Why they don't want any good news about the Catholic Church over here

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There it was again. The cool sting of rejection, like an unexpected slap across the face.

I’d just met with a potential financier for a documentary film I’ve been working on with my sister, and after he viewed the product of our eight months of hard labor, he had brushed it off with a few words.

‘I don’t know how to say this... it’s just not what we’re looking for.’

An edit room never felt so cold. I looked at the hundreds of soundbites on my Final Cut timeline scornfully, for not proving they were worth their salt. And down at my hands, for the same. My sister and I are both from America the land of can do -- in Ireland it’s can’t do it seems--especially where the church is concerned.

The film is about the life and death of an Irish missionary priest who was murdered less than a year ago in Africa. It’s not finished; the purpose of the meeting was to determine whether this representative of a film funding program was interested enough in the story to send me to abroad to investigate the brutal circumstances of the priest’s death.

He added, ‘He does sound like a good man, who did good things, and it is interesting... I just don’t know if anybody who doesn’t support the Catholic church would be interested in seeing it.’

Translation: Nobody in Ireland wants to hear anything positive about the Catholic church nowadays.

Yes, members of the Catholic church have committed horrendous deeds. Yes. Between priests abusing youngsters, their clergy brothers covering it up for decades, and now, the Pope’s rejection of the resignations of two bishops who served when all of this was occurring, for obvious reasons, nobody is a fan of the Catholic church lately. Absolutely understandable.

But not all Catholic priests are child molesters. Nor are they all men involved in corrupt cover-ups. And for the record, to those who oppose the construction of an Islamic Center near Ground Zero, let me assure you, not every Muslim is a terrorist. These are indisputable facts that you can confirm personally by visiting churches and mosques, and then talking with the faithful. If you do, as I have, you’ll find yourself surrounded by worshippers who are heartbroken and disgusted by the heinous criminals who have sullied all that they ever held sacred.

No one and no thing has been either all black or all white since we were introduced to the Crayola 12 pack in elementary school. People, and the institutions they belong to, always come in shades of grey.

‘Maybe if there was just a little less gushing about him. Like 90 percent of what people are saying about him can be cut,’ my movie industry insider explains. ‘And if you ask the people questions about him again, so that there’s more of a cynical take on his life, maybe...’

But, I counter, ‘Even if I interviewed everyone again, I doubt I would get anything but people saying he was a wonderful man. I mean, by all accounts, he was a wonderful man.’

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