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Socialist Review Index (1993–1996) | Socialist Review 185 Contents
From Socialist Review, No. 185, April 1995.
Copyright © Socialist Review.
Copied with thanks from the Socialist Review Archive.
Marked up by Einde O’Callaghan for ETOL.
Priest
Dir: Antonia Bird
One of the most startling features of British society in the last few years has been the virtual collapse of public support for many established institutions in the face of scandal and exposure of hypocrisy. Events in the last few months have shown that the Christian churches are not exempt from this – from the scandal around the Bishop of Galway’s love child and the outing of the Anglican Bishop of London, to the outrageous cover up and protection of priests committing child sex abuse in Ireland.
This makes Priest, a new film written by Jimmy McGovern, a very topical, controversial and interesting watch. It centres on the moral dilemmas facing a young Roman Catholic priest, Greg, trying to apply the strict codes and articles of faith he fervently advocates to the poverty-stricken, working-class Liverpool parish to which he is assigned. He preaches Thatcherite individual responsibility and attacks the moral laxitude of the parish priest Matthew, who lives with their housekeeper and whose sermon ‘sounds like a party political broadcast for the Labour Party’. This unbending preaching only serves to increase Greg’s rank hypocrisy when he begins a love affair with Graham, whom he meets in a gay pub.
The film takes us through the twists and turns of Greg’s dilemmas and his questioning of his vocation; in the process, reinforcing not only the hypocrisy of the Catholic Church but also the gap between its harsh morality and basic compassion, love and humanity. When Greg is exposed as gay we see this gap get bigger and bigger, as the hypocrites line up to attack him. Alongside the absurdities of a ruthless, careerist bishop and a priest who converses only in Latin, Greg is shaken by his inability to deal with a 14-year-old who tells him in confession that she is being sexually abused by her father.
Though largely very good at condemning the Catholic Church and its teachings, here the film misses the chance to stick the boot in about its rigid moralising about sex and the family – which helps to create the conditions for abuse and then leads it to deny, ignore or indeed cover up incest and abuse. Instead it is the girl’s father who is portrayed as a calculating, manipulative and evil monster – rather than the powerless, desperate and repressed man he would be in reality.
Moreover, I’m not really sure that a character like the lefty priest Matthew – who offers Greg a way to solve his dilemmas and redemption – would really survive in the Catholic Church and that liberation theology was ever taken quite as far as he does.
Despite these criticisms, overall I really enjoyed this film. It was well made, had good acting, the sex scenes were done brilliantly and they even sang The Fields of Athenry. Most of all, Cardinal Hume would hate every minute of it.
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