, oh, good.

My daughter, Joanne.

-She's really pregnant.

-Oh, right.

Over nine months pregnant, so she is heavily pregnant,

OK, come on ahead, this way here.

When are you due?

I was due on Sunday.

-Oh, God, we'd better do a good blessing here, eh?

-Yes.

For the past 50 years,

Brian D'Arcy has made the needs of ordinary people his priority.

Hello, how are you? Good.

If those walls could talk,

then you'll hear what the real Catholic Church is about.

What's actually the glue that is keeping the Catholic Church

together are the decent priests on the ground doing ordinary things

every day of the week, and without that, you know,

the whole thing would have disintegrated long ago.

But actually, as long as you have that,

it doesn't matter all that much about the upper echelons,

as long as they leave us alone to get on with our work.

Yes, I'm looking for... Can I order four boxes of your altar wine?

He's brought this ethos of listening and talking to ordinary Catholics

into the public arena through his writing and journalism.

But one Sunday World article has nearly cost him his job.

In a double page spread,

Brian criticised some of the Church's core beliefs.

"If we were serious, passing on real power to committed believers,

"there would be an end to compulsory celibacy,

"accepting that there should be a discussion about women priests,

"gay people who want to live a spiritual life..."

In the same article, he also criticised

Rome's handling of the clerical sex abuse scandal.

"Institutions protect themselves at all costs.

"Individuals and victims were, and still are, disposable."

After the article was published,

Brian was contacted by the head of his order.

I got a phone call from my Provincial.

He said he'd like to meet me, not in the Graan.

So, I said, "Oh, that's unusual, Pat,"

and he said, "Yeah."

So, he said, "We'll meet halfway, quietly in a car park."

And the sweat broke out on me.

Brian's superiors were sent

a strongly worded letter by the Vatican.

It accused the Sunday World article

of causing scandal and confusion to the faithful.

I just can't understand why the Vatican is suddenly worried

about what I'm writing in the Sunday World.

It sets a real doubt in my mind as to where the Church,

as an organisation, is going.

If Brian is to toe the Vatican line, every controversial article

or broadcast should first be cleared by an official church censor.

This lack of journalistic freedom has forced Brian to question

whether he can remain a priest.

For the past year,

Brian has wrestled privately with his dilemma.

How are you, Mary?

Jesus, I'm a bit broken this evening.

But news of his censure has been leaked to the worldwide media.

It's caused a frenzy of activity in the Graan.

Every institution eventually becomes irrelevant,

and as it becomes irrelevant, it becomes more fundamentalist.

And as it becomes more fundamentalist,

it becomes more and more disconnected from what it was about.

And, you know, its own fundamentalism is the seeds of its own destruction.

All hell broke loose today about 12 o'clock.

The girls have been taking down notes from all sorts of people -

Today FM are looking for me, Belfast Telegraph,

Gerry McArdle of RTE, Irish Daily Mail.

And then there's a nice wee one - "Joan from County Antrim

"rang to say she's so upset, and wants you to know

"that she will be praying for you."

So, I obviously won't be able to get to any of those this evening

because my first duty is to go out and say Mass,

since I'm still a priest in good standing - for this evening, anyway.

I wonder you're here tonight at all, to listen to a heretic!

In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, amen.

Sorry for interrupting you. Can I say something

on behalf of everybody here and everybody for many miles around?

You're integrity, you're truth and you're inspiration.

I think all of us just want to say, we're with you.

Oh, God love you.

APPLAUSE

Oh, Betsy, how are you? God love you.

I'm so, so sorry.

You don't deserve this.

We're OK. We'll get through it, don't worry.

I know you will, but you shouldn't have to.

Brian's relieved he has the backing of his congregation.

But he's wary of how his Church peers will react.

He's heading to a meeting with the rest of his order.

It'll be the first time he's had to face most of them

since he was censured.

Many of my peers see me as an absolute failure.

People will say, "He's not a safe pair of hands if the Vatican don't like him."

Because I'm not the kind of priest

any clerical structure wants a priest to be.

I had the choice of being a priest's priest or a people's priest.

And sadly, the difficulty is,

you cannot be both in the present Church.

And I'm not usually sad, I really am not usually sad.

But I'm pathetically sad at the moment.

I could go in there and everybody will shake hands with me

and say, "How are you Brian, how are you keeping?

"Manchester United lost, you must be down about that,

"Fermanagh's not doing that well," but nobody will say to you,

"How does it feel to be such an outcast of the church you've given your life to?"

The stakes are high.

The order will decide whether Brian can stay in his job

at the Graan for another four years.

He has no say in their decision.

His worst fear is that he'll be reassigned

and banished to a remote outpost.

It's pretty difficult to ask a man of my age to change

where I live - to pack my bags, cut my traces, cut my roots,

cut my family, go somewhere else

and try to found and get the same enthusiasm for a congregation again.

Brian will have to wait three months to learn of his next posting.

So I'm looking into stormy waters and no way out.

He'll use the time to contemplate his options.

When things are getting really bad, I tend to come up here.

I just sit for a little while

and go back to the innocent altar boy that was up there.

Growing up in Fermanagh,

Brian's life was defined by the Catholic Church.

This is the source of all my faith. So it sort of grounds me.

But he didn't always see his future as a priest.

I was 15, maybe, before the priest said to me,

"I think you should be a priest" which was quite a shock to me

because I did not think I should be a priest, at all,

and didn't think I had anything in my life that could...

That was good enough to be a priest. And I probably still don't, really.

At that time, Brian was struggling with a dark secret.

He says that, when he was ten,

a religious brother at his primary school sexually abused him.

A lot of your emotional level stays at the age you were abused.

And that was a secret to me when somebody pointed that out to me.

And therefore I began to see in myself that this was

a very immature guy acting things out.

Looking for attention.

Allowing yourself to be ruled by the whims

of somebody else outside you - which is exactly what abuse is.

The abuse didn't end there.

When Brian was training for the priesthood,

he says he was abused again - this time by a member of his own order.

I later became a Superior of the monastery,

and when he was dying he sent for me and asked me to do his funeral.

And told me what to preach.

How did you do it?

I did it because I was able to do it.

Why? You didn't have to.

I did, because I was Superior.

Did he still have that hold over you?

Mm-hm. Mm-hm.

I think he had.

You're afraid the secret will destroy you.

Until you realise, "Hey, I've nothing to be afraid of,

"I've nothing to be ashamed of."

And, you know, I can say that clearly now and that is it,

and it's the same when the Vatican came after me,

I could say, "Well, I've nothing to be ashamed of."

"I didn't do anything wrong."

I'm not being angry, I'm not shouting,

but I'm saying, "Hold on a minute, I have a dignity here,"

And that's me overcoming abuse.

I just can't understand how you went on to be a priest.

Well, here I am...

..50 years later.

How are you all doing?

That's great.

And how's yourself? You're still saying the wee prayers?

That's good. Nice to see you there.

See you again, all right? Take care. Bye-bye.

Brian's had a long association with the Graan.

All the best, Peter.

50 years ago, he walked into the monastery for the first time,

an unworldly, raw recruit.

At just 17 years old, he said goodbye to life on the outside world

to become a Passionist monk.

This is the very room where I spent most of my year.

Oooh.

It's a lot different.

There's a softness in that, but the time - my time -

it was pitch pine floors and you had leather-soled leather sandals,

so every move you made could be heard and monitored.

It was almost like whatever is about you that's your natural personality

should disappear and you should look to higher things,

become more godlike and less human.

So, therefore, you began to get this impression of yourself that

you were kind of worthless, really,

and you should be grateful for being in here.

It was a kind of gift that you should be grateful for,

rather than something that you should relish, choose, celebrate.

The spirituality of the time was pray, pay, obey.

You did what the parish priest told you.

If you didn't, you were wrong, you were a sinner.

You had no rights.

You were to beat yourself very hard on your bare bottom,

praying, saying five Our Fathers, five Hail Marys

and five Glory Be to the Fathers. Slowly - not fast.

So that you gave yourself a good walloping,

to kill the flesh, kill the world.

You were very malleable, you were idealistic.

You were the perfect material for cults to work on.

The world Brian had left behind

was on the cusp of radical social change.

The swinging '60s were dawning.

Even the Catholic Church was part of this movement.

A month after he joined the Passionists

came a momentous event in Rome.

"October 11th 1962, a historic moment.

"The opening session of the second Vatican Council."

The conservative Church of Brian's youth

was opening up to the modern world.

The Latin Mass was translated into English,

altar rails were removed, and priests were encouraged

to step down from their lofty pulpits and listen to the laity.

For the past 50 years, Brian has embraced

this spirit of openness with every fibre of his being.

His efforts to reach out to people - in all their guises -

have led him to some surprising places,

not least the showbiz circuit.

I don't want to do it too often.

Unlike most clerics, Brian D'Arcy's just as at home

in the world of entertainment as he is in a church.

-Tom, how are you?

-Father Brian, how are you?

-Good to see you.

Hello, Frank. How are you?

I heard you got censured by the top man.

If you write anything, I'll make sure it goes to the right place!

His early forays into journalism

blossomed into a ministry extending well beyond the monastery gates,

into dance halls and concert arenas.

CHEERING AND APPLAUSE

A regular on the chat show circuit,

Brian wasn't afraid to parade himself in the name of populism.

Not a bad pair of legs, Brian!

Not a bad pair of legs at all! How about that?

APPLAUSE

And you turn up here with a hole in your tights!

It's the first time I've even touched a pair of tights,

never mind putting them on!

LAUGHTER

But what's made Brian loved by the public

has seen him loathed by some other priests,

especially because of an unprecedented clash

with the head of the Irish Church on live television.

Thank you for coming. Do sit down.

Brian was in the audience the night Cardinal Cathal Daly appeared

on a chat show to discuss early revelations about child sex abuse.

It's an old cliche that, after a bishop is ordained...

-SHOUTS OF "SHAME!"

-Sorry, sorry, sorry...

I don't think what you've said is fair, Cardinal Daly.

At the end of the day, the Church is perceived as heavy-handed

and out of date and lacking in compassion.

Now why is that? And We can't dismiss it just because...

APPLAUSE

Don't dismiss the whole thing because there are some...

No, I'm not dismissing it, Cardinal, that's precisely the point...

I know you're not, don't dismiss the whole clergy.

-Nor am I dismissing the whole clergy.

-There are some who are working very hard...

Nor am I, but they have been let down.

'The phone calls were furious.'

'Terrible phone calls from priests all over the country,

'saying I'd let down the Church, I'd been a disgrace.'

It gave me a great lesson on the power of the clerical club,

which I've never forgotten.

It was something that defined a lot of what I am ever since.

I would not be, and am not, liked by priests.

Brian feels he is an isolated voice in Ireland.

But around the world there are priests calling for liberal reform.

He's on his way to Austria, where a 400-strong union of priests

has also incurred the wrath of the Vatican.

Pope Benedict targeted the Austrians

because they've encouraged their union members to lobby actively

for the reform of some of the Church's core teachings.

Brian's on his way to meet the priest leading this call to disobedience.

Helmut Schuller has paid a heavy price for his dissidence -

demoted from a senior post in the Austrian Church,

he now works as a parish priest outside Vienna.

He remains defiant.

At no moment I thought to leave, because it's my Church.

I want this Church to move, to change, to find renewal,

to find reform, and I have a lot of friends in this Church.

I don't want to leave it.

Do you ever waken at night, as I do,

and say, "Am I being more divisive...

"than I should be?"

It's a real danger, but I think the real schism

is between the hierarchy and the people of the Church.

The vast majority of the people will not find what

they are looking for in these churches where such priests

are preaching the old-fashioned Roman Catholic Church of 1871 or so.

And I think that that is the production of a schism.

And this schism is risked, not by us,

but by those who are not really openly listening to the people.

There's times I'm lost, I don't know where to go and what to do.

Some people tell me, "Keep quiet, keep under the radar, keep going on."

Others say, "Why waste your life running your head against a stone wall?"

Others say, "For God's sake, speak up, be a man,

"do what you've always done."

I think the last possibility is the only one.

You have to stand up and to speak,

because, as I have heard in Ireland and Great Britain,

your voice is very important for a lot of people.

Let me say first that I decided in 2006 not to go on alone,

because up to this time I was also alone.

I was invited in television, in talk shows for Church questions.

And after, I was phoned by a lot of priests the next day,

and then I thought I should not go on alone,

I should build up a network, I should invite other priests,

so we do it together.

And then I decided with my friends to make this,

to build up this assembly we have now.

They will try to divide us,

we should try to come together and to build up this network.

We are not asking, we are not begging,

we are beginning, and the reality is growing.

-And the reality becomes the seed of a new Church?

-Yeah.

While Brian appreciates Helmut's advice about safety in numbers,

he's all too aware of his own limitations.

'You have to be brave in life. He's very brave.'

'I wouldn't be a Helmut Schuller in Ireland,

'because I wouldn't have the confidence of priests.'

I'm a full-blown lone ranger a lot of the time,

simply because of my experiences

and because of the nature of my work up to now.

He's not a lone ranger.

There was strength in the support he gets from other priests.

Brian realises he must go it alone.

But he wonders whether the Institutional Church in Ireland could be open to change.

To test the mood,

he's in Dublin for the International Eucharistic Congress.

-Brian.

-How are you? How are you keeping?

-Good to see you.

-Nice to see you, too. How's the farm?

-Good.

-That's good.

65,000 Catholics have travelled from all corners of the world

to celebrate their faith together.

The current head of the Irish Church, Cardinal Sean Brady,

is using this platform as a chance to rebuild trust.

I want to take this opportunity of the 50th International Eucharistic Congress

to apologise for the times when some of us were blind

to your fear, deaf to your cries, and silent in response to your pain.

When I heard there was going to be a Eucharistic Congress,

I wasn't that happy about it because I really thought it was

a plan to draw a line under the abuse crisis.

And I didn't like that, I just thought that's not the way to do it,

cos we're not the ones to draw a line under the abuse crisis,

it's the survivors.

-GG.

-GG, a few steps down and on to the fourth seat on the right.

Right, lovely, good man.

Brian wants to experience for himself

the model of Church on show at the final event in Croke Park.

This is extremely clerical.

It's very much an institutionalised version of religion,

but it's not where I'm at home.

Priests at the top, all in white.

Laity down at the back and other places - as usual.

Let's listen to the people,

and let's build from the ground up, rather than from the Vatican down.

But the Vatican is playing to a much bigger gallery beyond the UK and Ireland.

There are 1.2 billion Catholics worldwide.

The biggest growth areas are Africa and Asia,

where there's little appetite for Brian D'Arcy's brand of Western liberalism.

If you look to Africa and Asia, people there, generally speaking,

are more orthodox, and that's where the Church is growing.

If the Church is increasingly African or Asian,

their agendas will set our agendas.

Sarah MacDonald writes for the international Catholic newspaper, The Tablet.

Do you think the Catholic Church in the Western world can survive?

Yes, yes, but I think that in order for Catholicism to...

reanimate itself and the wider world,

it has to take some sort of a shift back to setting out its parameters,

setting out its stall, setting out its identity.

The fact of the matter is, your hope for the way the Church

would be renewed in the '60s has actually just led

to a collapse in religious life.

The Church was so accommodating on some issues,

that nobody was really sure what it was teaching at all.

But people who are coming from a liberal perspective

need to recognise that there is a shift.

Those who are from their late teens up to their mid twenties,

the most radical thing they can do amongst their peers

is cleave to something that is structured,

that gives a sense of community and is orthodox.

They would see you as representing an ageing, disgruntled minority.

But you've a role to temper the move towards ultra-conservatism

within the Church, so engaging in debate and dialogue,

that's where you definitely have a role to play.

Engaging with the Vatican, engaging with the hierarchy here in Ireland.

Since the child sex abuse scandal broke,

Brian has repeatedly criticised the Irish hierarchy.

Most recently, he questioned whether Cardinal Brady should resign,

following allegations he'd personally mishandled

a complaint about a paedophile priest.

Now Brian wonders whether the Irish hierarchy

will wish to engage with him.

Many of them would consider me an enemy of the Church now,

and if they did, it would be very difficult to remain a priest.

Keen to extend an olive branch, he's writing a personal letter to Cardinal Brady.

I would like a conversation about the future shape of the Catholic Church in Ireland,

especially after the Eucharistic Congress.

How can the Catholic Church speak with integrity to the Western world?

Has the Church nothing to say to that group of people?

Rather instead to the growing,

not fully developed communities of the Third World?

The worst case scenario is that we allow them

to impose this legalistic Church again.

Look what happened - tat's what led to abuse.

The abuse of children, the abuse of power,

the abuse of the Church itself.

The danger is that the Cardinal will endorse the Vatican censure,

pushing Brian D'Arcy even further out on a limb.

So he's decided to tackle the traditional mind-set head on.

'The Church's job is to move the world.

'The Church doesn't move with the world.'

He's meeting Father Brian McKevitt,

editor of a conservative Catholic newspaper.

I feel very afraid when I read some of the things you write,

because I think, "That's very harsh!"

But Brian, when you write in The Sunday World,

you're there as Father Brian D'Arcy.

So you're there as a priest.

If I speak or write as a priest, then I am, in some way,

a representative of the Church, and I've got to be faithful to that.

-Otherwise, I'm abusing my power, my position.

-Not necessarily.

I don't think I'm abusing my power as a priest,

and never, certainly, would do that.

What I try to do is give a voice to the people with...

with, eh, reasonableness and encouragement when necessary,

and disagreement when sometimes necessary,

but we're mature adults with a conversation,

we're not talking about the nitty-gritty

of infallible doctrine here, we're talking about people's lives.

A lot of what you write is kind of a candyfloss spirituality.

It looks attractive, but when you actually bite into it,

that...

there's kind of an absence of substance,

and an absence of nourishment.

I think that's the point. Do I...?

Would you know my audience better than me?

-And you're not my audience. Do you understand what I mean?

-Yeah.

A man with degrees in theology, Dominican, editor of a paper

and he has all the opportunities he wants

to have all the theology he wants.

I'm not thinking of you when I'm writing in the Sunday World.

I'm writing for people who have lost contact with,

often, any Church at all,

and certainly have a difficult relationship with the Church.

Yeah, what I'm saying is, are you providing it?

The impression I got from reading the articles was there was

a kind of negativity towards the authorities in the Church.

I would say, yes,

I've been fairly negative to a lot of what has gone on

-in the last 15 years.

-Mm-hmm.

But, if you go out to the road and ask somebody

how they view the leadership of the Church in the last 15 years,

they would say it has not been very inspiring - shouldn't I learn from that?

I can certainly see so many faults in the Church,

and it drives me crazy at times,

but I'm not going to try and kind of feed that to other people.

I want them to love the Church, despite her sinfulness.

Now, the Church, I think, is entitled,

with you or with me, to say that you must give

the authentic teaching of the Church.

That you must, to the best of your ability, try and communicate that,

and certainly that you must not in any way undermine that.

I knew he wasn't hearing anything I was saying, or appreciating it.

Or my point of view at all.

And I found that just kind of a dialogue of the deaf.

I've no problem with him calling me candyfloss.

That's his view.

I know it's not the view of the vast majority of readers,

who find a different form of spirituality there

which is just as real as his.

-I just want a couple of Mass cards.

-Certainly, no problem.

For the dead, is it?

I want a couple for the dead, but I don't know who for yet.

-I know, but to have them, is it?

-To have them, yes.

-Yes, of course.

That's a good idea to have them in the house.

Brian's on his way to officiate

at the wedding of a young Fermanagh couple.

They've requested him specifically.

In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, amen.

I always like to begin the journey with a prayer.

Recently, somebody said, "Would you leave to get married now?"

And of course, how would you leave to get married at 67 years of age?

Come on, Jesus, I'm not that stupid.

Who'd have you at 67?!

Some nurse, maybe, to wheel you around in a wheelchair

is about all you'd get at my age.

But a worse thing struck me, actually. Or a more shocking thing.

That, after a life of celibacy, I would be incapable of loving.

The whole principle of celibacy is that it's supposed to free you to love more.

I'm not sure that I've seen that in many places, actually.

HE LAUGHS

-How are you, how are you?

-Not too bad.

How are you, lads? God, you clean up well!

-How are you, Marco? How are you doing?

-Not so bad.

-You're looking great.

There's some seats at the front.

Now, if you're nervous or anything, don't worry - there's no collection.

LAUGHTER

But if you'd like, there's a few wee seats at the front here

if you'd like to come up to them.

When you dress up, you might as well show off.

-Well, Josie.

-How are you, Father?

-You look gorgeous.

-Thank you.

-She's on the way, is she?

-She's there.

Oh, she's there? That's great.

Now, she's just about to start off now.

And she's a vision.

An absolute vision. Don't look now, don't look now!

HE LAUGHS

You can look if you want to, I don't mind.

I feel very nervous and insecure

and not at all confident about speaking at a wedding.

And the reason is because I'm an old bachelor.

So, Grace and Malcolm would say, "God, I hope he's not going to tell us about marriage

"if he hadn't even the guts to do it himself."

Well, as I say, the Pope's still alive.

And an old bachelor's what I'll be!

And at this stage, anyway, who'd take me?

'I would have been a much better priest, had I married.

'I think it would have been that whole thing of sharing your life with somebody else.'

And that whole thing of making sacrifices for somebody else.

And also that idea of a companion,

a closeness, friends, somewhere to call home.

-Have you ever been in love?

-Yes, I've been in love.

'I did think I would get married.

'I never broke my vows.'

Both of us knew there was nothing wrong with it,

you know, that it wasn't just a sexual attraction,

that it was much beyond that, and both of us knew

that we could have been holy and good people and been married.

And I suppose that's the only anger.

That's why I suppose I do get passionate about the idea

that a priest does not need to be single to be a priest.

'I shouldn't have had to make the choice.'

No family deserves a day better...

'If the option to be married was there,'

it would be a far more credible Church.

This is a miracle of life that I never really understand -

that somebody can find somebody that they love.

Of all the thousands, millions, billions in the world,

seven billion people in the world,

well, I wouldn't expect Malcolm

to have gone through all seven billion of them.

Grace probably did.

LAUGHTER

But anyway, isn't it great that the one Malcolm fell totally in love with

was actually the one who fell totally in love with him?

Ask any single person who doesn't want to be single

what it's like...

..and you're a nobody in the world, for a start...

Um, you have no place, really, you can call your own,

you've no friendship you can call your own.

You've given your life to everybody else,

and find that you have no life at all at the end of it.

|Where is home?

At the end of my life, I don't have a home.

There's no place I can call home.

Ideally, religious life is supposed to be a kind of home - it isn't.

Not now, anyway.

Brian's no closer to resolving his dilemma,

and there's still no news about his next posting.

His weeks of contemplation have strengthened the sense

that he's swimming against a global tide

and deepened his feeling of isolation.

He's seeking counsel from an old friend.

Hello. How are you? You're more than welcome.

-Good to see you.

-Thanks for doing this.

Not at all. My pleasure.

-Come in.

-I really appreciate it, Frank.

The actor Frank Kelly, better known to some as Father Jack.

It's the media that's the real enemy.

Of all the unearthly, unspiritual pleasures!

HE SHOUTS INCOMPREHENSIBLY

Ecumenical...! Yes!

How right you are, Father! How right you are!

We have to straighten out the media.

That's the important thing, Father!

And we have to do it...

Now!

HE SCREAMS ANGRILY

Did you ever find anything in your life

that was pulling you a little bit away

from being a practising Catholic, as you are,

and at the same time sending it up in a very public way?

No, I've been in satire all my life.

There is no difficulty for me between my spirituality

and my religion and satire.

There was a time when the assumption was that all priests

were very wise and very highly educated.

I grew up in that atmosphere.

But, still, my parents gave me a feeling

that you shouldn't be afraid.

That you should be liberated by faith, rather than intimidated.

-Talking to you now, I don't feel I'm talking to a priest.

-Yes.

You're a man who happens to be a priest.

There's no Roman collar floating in the air over your head.

Priesthood isn't a thing in inverted commas running around on your shoulder.

It's got to be you.

In humility you have to say,

"Maybe I was wrong, maybe I am wrong."

I stay awake at nights wondering about it.

It's a situation, after 50 years in religious life,

somebody says that I'm not really a reliable priest.

What do you think, as a lay person in the middle of all that?

I think one of the biggest problems facing the Church is that

if it is going to be undemocratic,

how is it going to continue living on in democracies,

where the average citizen is becoming more and more educated?

They're not as bulliable as they were.

Is so much of the repression and oppression from the Church bullying?

Is that a good name for it?

Well, if you don't know who your accuser is,

and you don't really know a defined nature of your misdeed,

and how long you're going to be left in limbo,

and whether you're going to be transferred,

or what the nature of your life is going to be,

and you're a grown, intelligent man

who's never been at odds with the Church before, you're being bullied!

What the hell else are you being but bullied? That's bullying.

Anybody who says otherwise doesn't know what bullying is.

I'm saying - the cheek of me! Who the hell am I to say it?

Well, you're the best known priest in Ireland!

And have been for some time!

I suppose both Frank and myself would,

in different ways, be in show business

and therefore we're looked upon as lightweights because of that.

And both of us can be light hearted

and be lightweights when it's necessary.

But it's almost like the clown

being the serious thinker behind the happy dress.

I love the way Frank spoke from his heart.

No acting, no sham.

Just a real man on a journey.

And if I can be that...

..God, it'll be a good gift to myself, whatever about anybody else.

Be real.

Forget the sham, just be real.

Name in lights.

Josephine, how are you?

Father Brian here, and I'm just going to give you a little blessing.

Don't worry about anything.

I'll do all the talking and all the praying.

Give Josephine strength and peace of mind.

In the name of the Father...

That's lovely, Father...

..Son, Holy Spirit, amen.

And I absolve you, Josephine, from all the sins of your whole life.

In the name of the Father, and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, amen.

May all from which you suffer cease and trouble you no more.

That's all right, Josephine, don't worry.

God, the wee woman, she was lovely.

She's as peaceful as anything.

She's ready to meet the Lord,

and you could see she tried to bless herself

to lift the wee hand with all the wee strength.

Every time I sit down by the side of a bed, say a few prayers,

they see it as the presence of God coming to bless them.

That's worth more to me than all the high-powered theologians

and ministers and papal documents and everything else.

That's what gives me the greatest thrill as a priest.

Brian wants to canvass one final opinion

about his future as a priest,

and it's taken him to Weston-Super-Mare

in south-west England.

Well, Mick!

-My old friend, how are you?

-Good to see you!

-It's great to see you.

-Welcome to Weston-Super-Mare.

God, I'm sorry for imposing this on you at this hour of the morning.

Do not be anxious, do not be anxious.

-How are you?

-I'm well.

Brian D'Arcy and Michael Carroll

studied together and were ordained on the same day.

But after ten years, Michael left the priesthood.

Ah, my darling Cathy, how are you?

Oh, welcome!

It's lovely to see you. What a lovely place you have here.

Aren't we lucky?

This is your husband, Michael!

(HE LAUGHS)

You can see why we took a long time choosing it, too.

It was worth it.

It's worth spending time on something you expect

to spend the rest of your life in, and this was our intention -

to find a place that we would go out of in a box, hopefully.

I suppose that's what I miss, is a home.

This is a home.

I suddenly realise that I would never think

of settling anywhere permanently.

-Well, it's not the way you think, it's not the way your life is.

-Yeah.

You're ready for moving now, aren't you?

I'm ready for moving now,

and I'm not sure that I'm ready for moving, but I'll have to move.

-Whether you're ready or not...

-Precisely.

...it could be the order from above.

All of a sudden I realise this is a home,

this is exactly what I don't have.

With so much doubt in his own mind,

Brian now wants to find out exactly what it was

that convinced Michael to quit.

I wish I was as slim now!

HE LAUGHS

You know, I used to often think,

why is Michael choosing one route,

and I'm choosing another route?

Now, looking back, I say to myself, "Was I right? Was I wrong?"

How do you choose a life?

It was only when I was ordained and got into the real world

that two things happened to me.

I started thinking and I started feeling.

And the second one was the disaster!

HE LAUGHS

Or the lifesaver!

The second one was the disaster or the lifesaver!

I was dying emotionally in there.

I got a sense that if I stayed here

and didn't sort this out, that it would destroy me.

It would destroy me.

The price I have to pay to be a priest

is becoming almost unbearable.

It seems to me what you're facing at this stage

is this crisis of authenticity.

What's the price I pay to remain within this organisation?

A lot of which I don't agree with and don't see with -

some of it minor, some of it major?

But you've got to do something internally, I believe, to yourself,

to be able to live in that, with a way that says,

"I'm living in a horrible organisation -

"or a dysfunctional organisation - authentically."

Yeah, that's it. That's exactly it.

Is that possible? Because, you see...

I've said that answer to myself, what you're after saying.

I'm trying to be authentic...

..humanly as you possibly can be,

in a situation that is obviously dysfunctional.

You have to build some sort of immense barrier,

or what I'd call a deflector shield for yourself that says,

"I can't listen to you any more, I just can't.

"You do my head in," you know?

"So talk all you want and send all the letters you want

"and censor all you want- I may comply or I may not comply.

"And until you kick me out...

"So I'm not going to move.

"Until you kick me out, I'm staying here."

-"I'm still doing the work I'm doing."

-"And doing the work I'm doing."

I don't hear the people saying "Brian D'Arcy, go," do you?

No, quite the opposite, it's the people...

If I have a reason for staying, it's the people.

So there's your answer.

I think what Michael was saying, knowing me for 50 years,

"You should be a priest.

"Even if they put you out, still be a priest."

That's a hell of a statement for me, going home tonight.

Back home, Brian's received a personal letter

from the head of the Irish Church.

Cardinal Brady has responded to many of his queries.

I'd asked him, did he expect it would turn out as broken up

and disjointed as it has, end like this?

He says not really, but the answer, then, on reflection,

"One should not expect life on this earth to be trouble free."

Reading Sean's letter,

you can see that he's struggling, and that's a good thing.

He's wondering, like I am myself, constantly,

if it was all worth it, after 50 years of a lifetime service to the Church.

I think there's, as I often find in my own writing, a loneliness.

And I detected the loneliness in that.

Kind of an exile, kind of a sense of failure,

kind of a sense of, "I didn't do the job that I should have done."

The Cardinal does set out a list of things the Church can do -

looking after the poor, celebrating rites of passage,

being an ethical voice, and upholding heritage.

The Cardinal also thinks there's a positive role for Brian to play.

"Share our reflections with people in our preaching

"to give them the give of acceptance and patience."

He's saying to me, "I think that's your role -

"to encourage patience and suffering

"and to encourage people to reflect in a patient way,

"and come to terms with suffering."

He specifically says that the way I use the media,

I am well placed and well gifted to make a contribution

to the future of the Church, and there should be a place for me.

And that's the first time that has happened to me in my lifetime.

Brian has finally come to a decision about his future in the Church.

I am going to remain a priest.

I am going to speak the truth in a more prudent way.

But it will still be the truth,

because I am not going to remain a priest and be silent.

In his latest Sunday World column, as a statement of intent,

he's chosen to write about an influential Vatican insider

who vehemently criticised the Church from his deathbed.

"Cardinal Martini feared the bureaucrats who have, quote,

"'killed the spirit of renewal in the Church.'

"A brave leader who gave his life to the Church.

"I, and others like me, cannot be silenced by fear.

"I must be inspired by Cardinal Martini's final, despairing plea

"for the transformation of the Church."

Brian is determined to speak his mind,

whatever the consequences.

Let's cut out all this theological poppycock.

Call what's wrong, wrong. Name it.

There's news about Brian's next posting.

At last he knows what his future holds.

Now he's preparing to share that news with his congregation.

Well, to take you out of suspense and myself out of suspense,

I have some good news and some bad news.

They're both the same news.

But for good or for bad,

I have been re-appointed to the Graan as rector for the next four years.

You're gluttons for punishment.

LAUGHTER

This is probably the only place I do belong, in this congregation.

It was a weight lifted off my shoulders.

The fellas that you had spent your life with at long last

had said whose side they were on.

At least I think I'll have a home for another four years where I'll feel at home.

By the time I finish this I'll be 71, if I do finish it.

I've no idea what'll happen in that time.

If I live to 71, I'll be the first man in my family to live to be 71.

My father died at 70, my brother died at 70.

I don't know what that means,

but sure, if you thought about that, you'd just do nothing.

So you get up and do your best every day,

and that's what it's all about.

Did I give hope more than despair?

Did I give life more than death?

Leave the rest to God.

Feck it, enjoy it.

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