Deliver Us from Evil

This was a shocking account of the political sickness that trickles through our world in schools and, yes, of all places, our Churches. Not a date movie. Similar to Schindler's List, the gripping tales told by Catholic Religious leaders and victims of child molestation in the Church held me in suspense of reality and opened my eyes to the scale and duration of the problem, which still exists in many places today. The disturbing part was the institutional course of action and lack of action taken when high leaders were made aware of the problem and asked for help by BOTH sexual victims AND sexual offenders. As with many parts of systematic human intervention, the easiest thing to do was to ignore or divert and continue. This film is an eye opener. I do not recommend it for children 12 years or younger.

In my opinion, this film is a front-runner for the Oscar for Best Documentary for 2006.

It's absolutely riveting. If you are a fan of "Silence of the Lambs," you should see this because Oliver O'Grady is just as chilling as Hannibal Lecter -- more so because he is real. Filmmaker Amy Berg did a news piece on O'Grady, a Catholic priest who raped dozens -- possibly hundreds -- of children in California. On a whim, she called him in his exile in Ireland and got him to agree to an extensive three day interview. It is a confession unlike any other.

On one level, Deliver Us From Evil is a righteous indictment of the Catholic Church: its inaction, its enabling, its bureaucracy, its male-dominated backwardness.

At the same time, the film is a profile of some incredibly decent people: Catholic parents and children who were victims in this rampage. Their character is inspiring -- their pain is as raw as anything you will ever see on film.

Finally, it's the study about the way a psychopath can play every human emotion to his own advantage.

There is Hell to pay for this man's sins. And some victims are living that hell every day.

I saw this film at the Toronto Film Festival, and I am still thinking about it a day later. I was raised a Catholic, and I think that this film should be required viewing for all Catholics. Amy Berg has constructed a documentary that is not only about the abuse of children and their families by an individual priest; it is also about the evil and politics that exist within the institution of the church and that have allowed (and continue to allow) horrible abuses to occur. It actually hurt to watch this film, but I did not walk out of the theatre with a sense of defeat. I left with a sense of resolve, knowing that we need to take the CHURCH back from the politicians masquerading as bishops and cardinals and, yes, even the pope.

You judge a tree by its fruit. This documentary succeeds in letting viewers behold this dark little secret that the Catholic Church hopes you will never find out about: The rotting fruit of their sin-harvest that comes from unspeakably heinous crimes against children that are tolerated by them as being business-as-usual! Love is the desire to do good to others but that is the antithesis of all that the Catholic Church represents as it was portrayed in this documentary and as revealed by fearless journalists all over the world who have courageously accepted the bold challenge to find the truth no matter where it takes them and then tell it like it is.

The most surprising and disturbing scenes in the documentary "Deliver Us from Evil" is to hear from Father Oliver O'Grady himself about the children and babies he sexually abused when he was a Catholic priest in California. We can see that O'Grady is still mentally ill, he is unaware of the seriousness of his actions in the past. He lives a normal life in Ireland as if all his abuses have been forgiven and therefore insignificant and impertinent to him. Another relevant point of the documentary is to present that both the dioceses of California and the Vatican simply deny or cover up all cases of sexual abuse perpetrated by their clergy. It is proven that all religions that view sex as an evil element, or preach fanaticism, certainly have sexual abuse cases done by their members.