The Reason Why - The Catholic Church and I (and Fr Paul Shanley)

Father Paul Shanley as a young priest, c 1970

Paul Shanley, released from prison July 2017

This is a discussion I had with Tim Cavanaugh of the online American libertarian magazine  Reason.com  ("Hit and Run" blog) in 2005. Mr Cavanaugh (presumably of Irish extraction?) was defending a liberal - or renegade - Catholic priest Father Paul Shanley who was initially adored by secular anti-clerics for flouting traditionalist Catholic values - until it suited them to use his anything-goes sexual antics to demonise the Church. The article entitled False Witness is dated 23 February 2005; I wrote to Tim Cavanaugh and an interesting discussion followed that drew in other readers including Jon Ihle.

In February 2005 Paul Shanley was convicted of the 1980 rape of a male minor, a conviction based entirely on "Recovered Memory" evidence. One blogger wrote that the opinion on the Catholic blogosphere appears to be that Shanley is a scumbag who was convicted on the only occasion on which he was innocent. That was certainly my view at the time. However others - like Catholic League president Bill Donohue - believed Shanley to be guilty although it appears that Donohue now accepts he was in fact innocent of that particular charge. [1]

The following extract from the  Wikipedia article on Paul Shanley helps to explain why "liberals" (both Catholic and secular) admired the man and traditionalists loathed him.

Shanley first gained notoriety during the 1970s as a "street priest", ministering to drug addicts and runaways who struggled with their sexuality. His writings included Changing Norms of Sexuality.During the 1980s, Shanley served as pastor of St. Jean the Evangelist Parish in Newton. In 1990, he was transferred to St. Anne's in San Bernardino, California. While there he and another priest, John J. White, co-owned "a bed-and-breakfast for gay customers 50 miles away in Palm Springs".

Shanley had earned "the nickname the hippie priest for his long hair and outspoken views, including his public rejection of the church's condemnation of homosexuality." He attended a conference on sexuality where the founders of NAMBLA, the North American Man Boy Love Association, conceived the idea of such an organization. However, Shanley was not a part of the 32 individuals at the meeting who caucused to form the group, according to a Catholic priest and Protestant minister who were.

The article False Witness and associated comments from the "Hit and Run" blog follow.

Rory Connor

16 April 2019

http://reason.com/blog/2005/02/23/false-witness

Hit and Run Blog

False Witness 

Tim Cavanaugh 

Feb. 23, 2005 3:53 pm

Dear Mr. Cavanaugh,

The attached is from the "Gay" magazine The Guide. Its not that it is the best account of your country's Salem Witch-Hunt (I will send you details of better ones). Its just that they cannot possibly be accused of making excuses for the Catholic Church. (I see they also have an article this month).

Will you defend this lunacy or (more likely) will you ignore it and the questions is raises about anti-clerical "liberals"?

Regards

Rory Connor

[above link is to a May 2005 article from The Guide by Jim D'Entremont as earlier one not available. There is a further article by D'Entremont dated March 2008 here ]

Dear Mr. Cavanaugh,
Summary follows. Plenty of material for an article on the effects of anti-clericalism. It's not so much that I expect journalists like yourself to disagree. What I expect is that you will remain silent and let the Witch-Hunters run riot. You don't actually believe what they are saying but they are attacking your enemies and that's all that counts.

Is that correct?

Rory Connor

[Reply from Tim Cavanaugh]

I never turn down a challenge, Rory! The articles you refer to can be be found  here, and though they're a bit out of date, Slate's Dahlia Lithwick (whose article on this topic I came across just before I got your email yesterday—divine intervention?) covered some of the same ground in covering the actual case against Paul Shanley.

So, in case anybody out there doesn't know, Shanley,  recently sentenced to 12-to-15 years in prison for child rape, was convicted solely on the basis of  recovered-memory testimony; three of his four accusers were dropped as unreliable, and the one remaining accuser had ample opportunity to coordinate his tale with the stories of at least two of the others (boyhood friends of his); no witnesses were able to corroborate any of the accusations, in whole or in part, and to the degree that there was forensic evidence, it would seem to clear Shanley (for reasons too complicated to go into here, and which did not involve Shanley at all, one of the boys actually had his cloacal region examined by a doctor at the time of the alleged crimes, and no evidence of abuse was found); Shanley appears to have had an active and varied sex life, which was widely distorted and misreported in press accounts; he was not actually a member of NAMBLA; nothing in Shanley's 1,600-page personnel file from the Boston Archdiocese supports any of the claims made about him prior to and during his trial... For more information, read JoAnn Wypijewski's  coverage of the case, [2] and since on the internet a thousand-word screed is worth a million pictures, don't miss Alexander Cockburn's post-sentencing hit.

For what it's worth, I have consistently believed, and written, that the real scandal here has been about management; what made the RCC sex-abuse story of 2002 take off wasn't the behavior of accused priests but the loony personnel decisions high-ranking church officials seemed to be making. That applies here as well: If they didn't think Shanley was guilty they should have defended him instead of shuffling him around and then throwing him to the wolves when he got too hot. However, I didn't pay any attention to the details of the Shanley case beyond noting that he had "multiple accusers" and a "30-year history" of allegations, both of which turn out to be largely chimerical.

But hey, way back in 2002 I was warning about the possibility of a witch hunt: When a priest in Baltimore was shot by a guy who claims the priest had molested him, a New York Times reporter astoundingly referred to the shooter as the "victim," and I called bullshit on that. And as it turns out, that Times reporter's name was...Jayson Blair?

And now you know...the rrrrest of the story!

TIM CAVANAUGH

MY NOTES:
[1] This is Bill Donohue's reaction to Paul Shanley's release from prison in July 2017 -"Catholic Left Goes Mute on Paul Shanley"

[2] For a Catholic traditionalist view on Jo Ann Wypijewski, a left wing journalist who defended Paul Shanley when most of her colleagues abandoned him to the Witch-hunters, see article by Phil Lawler "Strange Ally: a left-wing journalists unconvincing critique of Spotlight"

VIEW COMMENTS (33) 33 Responses to “False Witness”

SR 
 23 May 2005 @ 5:02PM
 [anti-Catholic evangelical] Obviously the Black Internationale has gotten to you, Tim. [/anti-Catholic evangelical]


mojoe 
23 May 2005 @ 5:21PM
 Tim,
 I live in the Boston area, and know 2 guys that absolutely, positively swear that this guy molested them also. They aren't interested in testifying because of the embarrassment involved. They've put it behind them (not a pun). And have seen what it's like to testify in these proceedings.

 Also, the media hereabouts reported that the other 3 accusers decided not to testify for the same reason, not that they had been disqualified as unreliable.

 There was another case locally where recovered-memory testimony was used to put away the owners and workers of the Fells Acres Daycare, only to have most of those convictions overturned some time later.

WSDave 
23 May 2005 @ 5:30PM|
I thought all that recovered memory, sex abuse, "satan ate my baby" stuff went out in the 80's. Is everything old really new again?

gaius marius
 23 May 2005 @ 5:40PM
 "I live in the Boston area, and know 2 guys that absolutely, positively swear that this guy molested them also."
 which is fine, mr mojoe. but that doesn't mean the trial of shanley as it happened was not a horrible miscarriage of justice.

Tim Cavanaugh 
23 May 2005 @ 5:42PM
 WSDave, that's why I figured there must really be something to the charges against Shanley. You know: There's no way they'd convict a guy on the basis of voodoo brain science just for the sake of the children! That would be unreasonable!

 What was I thinking?

Rory Connor 
23 May 2005 @ 6:25PM
 Dear SR
 You are absolutely right: The Black Internationale has got Tim! I was a De La Salle Brother from 1966 to 69 and it was the formative experience of my life. My novice master Brother Maurice Kirk was as important as my parents if not more so. (He became head of the De La Salle Order in Ireland and was killed in a car crash on 10 April 1974.)

 In September 1967 at the end of our training a Jesuit priest Father Michael Sweetman gave us a 9 day Retreat (spiritual conference for you pagans). It's true what the Jesuits say: when they control a child's education they have him for life!
 Rory

Jeff
 23 May 2005 @ 6:30PM
The Catholic church scapegoating somebody for the sake of convinience? Unheard of!

Gary Gunnels 
23 May 2005 @ 6:37PM
 Rory Connor,
 I am a heathen thank you very much.

crimethink
23 May 2005 @ 7:00PM
 Gary Gunnels,
 Was he talking to you?

 Or do you have a new housemate? ;-)

SR 
23 May 2005 @ 8:14PM
I'm very gratified that someone recognized the "Black Internationale" reference.


Gary Gunnels
23 May 2005 @ 8:43PM
 crimethink,
 If you read his comments you'll see he was referring to anyone reading his comments who happened to be rational enough not believe in Christianity.


James Kabala 
23 May 2005 @ 9:06PM
A number of people in the Catholic blogosphere take the same position as mojoe: This was a scumbag who got caught by a rare case in which he was innocent. I don't know enough details to say whether that's true or not.

 As for the Jayson Blair anecdote, all I can say is, "Wow."


Gary Gunnels 
23 May 2005 @ 9:18PM
 Sometimes it is very difficult to keep the outside world from invading the jury room. Does anyone know if the NAMBLA claim arose at trial? I doubt the prosecution would raise it (its not in their interest to dispel this rumor), and if the defense didn't, then that claim could have tainted the entire jury pool. Even voir dire might not have rid the jury of this notion if the prosecution or defense avoided or didn't think of it.

The Wine Commonsewer 
23 May 2005 @ 10:09PM
 I'm also too lazy (busy) to go looking but to my recollection the denial of the NAMBLA connection turns on a technicality. He was involved but it wasn't NAMBLA yet because the organization was just getting off the ground. It ultimately evolved into NAMBLA. A nice bunch of folks I'm sure.

 I don't doubt that Shanley is guilty. I also think the evidence was thin. Too thin for a conviction if it was anything else but a sexual assault case.

The Wine Commonsewer 
23 May 2005 @ 10:11PM
 Meant to also say that (from memory) the Archdiocese of Boston has written records connecting Shanley with NAMBLA around 1979 or 1980 so, no, it didn't arise at trial for the first time.


Tim Cavanaugh
 23 May 2005 @ 11:08PM
Gary and TWC: This claim was not in evidence at the trial, but according to the Wypijewski story, the jury pool showed close to 100-percent awareness of Shanley and the media reporting on the case, so it's a good bet at least a few of the jurors knew about the claim. I'd say his non-membership was more than just a technicality, though he wasn't pure as the unsunned snow either. From the story:

 "By 1977 anyone wanting to report molestation could call an anonymous tip into a hotline instituted by the Boston D.A. Innuendo poured in about hundreds of gay men. It was a year of panic that set the stage for Shanley to articulate his most "deviant belief." In nearby Revere, a police dragnet implicated 25 men and 64 youths in an alleged sex ring. Police detained the young people, or enlisted psychiatrists and priests, to coerce them into cooperating. A group called the Boston/Boise Committee was formed to defend civil liberties. Ultimately none of the men did time, and the district attorney responsible for the scandal was swept from office. Afterward, the committee held a conference to discuss sex between men and teenage boys. Shanley was among the clerics, ethicists, lawyers, activists, and psychologists invited to speak. He told the story of a gay teenager, rejected by his family, who took up with an older man. When the boy's parents found out, they called the police and the man was imprisoned. "He had loved that man," Shanley said of the boy. "And when he realized that the indiscretion in the eyes of society and the law had cost this man perhaps 20 years . . . the boy began to fall apart. We have our convictions upside down . . . the 'cure' does far more damage."

 "At his 2002 PowerPoint show, MacLeish projected a sentence from a 1979 account from Gaysweek that read, "At the end of the conference, 32 men and two teenagers caucused and formed the Man Boy Lovers of North America." The suggestion or assertion that Shanley was among the 32 has been repeated in the press many times since. But Shanley wasn't part of that group, say a Catholic priest and Protestant minister who were."


martin
 23 May 2005 @ 11:10PM
 Repressed memory syndrome or RCC discussion aside, my feeling is, what convicted the guy was the sole witness sobbing and breaking down on the stand. After decades of indoctrination, no juror wants to feel that the obviously terribly affected victim did not get justice and a potential molester might be allowed to roam freely.

 The child sex abuse hysteria should serve as a textbook case of subverting important foundations of justice, such as assumption of innocence, retroactive legislation, due process rights and more. All to the great enhancement of power of prosecutors, social service groups, NGOs and ably pushed along by an often gullible and uninformed media. Sex sells.

 Ending the WOD will be magnitudes easier than halting the sex abuse hysteria train.


martin
23 May 2005 @ 11:23PM
 PS:  Even if Mr. Shanley ever was a member of NAMBLA, that is not what he was at trial for. To all advocating it should make a difference to a jury, you need to seriously check the consequences if such thinking takes hold in practice. Undeniably, especially in molestation cases, it already has.

 Just because a guy was a sympathiser or even a member of the KKK, doesn't mean he is criminally liable for the atrocities committed in their name.

 Looks like Government mind control to me.



TWC
 24 May 2005 @ 12:16AM
 Thanks Tim....
 Certainly this stuff is troubling. But the entire legal system is insane, and when it comes to sex crimes, it's a crap shoot.


Gary Gunnels 
24 May 2005 @ 12:19AM
 martin,
 Having now had some experience with trial work I can tell you that I have a very jaded attitude toward juries. A talented trial attorney can manipulate the fuck out of them.


Rory Connor 
24 May 2005 @ 4:17AM
From my reading of the case Paul Shanley may well have been guilty of sex with underage but ADOLESCENT boys. Consensual sex with a 16 year old youth is a crime, but very different from raping a 6 year old. So why wasn't he charged with his (possible) real crimes?

 In the 1970s Paul Shanley was a Gay and Liberal icon. He was part of the Church's outreach to the Gay community and reached out so far that he swallowed their agenda hook, line and sinker. When he was removed from that ministry about 1980, Cardinal Madeiros (?) was denounced as reactionary.

 Part of the Gay agenda was (and is?) to reduce the age of consent. If Shanley was prosecuted for consensual sex with teenage youths, the trial might have focused on the issue of homosexual priests. Instead the prosecution brought vile and fantastic charges in order to demonise Shanley and the Catholic Church.

 Just a suggestion!

 Rory


Douglas Fletcher 
24 May 2005 @ 4:39AM
What the hell is in the water up there, anyway?


Jon Ihle 
24 May 2005 @ 6:49AM
Everyone here - especially Tim - should know that Rory Connor's aim here is to exonerate the Catholic Church's complicity in widespread sexual abuse by drawing attention to exceptional miscarriages of justice. He's been bombarding my blog and email for over a year now trying to get me to write about this stuff, too. He contacted me because I'm a Jew who occasionally writes about anti-Semitism and he sees the sex abuse allegations, trials, etc. as an anti-Catholic campaign. As you can see from his last comment, his paranoid exculpatory fantasy involves a conspiracy theory about an organised attack by homosexuals on the Church. From what I can tell, his group, Voices Emerge, is struggling with the complete loss of Catholic authority in Ireland, where not only has clerical sex abuse been revealed, but also a widespread longstanding system of virtual slavery for orphans, unwed moothers and other moral undesirables. This is an institutional problem with the Church, but Connor wants you to pay attention to an individual case so that you forget that.


Rory Connor 
24 May 2005 @ 10:25AM
 Jon Ihle is right. I have been bombarding journalists trying to get them to write about a gross miscarriage of justice that bears comparison to the (Jewish) Dreyfus case in France over a century ago. The evidence against Dreyfus was forged but it was not ludicrous. The accusers of Dreyfus had more respect for the intelligence of their audience than the advocates of Recovered Memory which is more like voodoo brain science.

 I know a lot more about the witch-hunt in Ireland than in the USA. However I do know that Shanley was one of the chief whipping boys of the anti-clerical child abuse lobby. Since Shanley is innocent of the charges against him (as even Jon Ihle seems to accept), it is a reasonable conclusion that the entire scandal in the USA is fake.

 I know for certain that our Irish scandal is a fake and a witch-hunt. I have been in contact with a number of the chief accusers and leaders of "victims" groups. One of them told me on the steps of the Catholic Cathedral in Dublin, that there are mass grave in Artane and other institutions run by the Christian Brothers. (This encounter took place in front of journalists and TV crews and was - briefly- reported in the media. His group was picketing the Cathedral after Mass).

 Another gentleman told the Irish Times that he attended the funerals of boys who died after being punched in the stomach by the Christian Brothers. No boy died of any cause while this gentleman was in Artane. I had a sharp E-Mail exchange with him in which I invited him to name the dead boys. Of course he produced no names. I know of several other accusations of this type. I call them "Murder of the Undead" allegations and they seem to be the Irish equivalent of Recovered Memory Syndrome.

 I am not talking about isolated individuals who jump on the bandwagon of a genuine scandal. These allegations come from the leaders and spokes-persons for "victims" groups in my country.

 The Irish Minister for Justice and the Gardai (police) have confirmed that they are unaware of a single murder.

 It is impossible to disprove allegations of child abuse, decades after the alleged events. You cannot prove a negative. However when the people who allege systematic child abuse are also making "Murder of the Undead" type claims, then you know that we are dealing with a new Salem.

 Rory


Gary Gunnels
24 May 2005 @ 11:32AM
Rory Connor,
 I've known many, many gay people in my life; I don't ever recall any of them having a burning desire to lower the age of consent laws.

 Even if Shanley is innocent, that hardly undermines the numerous other cases of sexual abuse of children (and nuns for that matter) by RCC priests. Of course, its not like the RCC doesn't have a long and inglorious history of persecuting or victimizing people; thus, the latest revelations are just par for the course.

 Jon Ihle,
 Thanks for the heads up.


dhex 
24 May 2005 @ 12:19PM
 i have to say i was heartened at recent protests at Catholic school closings by parents in carroll gardens and other parts of brooklyn. the direct connection between hush money payouts and budget woes was being addressed directly. (not that there's much of a solution there, unless these parents could somehow double their tuition fees, which is, ahem, unlikely)

dhex
24 May 2005 @ 12:24PM
"it is a reasonable conclusion that the entire scandal in the USA is fake."

 yes, well...we all have to hold onto something.


Altar Boy 
24 May 2005 @ 1:02PM
I went to catholic school for 12 years and had a lot to do with priests, nuns, and brothers. I'm from a very Irish part of town and know hundreds of others who had similar upbringings.

 In all that time and all those people I've heard of 1 case where something sexual might have happened.

 Sure, they were willing to hit you for punishment, but at the time (1960s to 1980s) this was not considered abuse. A lot of them were assholes, and had some other issues, but that doesn't mean they were abusers.

 I understand people who are not Catholics and who only hear the horror stories of catholic school (which I too was all too happy to share with friends at the state college I went to) don't understand the culture and assume all members have the same failings when there are well publicized allegations. The same can be said for any fringe group, such as the Jews or Mormons.

 I would think of all the blogs out there, folks on this one would understand how the actions of a wacky few can unfairly tarnish the reputation of the moderate majority. (e.g. Badnarik)


James Kabala 
24 May 2005 @ 3:12PM
Rory:
 Most of the sexual abuse claims in the U.S. have not been based on recovered-memory syndrome. On the contrary, in most of these cases diocesan archives show that the bishops were notified of the abuse at the time and chose to hush it up.

 The stories you report from Ireland do sound outlandish and Maria Monkish. (For starters, why would dead children be buried in a mass grave instead of returned to their parents? Was this Artane school you mention for orphans?) However, we are talking about two different countries and two different scandals.


The Wine Commonsewer 
24 May 2005 @ 3:13PM
Altar, we do understand that this is a few bad apples in a whole bag full. With the knowledge of the good apples, the gorcery store left the bad apples on the shelf. They even disguised them by putting them in brown shopping bags filled with good apples. They then sent them home to unsuspecting shoppers, some of whom ended up with a rotting bite of the apple containing a worm.

 And that is why everyone here and the rest of America is so outraged.

 Hand me my shootin' iron regards,

 TWC


Jon Ihle
 24 May 2005 @ 4:33PM
Yes, Rory, I do accept that, at the very least, there has been a miscarriage of law in the Shanley case (I'm not in a position know whether it was just, in the cosmic sense). I also accept that cases based on recovered memory are crap. The notion that people forget trauma is fanciful and probably agenda-driven. Further, the instances you describe re: Artane sound nuts and produced by hysteria. But what you can't deny is what the Church has documented itself - and I'm not just talking about sexual abuse, here. I'm talking about the Magdelen laundries and the whole infrastructure of incarceration built around unwed mothers, orphans and juvenile delinquents, wherein these people were mercilessly brutalised. And, of course, I'm talking about clergy who have admitted what they've done and about the Church which has admitted its role in covering for them. It's important to distinguish fact from fiction and to consider these cases individually, but you want to generalise too much from a handful of particulars. What should be important to you is the truth, not just the reputation of the Church.


Rory Connor 
24 May 2005 @ 4:37PM
James
 I agree I have limited knowledge of the scandal in the USA. However the following is a quotation from an article by Daniel Lyons, "Sex, God and Greed", Forbes magazine, June 2003.

 "The False Memory Syndrome Foundation, a Philadelphia debunking group, says at least 100 clergy cases involve people who claim they were molested or raped, blocked it out for decades and now suddenly remember."

 Another quote about the lawyer who represents the four "victims" of Paul Shanley. "For Roderick (Eric) MacLeish, sex litigation is a big business. MacLeish says he represents 240 people bringing abuse claims against the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Boston." The Shanley case is described as his "most celebrated current case."

 Daniel Lyons is no Catholic Church acolyte nor is Forbes Magazine. The article is largely concerned with the effects of the scandal on the American insurance industry!

 There are just too many dubious cases. Have they all jumped on the bandwagon of a genuine scandal or is there something rotten about the entire child abuse issue?

 The story is much the same in Ireland. Artane was an industrial school mainly for teenage boys I think. Some would have committed offenses, some were orphans and others were neglected by their parents. The allegation about mass graves is an accusation of mass murder against the Christian Brothers!

 There was an article in the Sunday Independent (on 22 December 2002 I think) which claimed that there had been a "Holocaust" at another school in Letterfrack with bodies buried all over the place. The man who made the claim had been at Letterfrack about 20 years after the last boy died there!

 As I said, "Murder of the Undead" allegations are the Irish answer to Recovered Memory Syndrome.

 Rory


Rory Connor
27 May 2005 @ 8:06PM
Is this discussion closed? I am going to attempt a final comment anyway. John Ihle and myself differ on most things but we both agree that Recovered Memory is crap. Since he is Jewish and I am Catholic this agreement is not ideological but genetic (i.e. we are both Irish).

 Recovered Memory Syndrome is a Freudian fable and only occurs in societies where Freudianism has made deep inroads into the culture. This did not happen in Ireland. The Catholic Church was strongly opposed to Freud's ideas because they represented a threat to Catholic doctrines regarding sin, free will and personal responsibility. (Even atheists should be concerned about the latter two). That is why we have lunatic lies like "Murder of the Undead" but not Recovered Memory.

 Both societies are sick but I prefer the Irish disease. A liar inhabits the same moral universe as the person who is telling the truth; he just has a different attitude to truth. The Recovered Memory brigade are from a different planet altogether. It is possible to repent of telling lies but how do you repent of Recovered Memory?

Afterword re "Recovered Memory"

On 31 March 2020 I wrote the following in a thread on the politics.ie website "Alex Salmond Accused of Sexual Harassment"

I wrote a Blog article recently that accidentally illustrated the problem of "historic" memory. I wanted to reproduce an online discussion I had taken part in - more than a decade before - about the conviction of Fr Paul Shanley but I had difficulty locating it. I was pretty sure I recalled a comment by a blogger that "the opinion on the Catholic blogosphere appears to be that Shanley is a scumbag who was convicted on the only occasion on which he was innocent." When I eventually located the discussion I found that what I was probably remembering was a comment that

" A number of people in the Catholic blogosphere take the same position as mojoe: This was a scumbag who got caught by a rare case in which he was innocent"

My memory failure makes little difference here, but suppose I was a witness in court testifying to something that was supposed to have happened in 2005. It could make a BIG difference if I said that an event had only happened ONCE when in fact it was was a RARE event (i.e. it happened a few times).

Shortly after I started to compose this Blog article on Fr Shanley, I recognised my mistake. However I thought the way I remembered the statement is an improvement on the original so I decided to let it stand. And of course, that's the problem with "Recovered Memory". It's not a mental photo of what happened in the past but a Reconstruction!

[ Also the author of the original quote was NOT a "Blogger". I upgraded him. Another aspect of "Recovered Memory" is to make past events more important than they really were! ]

Rory Connor

10 August 2020

Father Michael Sweetman SJ - declining to Baptise the Spirit of the Age

Homily by Michael Sweetman SJ (1983) on 50th anniversary of death of Fr John Sullivan

The above is a talk by Father Michael Sweetman SJ in St Francis Xavier Church in Dublin during a Mass to commemorate his former teacher and then colleague Fr John Sullivan a well-known saintly Jesuit who died on 19 February 1933. The date is February 1983 - the 50th anniversary of the death of Father Sullivan.
 [Michael Joseph Sweetman was born in Dublin on 20 March 1914 and encountered Fr Sullivan when he was a late adolescent studying at Clongowes Wood College in Co. Kildare. He himself joined the Jesuits in 1931 and was ordained a priest in 1945.]

I was a novice in the De La Salle Brothers in Castletown, Co. Laois (diocese of Ossory) in 1966/67. At the end of the year of training in late August 1967, our novice master Br Maurice Kirk invited the well known Jesuit Fr Michael Sweetman to give us an eight-day retreat. I took copious notes of his talks that I wrote up in my diary in the evenings. A few years ago I photocopied the relevant pages and left copies in the National Archives and Jesuit archives. Due to the collapse of all our hopes of that time, I have never been able to reread the notes or the rest of my diary - but hopefully I will get around to it now - or my notes of Fr Sweetman's talks anyway! [ I have written about Fr Sweetman and Br Maurice in the About Me section of my old website IrishSalem.com ]

What follows are (or will be) excerpts from articles by Fr Sweetman from the 1940s to the 1980s - mainly in The Furrow - for which he was film reviewer from  1965 to 67 - and in Studies Quarterly Review, a publication of the Irish Jesuits. It may well have been his articles in The Furrow that helped bring him to the attention of Brother Maurice. I have described Brother Maurice elsewhere as a "liberal Conservative" (with emphasis on the noun!) and Fr Sweetman as something of a "radical priest". However the latter phrase has definitely changed its meaning from Ireland in the 1960s to today. Fr Sweetman's attitude was quite different from that of Fr Gabriel Daly OSA of whom I have written previously.

This essay is definitely a Work-in-Progress and will continue that way for a while. I propose to organise it in themes rather than chronologically. Curiously enough the first film review of Fr Sweetmans's that I came across in the Furrow (November 1965) concerns the issue of false sexual allegations made by a child against adult teachers! 

NOTES:

• I should stress that the various topic headings in blue are my own invention - not those of Fr Sweetman!
• I have followed this with a second post "Father Michael Sweetman S.J. His Story [2]

Dublin Youth of 1965, Sex and False Allegations

(The Furrow, November 1965)
In discussing, and judging, what is suitable in films presented for indiscriminate public consumption, the statement is often made that something will shock the young and uneducated. This is a possibility that deserves every consideration. But if by un-educated one means particularly city youngsters who have been unable to obtain more than a primary education, the notion of what is likely to shock them needs imaginative investigation. They are not uneducated in the realities of life; they, of necessity, have become immune to many of its shocks. Certainly the use of obscene and even blasphemous language would be no shock, in the sense of being something new, to them; nor would the sight of raw passion, violent emotion, scurrilous abuse, drunkenness, dishonesty or squalid lust. Those who are likely to be shocked by these things, or entertained as the case may be, are the educated and sheltered minority. But as they are surrounded by counteracting influences antagonistic to this kind of behaviour, they also are partly protected.

 What really does everyone harm are false values attractively displayed; omission of all concern for religious and ultimate standards; cynical or sentimental contempt for people.

 When a film like The Loudest Whisper (Academy) is restricted to those over eighteen, it is not because the subject or treatment is shocking, but rather because it would be puzzling to the very young and might create morbid suspicions among adolescents. 

The subject here might be said to be lesbianism, but the film gets its excitement not from this, but from the power of malicious whispering about it. ......

Here, as in Lord of the Flies, there is an indication of the zest for evil that can possess a child. The bold girl is a clever, malicious, subtle, cruel little viper, but she is not inhuman, she is no caricature. For spite, using phrases she has overheard from a silly adult, she tells her grandmother that there is an unnatural relationship between the two young teachers who run the school. In the orgy of, mainly, feminine emotion which follows on this, the parts of the teachers are sensitively played by Audrey Hepburn and Shirley MacLaine; the grandmother is superbly done by Eileen Hopkins; the children are excellent. The poisonous whisper is tipped into the ear of the grandmother in a most effective dialogue in the back of a car. ....

 It is a film worth seeing for all educationalists and that, in some sense, includes nearly all adults. 

Effect of Film Sex Scenes on Irish Girls (1966)

The Furrow June 1966 - [This follows his review of a film version of Hamlet by Grigori Kozintsev]

 From the sublime to [Vittirio] de Sica. Marriage Italian Style (Academy) is bored de Sica, following his own too well tried formula: a golden hearted prostitute, a few orphans, a sly cleric, a glamorous play-boy ready to harvest an unlikely domestic peace once he has sown the very last possible wild oat. . . and so on. Sophia Loren affronts me; I can't take her; and I must say I don't much want to. Though in fairness it should be said that when her characteristics are toned, honed down, as she is supposed to grow older, she becomes far more beautiful and appealing. The comedy is very predictable and seldom warms up. Except for the intellectual effort which might be demanded of parents in explaining to children how Filomena's three children came into the world, there does not seem very much reason to restrict this film to adults. It is certainly not adult fare.......

In almost all of these kind of films there is a scene or so of the glossy magazine type, where female bodies are displayed in an impersonal, provocative, artificial way. These are of the same category as that group of writings which Richard Hoggart well labelled "sensation-without-commitment". If I may at all trust my intuition, these scenes generally break the interest of the audience in the cinema, and are received with more embarrassment than fascination. Certainly they reveal minds behind them whose sense of humour has deserted them, whose good taste never existed, and whose inventiveness and imagination has been choked by desire for easy money. But the very fact that they leave nothing to a more sensitive imagination - one's own - makes them that amount less harmful than the static picture or the suggestive passage in a book. But though they may be less successful they must be stigmatised as of the same intention as the type of picture that is pushed into a drawer when an unexpected knock comes to your office door. Their contented lovelessness, and chinkless in sincerity, are perhaps their most objectionable qualities. 

I have been wondering what effect these scenes have on girls. A very limited research suggests that they mostly view this kind of performance as silly, something no girl, bad or good, would want to put on in any conceivable circumstances. This may be tinged with slight envy of the mere physical talents of the sirens. Some feel that this kind of stuff is clearly what purveyors of "immature emotional satisfactions" (Hoggart) want their frightened clients to believe is the way they would like girls to behave. It all begins, and ends, in solitary fantasy. 

It reminds one again that many authors or artists, even of genius, never knew sexual normality. So many were warped in their own experience or suffered from egoistical inability to control their im pulses. Anyhow, the evidence goes to suggest that there are some very stunted, and not a few sick minds behind the production of mass entertainment. But when all is said and done the misfit sections do not make these films totally objectionable; no more than occasional tactless insult altogether destroys a friendship.

Censorship, "Liberals" and 'Room at the Top'

(The Furrow, January 1966)
 Room at the Top (Corinthian) is one of the best of the films previously banned, and now cut and passed for adult audiences.  They keep before our minds the question of censorship and the  deeper one of the moral influence of art and literature. The days of  banning merely because of the theme, or subject, seem to be over  everywhere; there is more attention given now to the method of presentation and the intent behind it. If this film was originally  banned because of the love scenes, judicious cutting has removed  such ground for objection without in any way clouding the issues  at stake. To contend that one needs a more prolonged and detailed  indication of the sexual relationship of the central character (Lawrence Harvey) with the two women, if one is to follow their story,  seems to me stupid if not dishonest. Just as well complain that you  don't know what happened to Karin in the Virgin Spring, because  the rape is not shown. (This beautiful, elemental film was shown in the Fine Arts theatre; I hope it will appear every now and again forever.) The way, the spirit, in which the double attachment is  dealt with seems to me reasonably adequate, given a completely non  religious environment. One leads to a pre-married pregnancy and  shot-gun wedding with the boss's daughter, the other, with an unhappily married woman, to her too timely death. Granted, by our or almost any standards the immorality of the two liaisons, there is nothing in the way the story is told to make one believe that this is  an attractive or acceptable way to live. The hopelessness of such a  situation is really effectively conveyed by the sensitive acting of  Simone Signoret; and if the great settler of knotty problems, death, is used a bit too glibly, still on the other hand he has always been  a legitimate means of emphasis of any vital point. 

But the sexual emotions are not the only or perhaps the most  important ones touched here. The exacerbated resentment of the  clever, ambitious, young man from the provinces and working-class, in the face of his social "superiors" is well set out. Suave manners, name dropping, initiated behaviour are all used as weapons to  humiliate and exclude him.The resultant emotions are well worth dramatic exploitation, for they are among the most explosive in the world.

 To return for a brief moment to the question of banning and  morality; the reason why this film does not seem to me likely to have  bad effects is principally because the women are never here treated in an impersonal, and so most deeply degrading way. The relationships are intensely, painfully personal. In so many other films which  seem to have no trouble gaining entrance, human flesh is paraded for  the amusement or provocation of anonymous Man. These arrogant, beedy-eyed inspectors look the girls up and down with cool appraisal,  intended to glorify an attitude of disenchanted experience coupled  with unflagging lust. This is immoral, and almost as unpleasant as  the slavish praise meted out by mis-named liberals, to any production  that is smutty, blasphemous and debunking.

The Insecure Offenders: Rebellious Youth in the Welfare State (1961 book)

Review of book ( by T. R. Fyvel ) in Studies Quarterly Review, Winter 1962 
THE first of these books might take its place in the worthy company of The Uses of Literacy, The Hidden Persuaders and The Affluent Society. It is, with them, a study of the vital under-currents of modern society; here there is particular stress on the influences which are producing delinquents in such alarming numbers. Statistics are used; but the book is a study of people not numbers. It deals principally with Britain, but has interesting sections also on the problem in U.S.S.R., U.S.A. and Europe. The statistical size of the problem may be indicated by the figures for Britain: in 1938 indictible offences in the 17-21 age group were 10,131, in 1959 they were 30,086; violence against the person rose from 163 to 2,366. Similar trends have appeared almost everywhere. 

An examination of the social soil encouraging such luxuriant growth shows it to be one where the moral law is openly derided, its very notion being denied validity even in learned circles; where the idea of there being a transcendental purpose in human life is presumed away; where the working philosophy of life is explicitly materialist and hedonist. In such a society commercial interests rule, almost absolutely. These interests are in themselves amoral and ruthless; their one purpose-production, of any thing. Desires are created and satisfied with this end alone in view. Now, the teenage spending power has increased to an enormous extent- unmarried young people spent £900 million in Britain in 1959 - so the commercial pressure is turned on it. The desires created in them are, for the most part, not for the essentials of life;

 'The economy is geared to the least urgent set of human wants' (Galbraith: The Affluent Society); stress is on drinks, smokes, entertainment, decorative clothing, body culture (cosmetics, etc.), betting, cars and scooters, sensational reading. This is the area where advertising and high-pressure salesmanship is concentrated. Desire is not only aroused but made rabid. 'In the U.S. it is already harder than almost anywhere else for those who cannot follow the advice of the advertisers . . . to lead any life which is psychologically secure.' 

It might not surprise a contemplative: it may at first seem rather unexpected to most others, that the result of all this, or at least what goes along with it, is a pervasive boredom. Time may be short and all that but one of the great problems is to put it in, how to kill it! The crime peak is reached in England at 4.0 pm on Sundays.This is one way of relieving boredom. Whether the long hours spent in coffee bars is to be taken as a way of relieving it, or of showing it, is an open question. They may possibly be included under the heading 'Doing Nothing' which was the way 23% of youths, in another survey, described their leisure time activities.

 Little enough interest is taken, and comparatively small sums spent in providing housing, sports facilities, education for the submerged tenth and where their fundamental needs are neglected their energies and resentments break out in violence, restlessness and a search for 'kicks'.

The great advertising media plug sex, sensation, crime and other get rich-quick activities. Is it to be wondered at that this 'arouses morbid and synthetic emotions' amounting at times to hysteria. Two popular Sunday papers were condemned by the British Press Council 'as grossly lewd and salacious . . . debased to a level which is a disgrace to British journalism'. They have of course a loud enough voice to set up a heart-rending cry of 'Inquisition' or 'Puritanism' or prudery if there is any attempt to censor them. Some one apparently calculated that United States television showed 6.2 acts of violence per hour; while their 'comic' literature was described by a Senate sub-committee as 'Short courses in murder, mayhem, robbery, rape, cannibalism, carnage, necrophilia, sex, sadism, masochism, and of all crimes, bestiality and horror'. Well, a lot of this may well leave the normal child unaffected, but it can certainly topple the unstable. ......

This simply tots up to a false, unsettling set of values which makes sheep of the majority but also a nice proportion of wolves to prey upon them. .....

When these mass-produced sheep in wolves' clothing, interspersed with genuine wolves as a by-product, get into the clutches of society's penal system, what happens Some rather peculiar things to start with: one is that many of these apparently untameable beasts have their first experience of an ordered, secure and reasonably healthy life; they thrive on it, and secretly rather regret certain aspects of it when it is over e.g. the companionship, the sense of belonging, the loyalties and solidarity of the group. This is so of the more enlightened juvenile institutions. Lady Wootton is here quoted as saying that 'Penal experiences create a delinquent culture based on these experiences'. This has its disadvantages when they are plunged back into the society which was largely responsible for deforming them and still repudiates them; they begin to hate it. Battle is joined and may be waged through many a raid and 'job' on one side and many a sentence on the other, till a type is developed which can live no other way and is stamped indelibly as criminal.

Sean O'Casey, Prostitution, Anti-Clericalism and the film "Young Cassidy"

(The Furrow, April 1965)
The most interesting show recently, for extrinsic reasons, was Young Cassidy (Adelphi). This is a story based on the life of Sean O'Casey; it scarcely adheres to its base at any point. It is cinema entertainment untrammeled by much reality. Rod Taylor in the lead is unconvincing. He is lusty, burly, blustering, an extrovert, quite unlike what O'Casey was or could have been. Perhaps this is the kind of "boyo" he would like to have been, instead of the scraggy, under-nourished, petulant misfit of genius which he was. There are some exciting, vigorous riots and street fighting to set ......

The encounter with the prostitute, and to a lesser extent with a slum siren, was in poor taste. Here was glamorised immorality at its most obvious and artistically inexcusable. One doesn't need to be as staunchly blind as the good lady who announces as she strides out of the Abbey Theatre: "There is not a prostitute to be found in the length and breadth of Ireland", to object to this scene. (This remark was, by the way, greeted with the derisive jeers it so clearly invited, by the cinema audience.) The prostitutes of Dublin, at least such as a young, impecunious literary agitator could afford, in the city of Buck Mulligan, Bloom and Young Cassidy, were unfortunates whose moral squalor and misery would have been well matched by external grime and stench. Here you have a beautiful, happy girl (Julie Christie) well bathed and laundered, looking as if she had come straight from the caresses of a Mediterranean sun. This is insincere, bogus, false; untrue to life and trebly untrue of Dublin slum life in 1913. 

This, coupled with the speech by Yeats implying that the most contemptible thing that could be said of a man would be to call him "a God-fearing young Irishman" all this lacks integrity. A further false impression is created when Cassidy leaves Ireland with the pompous encouragement of Yeats booming in his ears, whereas O'Casey left with fury in his heart at Yeats's refusal of the Silver Tassie. 

But when all is said and done it's not to be taken too seriously; the scenery is beautiful; all the women act well. Nora (Maggie Smith) is easy to watch, though indeed the love scenes are oppressively "filmy" with conventional posturings and manoeuvring for position on the canal bank, from amorous clich to clinch. This is a film of parts; the good parts do not redeem the bad but neither do the bad corrupt the whole. There is no whole. 

Sean O'Casey, Matt Talbot and Marxism

Extract from review of two books on Matt Talbot in The Irish Monthly, July 1949

Another book that makes passing mention of Matt Talbot is the autobiography of the emigre Dubliner, Sean O'Casey. He sneers. It seems rather strange that an artist, one of the sensitive high-priests of the true and beautiful, should fail to admire beauty flowering even by a cess-pool; it is somewhat disgusting to find him going out of his way to spit upon it. Is it because Matt Talbot purified himself completely of a ravening vice, cauterising it ruthlessly out of his soul, that he is " Mutt Talbot "? Is it ever contemptible for a man to free his spirit from almost all the claims of mortal flesh in order to seek Truth and Beauty with unshrinking sacrifice, with undiminishing fidelity? Is he a fit object for ridicule because he gave from his scant possessions to a good cause more than he could spare? Perhaps the Marxist in Mr. O'Casey got the better of the artist. 

 Your Marxist is a determinist. These omniscient planners of a perfect world, these humourless betterers of the human race, think they can plan men, infallibly. How then can they admit that something far better than the best they have planned has grown up strong and tall and fair out of conditions that should breed inevitably depravity, meanness and ugliness? It would never do for a doctrinaire Marxist to admit that the highest form of human activity could grow out of the soil Matt Talbot was rooted in. Above all he could not admit to be a hero an addict of the "opium of the people ". Now if Matt had only remained a drunkard he might have served his purpose as an obscure but useful little figure in their statistics : the hundred and first case of crime inevitably due to liquor, or the fifth, perhaps, of suicide due inevitably to hopeless poverty, or of lunacy predetermined by victorious environment. But he evaded their clutches. He had a will of his own, that forbidden article of private property; he had a strong, free will, and by God's grace he used it. That is the rub; that is the accursed scandal for the Marxist. "The weak things of this world has God chosen to confound the strong." Matt Talbot confounds the Materialists: "Confound him!"

 Is there just a little danger that he might be a stumbling-block to "progressive" Catholics? They might ask: Is he a fit ideal for the social movements in the Church, with their present stress on self-development, education, good housekeeping and in general the raising of the workers' standard of living? Not that you expect a man to be ahead of his time - you don't blame St. Louis for accepting the feudal system - but you do not want him to be notably behind or to seem even opposed to the progressive movements of his time. And Matt Talbot? What did he care about the standard of living? A cup of cold tea and cocoa mixed, and a few bits of bread kept body and soul as close together as served his purpose; there was not much use in dressing too respectably if he was going to slit his trousers at the knees, in order to kneel on the bare ground : a hard bed, too, served better for praying on that a soft mattress. Then what about the Social and National revolution that took place in his time? What was his record; " Where was he in 1916?" Probably kneeling on his plank bed, praying.

 But, as the bus-conductors say : " Hold tight a moment, please." Are we to get so obsessed with procuring good things that we can no longer admire better? There is no need to get huffy because a quiet, independent, courageous little man walks out absent-mindedly far beyond our furthest goal, brushing aside somewhat gruffly the proffered hands of the uplifters, and ignoring all their most cherished maxims. " Matt went on his way, and maybe it was a good way, too." He was not against social improvements, he just got where he was going without them. He might have spent his life, and spent it well, in fighting for improved labour conditions and national freedom, with Pearse and Connolly; he might have joined Big Jim Larkin in his fight against drunkenness among the dockers; but, forced to a judgment, would you not say that he spent it better in fighting the long, glorious, lonesome battle for better spiritual conditions in his own and other souls, all-absorbed in the movements stirred by the incalculable action of the Holy Spirit? He went " a more excellent way ". 

Brendan Behan's Dublin

(The Furrow, December 1966)
A small film that deserves mention at least because of its subject is Brendan Behan's Dublin. It follows all too predictable a course, and while much of this course is pleasant and humorous and worth while, there are always the same unchallenged assumptions. They do Brendan Behan's memory no credit. I never met him, and am in no position to say anything about his character or personality, but I have read much of the publicity about him and some of his works. The reiterated charge that the Irish neglected and harassed this lovable genius needs to be rebutted. The people who destroyed Behan were those who encouraged in him a sick adulation for the poison that was killing him - alcohol; who for the sake of publicity put on display his weakness and then proceeded to vilify anyone who happened not to like his performance. Another point that I think is unworthy of him is the repeated suggestion that he suffered from an acute form of inverted snobbery. Anyone who respects his memory should drop these themes from any further tributes to him. 

"Of Human Bondage", Somerset Maughan and Meaninglessness

(The Furrow, May 1965)
Of Human Bondage (Adelphi) has the particular interest to us of  having been made at Ardmore. It is well made, and well cut, only  once did I feel a jolt as regards sequence of events. But it is not a  very good story. The character of Philip (Lawrence Harvey) is sympatica. He is club-footed, sensitive, insecure and sentimental.  Admit it or not, many will easily identify with Philip ; Philip mooning romantically over a saucy little waitress, longing for her physically, and longing to be her saviour as she sinks from sauciness into the  soup. It is touching in parts, due to Harvey's sincere, anxious,  portrayal of a man cornered by his own disguised greediness into  altruistic concern for the girl. He speaks clearly, which adds  immensely to the enjoyment of viewing him; Kim Novak doesn't,  and it irritates. 

The story evokes only a minor pity, where there  could have been tragic sorrow. The great issues are not raised. When  the now wasted prostitute asks for a fine funeral as her dying request, one feels that the author is showing not merely how pitifully  mean her values always were, but that he himself believes that there was nothing else at all that Philip or anyone could have done for  her at that time but promise to fulfill her paltry wish. Religion is  thrown in with vague gestures over the remains, the words of prayer  sounding as meaningless as the trimmings on the hearse, the whole  performance something tacked on to life or something that happens  at a distance from reality. This was suggested to me by the great  space between the watching Philip and the burial. 

I wonder am I  wrong in thinking that it was Maugham as much as Philip who  could not think of anything to say that might conceivably console  or give hope to a degraded, desperate, dying girl. One wasn't left  in sorrow that the girl was beggared of all values and failed to  reach the only hand that could have saved her; there never was the  slightest suggestion that such a hand existed. Deep things are treated  shallowly and tragedy reduced to insignificance.

"The Trial" Orson Welles as Franz Kafka  

(The Furrow, December 1965)
Another intriguing, or worrying, film is Orson Welles's The Trial (Astor), based on Kafka's book. Where the book might very well bore you - at least in translation - this spectacular show holds you almost continuously in its firm, chill grip. It is impressionistic, nightmarish; it is clear and illogical, true and unrealistic. The sight of the waiting, hopeless, obsequious, anonymous victims of the system, the law, society, is horribly memorable. The vast office, too, efficient and impersonal, with its serried ranks of typists clapping their keys in a kind of theatrical applause as the young boss glides down the aisles; the sudden emergence of Mr. K. (Anthony Perkins) before the masses in the people's court; the lame woman dragging the heavy trunk, for no apparent reason, across a waste dominated by fortress-flats; the glimpses of the corridors of power, terrifying narrow passages between cliffs of menacing files, the "records" dread of every little man; this is all immensely effective. The scenes with Block and the Advocat (Orson Welles) tend to sap one's energy; perhaps that is intended. Hints of fetishism in the references to physical defect as a sexual attraction; more than a hint of morbidity in the love of the girl (Romy Schneider) for all accused men; some thing cruel and menacing about the kisses of another girl - this all conveyed the unhealthy depths beneath the surface of consciousness.

From the dramatic opening shots one easily identifies with the citizen caught at a fearful disadvantage by the uniformed official; he is the "naked" man off-balance, accused by authority and feeling irrationally guilty within himself; of what? He never knows, we never know, no one ever knows. "It has been established that a man who appears naked before an examiner and is unexpectedly addressed by his first name will, during a brief conversation, reveal essential traits of his personality and things which otherwise might come out only in many hours of history-taking. ... Try to conjure up a society in which such a rapid testing of the personality would be a typical scene" (Karl Stern in The Third Revolution). 

This is the kind of society that Orson Welles conjures up in his nightmare Trial for us.

Hitler, Stalin and Ireland

(The Furrow, December 1966)

Deadly-serious Russian matter was to be seen in Common Fascist (O'Connell Bridge Centre). It is a documentary on Hitler. The interesting thing about it is the nature of many of the pictures; they seem to have been taken when he was unaware or unconcerned that he was being photographed. It brings out the insignificance of this kind of man, how clumsy, childish, vulnerable he looks. All the more terrible the power that his magnified voice and inflated image could generate. His performance should be shown every now and again as a warning to educators to encourage independence of mind as the all-important protection of human dignity. There is an obvious irony about this plea for the dignity of the individual coming from this source; it is impossible not to remember that during the Hitler regime Stalin was liquidating millions of kulaks and all political enemies he could lay his many hands on. Being a small, neutral country, whose ultimate loyalty is not to any of the kingdoms of this world, gives us an excellent vantage point from which to discern the lovers and enemies of the truth. 

Doctor Zhivago

 (The Furrow, October 1966)

Fr. Sweetman prefaced his comments of Dr Zhivago with a reference to his preceding review of Four in the Morning which he praised despite describing is as "bitterly pessimistic, inconclusive and depressing."
, 
Director Anthony Simmons has here produced a document with much truth in it; "if we think ourselves to be something whereas we are nothing, we deceive ourselves". But it is nihilistic in a more than Pauline sense. The literati and arbiters of taste seem to demand a theme and treatment like this before they give unqualified praise, or at least sympathetic excuses, to any work. Uncharitably, one has a vision of film critics studiously raising their delicate noses and sniffing the winds of change for a fashionable scent. If the vogue happens to be for the aroma of sewers and the sour effluvia of the low tide of life, then in that direction will the hymns of praise be sung, while these same sensitive organs will be jacked-up to be looked down on anything that is noble, normal, non-post-Christian. 

Doctor Zhivago (Metropole) faces criticism, faint praise and some misunderstanding, precisely because it is on a large scale, it is noble in conception, poetic, ante rather than post-Christian, not sympathetic to nihilism, never exulting in despair. Those who express disappointment with Lean's film might well have felt the same towards Pasternak's novel. Perhaps neither produced the work that others think they should have produced. Neither sets out to give a dramatic, sensational description of the Russian Revolution; neither sets out to reveal exclusively the emotions and interactions of a family within, but somehow detached from, the Revolution. Rather it seems here we have people whose aspirations Pasternak would consider as of superior importance and value than politics and history, yet who are almost totally submerged and lost in this vast, impersonal, mythological event. The fact then that we find ourselves at times incapable of being deeply involved in the fates of the individual persons, is not a failure on anyone's part to hold  our attention, it is the result intended. The fact that we do not get a clear idea as to what the revolution is all about is not a failure in precision on anyone's part, it is the result intended; we are experiencing it from the point of view of a group who are pushed about by it, who never see it as a whole, and who, like the vast majority of people in any war or upheaval that ever was, are concerned primarily with survival and simply holding out.

The effort to forget what Omar Sharif was like in other films and to believe in him as a doctor-poet requires a good deal of detachment. To say that he is miscast may be only to admit that one did not succeed in making that effort. To complain that Geraldine Chaplin is a bit wishy-washy in the part of the wife is only to say that she interpreted the character correctly. The contrast with the vital, passionate Lara (Julie Christie) is of the essence of the situation. The anglophile Alexander (R. Richardson) was intended as an in effectual member of a disappearing class and another age; the type for whom "another purge" would seem as serious a crisis as, but no more so than an unpleasant domestic disturbance. For author and director, if one may be so presumptuous as to state their intentions, the fate and value of the individual may be of more importance than the events in which they are involved, but they make no impact whatever on the events; the tramp of history deafens us to the pounding of the human heart. 

This mass menace, bigger than, but inferior to, the workings of the human spirit, is well suggested in scene after scene: the early demonstration brutally suppressed, the first mutiny of the soldiers returning from the front, the beautiful charge of cavalry over a frozen lake, the mowing down of white recruits in a golden corn-field, the sack of a village by the thin lipped fanatic Strelnikov (Tom Courtenay). To say, as has been said, that the scenic effects are only picture post-card pretty is a more than usually unfair cliche. They are simply as beautiful as the cinema can produce, and here as significant as can be desired. They are totally in tune with the events and add to our understanding of them. The vastness, the bleakness are overwhelming; the snow, the forest, the isolated homesteads, the chilling howls of the wolves; the monotonous, ominous, infinite stretches of country, are at once passive and tense. This is the land, Mother Russia. The aggressive action that takes place upon her is perhaps best symbolised by the train. The train, in a way, is the most thoroughly delineated character in the film. It makes a huge impact, it is the elemental, active force, penetrating the waiting, absorbing world, giving life to it, bringing  death to it, disturbing its peace, awakening it to hope. If only for this epic train-journey to the Urals, this is a great film. After it, like a symphony of Beethoven's, you know a great deal more about man's isolated yet shared, guided yet mysterious, dull and exciting journey through this life. There is a unity of sound and sight to produce the effect; the steady rail-rhythm topped by a variety of rappings, tappings, hangings, hissings, there is the swaying and the jogging, the sudden leaps and purposeful swings, the silence and the smoke; smoke that is at once poetic and dead, leaden and light. When you are almost worn out by the drudgery, the monotony, of it, it brings you to a climax of frenzied achievement in a tunnel, then on and on and on.

One little waifish girl (Rita Tushingham), born not of the hero's marriage, but of his union with the briar-wild, ever-surviving, life loving woman Lara, is all that is left at the end of it all to care about or hope in; the child of the obliterated generations rations facing, pitiably alone in a vast crowd, her veiled future.