Deliver Us from Evil (2006)

I love this movie so much

Good movie, but best of all time? Hardly . . .

This story has more twists and turns than a second-rate soap opera.

A movie that not only functions as a solid scarefest but a razor-sharp satire.

Deliver us from evil is a documentary film exposing the atrocities committed by Irish born Father Oliver O'Grady, and his time as priest and leader of a parish in various different towns in California. It also displays the conspiracy of the Catholicism, its constant protection of employees within the church and the lengths they went to, to protect gods name while standing by and watching children robbed of their innocence.Although much of the information we see about the Catholic Church and the corruption at the very heart of it, is not completely surprising and I'm sure many people already have their beliefs on paedophilia within the church and its ongoing cover-up, it is with the shameless nature that these "Men of god" talk about the case that is difficult to watch. When Bishop Mahony is asked at one point, "If you knew of a priest having sexual urges towards boys and girls as young as 8 or 9, would that be just cause to remove him from his post" he replies in monotone "No" . It is unsettling to say the least and combined with interviews with the offender himself Father O'Grady, a truly vile and disgusting individual and clearly sociopathic and the victims and their families, we are presented with such a hopeless and desperate story from where there truly is no redemption.Father O'Grady intersperses the documentary with various appalling remarks and commentaries and it is abundantly clear from the get go that he has no sense of realty and that the disconnection he has leads to a point where he feels it is acceptable to write to his victims and arrange a nice friendly reunion. It is so far-fetched and so ridiculous that we have to questions his sanity and motives throughout. He gives us certainly no just cause for sympathy, describing with a smirk what he did with various young girls and boys and what aroused him and why. The saddest part being that after this documentary was made he was arrested and sentenced to three years for further child pornography charges. It begs the questions, how can the Catholic Church protect him still and how has he evaded a longer jail sentence.The Catholic Church is presented in such a poor light, that it's very difficult to know what to believe and who to trust. With more and more cases emerging of child abuse within the church and of many more cases that still go unresolved and undiscovered, it is an eye opening insight into the truth and the need to protect our children and the children of the future with such reverence and love.The victims and their families who gave interviews during the film are unfathomably brave people. It seems that for some there is no light at the end of the tunnel and even 30 years later they remain as scarred and as unhealed as before. It is truly heart retching to see the long term affect this has particularly to those who believed so fervently in god before and who feel betrayed and violated themselves by the church.While the film does not offer hope nor light, it does offer us truth and facts that may have remained hidden. It is very honest and does not shy away or worry that it may offend. If nothing else we can learn so much from this film and focus on bringing justice to the victims and their families and work so much harder to find and punish those responsible.

In a terrible way, that monster Oliver O'Grady has rendered a service to the human race. He and others like him have set off deafening alarm bells. He illustrates the moral insanity of someone in a position of trust who is governed by his hormones and not his religious precepts. O'Grady has called into question not only the "infallibility" of the church hierarchy all the way to the top, but has left the seeds of profound doubt as to the power of prayer to protect the vulnerable from evil. People who attack the Catholic Church from the outside usually only succeed in stiffening the resolve of its followers to continue with renewed faith. It's the hypocrites and dogmatists within the church who inflict the mortal damage that may eventually consign it to the scrap book of history. Any religion or spiritual institution worthy of preservation must contain its own safety mechanism built within its very precepts. I recall, following a recent sex scandal in the media, a televised town hall meeting in which a conceited and arrogant Catholic lobbyist harangued the audience (mostly Catholics) with her usual spiel, "no salvation outside the church", "sexual abuse is far more prevalent outside of the church", "no place for women in the priesthood", etc, etc. When asked what was the problem the church had with women priests she smugly retorted: "according to the bible, how many women disciples did Christ have?". I felt like responding "best evidence suggests Jesus died on the cross before he was 30 and his disciples were also in their 20's, how come the median age of a new pope in recent times is 63 years?" - but I abstained from commenting. As the audience became increasingly restive and annoyed by her delivery, I became increasingly content; "keep up the good work ma'am, you're message is accelerating the church's eventual demise; a reformed Catholic Church might have struggled on for another 1000 years.

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.

Sexual abuse in the clergy scandals are nothing new. In fact, American Roman Catholic priests are now seen as suspicious, untrustworthy, and vilified as possible child molesters. Not all priests are child molesters or pedophiles. But sadly, the Roman Catholic Church has lost trust among it's own parishioners and followers. The sexual abuse scandal has rocked the Church foundation to the core of it's being. In this documentary, the defrocked priest Father Oliver "Ollie" Grady was an Irish immigrant to the United States. In Northern California, he served in parishes in Lodi, Turlock, Stockton, and San Andreas where he committed sexual abuse crimes against the children of those parishes. I don't know who I'm more disgusted with--him or the hierarchy who shuffled him around without getting him the assistance. Unlike some molesters, Ollie is quite frank and candid about his crimes but truly unaware of the destruction that has caused his victims. Unlike the obvious monsters, Father Ollie comes across as the guy next door. You wouldn't think he was such a monster. There is more to the story even his own personal history which might shed light on his crimes. I wished that they discussed it more in the documentary to help understand the monster within.