Biting the Hand

Scene from the documentary Hand of God directed by Joe Cultrera

Last night, the documentary Hand of God was shown on public television in this area. The director, Joe Cultrera, describes the film, which tells a story in the life of his brother, and its effect on him and their family:

"Back in 1964, a Catholic priest in our hometown of Salem, Massachusetts had sexually abused Paul at the Catholic school we both attended. After spending thirty years in a dark box of silence, he initiated his own investigation, uncovering some startling abuses of body and power. This occurred many years before these deceptions hit the headlines... [the film is] an interpretive dance. A weird visual mambo trotted around a straightforward narrative of a crooked happening..."

Personally, I enjoyed the stories of youth, of innocence, of the Faith as more than going through the motions, but a way of life, the very stuff of life. Had I been born five years sooner, and had grown up closer to the city, I might have had a taste of the same jubilant experience. In fact, it almost made me wish I had grown up Italian, as if I was otherwise cheated somehow. But the ones who were really cheated were the family that was torn apart by the sick and twisted behavior of one priest, and the malfeasance of those confreres who covered for him.

The film betrayed more than the loss of innocence of Paul Cultrera; it betrayed the crisis of faith within his whole family. This is the unspoken and unacknowledged message in the film.

No, not because they refuse to put some bishop on a pedestal. You see, that's where people get confused. They assume "the Church" is just a bunch of guys in robes. They become just as much promoters of the clericalist mentality as... well, the clerics. When another Italian, Catherine of Siena, wrote her letters to the Holy Father, at one point referring to the clerics around him as "wolves and sellers of the Divine Grace," she was not attacking the Church Herself or Her teachings. So why did these people have to? Somehow, the idea that they were going to all this trouble, for all this time, because of something Christ Himself founded, escapes them from the moment the camera is rolling. It is completely arbitrary to assign blame to a system of belief that, in its essential nature, is being ignored in a given situation by its own agents. Part of the "visual mambo" to which the director refers, includes the dissonant juxtaposition of sacred images, some of it quite artfully done, but in other cases bordering on the sacrilegious. We can only assume, then, that the events portrayed, cut deep enough to cause such damage to souls, as to lead to despair.


Scene from the documentary Hand of God directed by Joe Cultrera

Something should be made very clear at this point. Saying the above does NOT make light of anyone's suffering, or anyone's outrage, or anything like that. (If you think that it does, you're probably incapable of complex thought, and should stop reading this immediately before you get a headache.) If anything, it does exactly the opposite. In a sense, you almost can't blame the Cultreras. After all, to whom can they turn for the real deal? Everybody around them in a robe or a habit is in somebody's pocket. The conspiracy extends even to a Sister who could probably get away with dancing around a tree and praising Gaia, more easily than spilling the beans about some pervert on the payroll. It's as if the whole town of Salem was being taken over by the Pod People before they could get the word out that aliens had landed.

Near the end of the film, Joe Cultrera is confronted by a cleric outside the chancery office. It is here that we realize one aspect of the problem which, to his credit, the director uncovers: namely, that we're not really dealing with very smart guys here. The fact is, they exist in every bureaucracy, and this writer has met more than his share after a quarter of a century with the Federal government.

The scenario is all too familiar. Some middle-management operative needs to cover for himself, by covering up a problem over which he has little control, but for which he knows he will have to provide an explanation. So he reaches in desperation for a short-term solution. The problem goes away, at least for him. There are three deficiencies with this approach; 1) others in a similar position, and in the same environment, are solving their short-term problems in the same way, 2) as a short-term solution that leaves a long-term residue, it has a cumulative effect, especially when combined with those of others, and 3) others outside the sphere of influence are adversely affected by the consequences of 1 and 2. And so, the operative in question never had a handle on the problem to begin with. Yet he is consoled by the knowledge that he will have moved on when this matter comes back and bites somebody on the hindquarters.

Or so he thinks.

On the night Christ was betrayed, the apostles went running scared. Their successors, at one time or another, have been running scared ever since. I'll give credit to Joe Cultrera and company where it is due; they caught a few in the act of running, literally. I'll also give his brother Paul credit where it is due; if the film is any indication, he probably could have turned out a lot worse. To know that is to know that God works His Grace into the picture somehow, even in the midst of unspeakable evil. Saint Paul reminded us of how that might happen.


Scene from the documentary Hand of God directed by Joe Cultrera

But I don't have to believe their view of the Church Herself or Her teachings to acknowledge their pain. Nor am I required to excuse the incompetence of errant shepherds as a litmus test of orthodoxy. I am not a Catholic for the sake of Joe or Paul Cultrera, any more than I am for Richard Lennon or John McCormick.