COMMENTARY: Welcome to Father Ray’s world

c. 1998 Religion News Service (Andrew M. Greeley is a Roman Catholic priest, best-selling novelist and a sociologist at the University of Chicago National Opinion Research Center. Check out his home page at http://www.agreeley.com or contact him via e-mail at agreel(at)aol.com.) UNDATED _ To understand ABC’s fascinating and brilliant new series”Nothing Sacred,”one must understand what […]

c. 1998 Religion News Service

(Andrew M. Greeley is a Roman Catholic priest, best-selling novelist and a sociologist at the University of Chicago National Opinion Research Center. Check out his home page at http://www.agreeley.com or contact him via e-mail at agreel(at)aol.com.)

UNDATED _ To understand ABC’s fascinating and brilliant new series”Nothing Sacred,”one must understand what a story is. The purposes of story is not to indoctrinate or educate. Rather, it is to illuminate, to send the person who temporarily lives in the world of the story back to the other world _ the”real”world _ with a heightened sense of the possibilities of life.


If one pulls part of a story out of context and stretches it on the procrustean bed of systematic analysis, then one violates the story and fails to understand what stories are for.

The vast majority of those who have actually watched”Nothing Sacred”_ a critically acclaimed series featuring Father Ray, a contemporary priest dealing with ’90s issues _ understand the purpose of stories and enjoy the program. But not the prosaic folk at the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights, who isolate, analyze and find fault with specific scenes or incidents in the show. They usually misread them, perhaps deliberately.

It is safe to say that despite its thuggish mania that the program is, of all things, a political attack on Catholicism, the Catholic League has lost the battle. The program is expected to run its 21 shows, priests are preaching about it in many places, parish study groups are discussing it, and, from what I gather, favorable mail continues to flood ABC. If the program is not renewed next year, the blame will fall on ABC, not the Catholic League.

But while ABC has resisted the”hardball”tactics and boycott threats of the Catholic League by continuing to support the series, the network has not been willing to give”Nothing Sacred”a decent time slot. (Recently the show was moved from Thursdays at 8 p.m. to Saturdays at the same time.)

Moreover, it seems to me ABC still has the uneasy feeling the Catholic League speaks for many Catholics. Thus, it refuses to air an episode about a priest with AIDS whom Father Ray persuades to overcome his guilt and return to the priestly poker club _ an admirable exercise in Christian inclusiveness. Will a priest with AIDS offend large segments of the Catholic population?

It needs to be said to ABC that Father Ray’s world is much more like American Catholicism than is the Catholic League’s world.

Most Catholics are well aware there have been cases of priests with AIDS. They will not be shocked by a story about such a priest, especially not by the charitable reaction of other priests. Quite the contrary, they will be edified by it as they are by the other stories in the series.


ABC is still influenced by the same kind of subconscious anti-Catholic bias that sees American Catholicism as a massive monolith dominated by a rigid and all-controlling hierarchy, precisely the same image on which the Catholic League trades.”Nothing Sacred”has a chance of surviving only if ABC understands the image of a Catholic monolith is wildly inaccurate.

Will the League have a field day over an episode about a priest with AIDS? Sure. It will mobilize those few Catholic homophobes who are not already in its camp. Will ordinary Catholic viewers be offended?

On the contrary, as someone who has studied the Catholic population in this country for nearly 40 years, I predict that, far from being offended, they will be edified by this story in Father Ray’s world.

If ABC goes for broke and takes the chance with such a powerful story, it will have won the battle. It is the story that counts. One can _ and the Catholic League doubtless will _ pull the AIDS story out of context and argue that the horrible image of a priest with AIDS is a political attack on the church.

To say American Catholics are not capable of the sophistication to understand the story is the purest bigotry. To use an image of unsophisticated Catholics to enhance one’s own political power is demonic.

DEA END GREELEY

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