Original subtitles

Female Narrator: Previously on 'Forgive Me':

Are you saying repeat the treatment?

More aggressively.

What if we don't?

No growth.

That's greats news!

More chemo?

No more chemo.

Are you sure?

I'm sure.

Okay! Go to work!

Everyone knows everyone else's business, it's a small town.

What are they saying?

Why is it your business?

I don't know.

I didn't want to tell her I was her father

and then die a week later.

Maybe your daughter is a reason to live.

That letter's almost 30 years old.

It's to my mother.

I think I should sue.

Sue? The church?

I don't want you to tell anyone, about any of this.

The lawsuit, the letter, none of it.

If your bosses see the letter they're gonna--

it's gonna give them a chance to cover it up.

They'll cover it up more. They wouldn't.

I don't think they would cover this up.

Genesius did.

No, he didn't.

Gene reported it. He reported it.

You can see that in the letter that you have.

Yeah, well he didn't go to the police.

No, but-- Hey, this works both ways.

Gene couldn't go to the police

with something that your mother told him in confession. Alright?

He couldn't, just like right now.

I can't go to the authorities, I can't go to the higher ups

with this plan of yours to sue the church.

You have my word, I will not tell anybody. I can't.

♪ 'Ave Maria' by Christopher Frances Mitchell ♪

♪ 'Ave Maria' by Christopher Frances Mitchell ♪

Hello?

Sister?

Ahh!

Oh, fuck.

Ahh.

And if we had a little bit of co-operation in this parish,

then I wouldn't have to ask for that.

Morning.

Morning. Good morning.

Where's Gene?

He said something about a lawyer.

He went to a lawyer?

Well, that's what he said.

Why?

Well, sometimes when a family's has the same priest

for lots of years, they ask him to go see the executioner,

that type of thing.

Executor.

Executor. Oh!

Well, both.

Were you talking about me?

Well, we thought Father Phil might hear confessions today.

Give you a rest.

I don't need a break.

You're taking on a lot, really soon.

It's been months. I'm good.

Let him do it.

Thank you.

Remember when I used to be in charge?

Yeah, you gave him the job, now let him do it.

Hey. Hey.

Do you want to start?

Okay.

Have you been to confession before?

Yeah. Yeah, lots of times.

So, you want to ask for forgiveness?

Wha, what is it ag--?

It's: Forgive me Father for I have sinned.

... Forgive me Father for I have sinned.

How long has it been since your last confession?

Hard to say, really. We had these group things.

Kind of a group forgiveness.

Um, a general penance?

Yeah, where we all get forgiven.

It's a, it's kind of a new thing.

We don't really do it here 'cause we've got

these great confession booths and enough priests.

But some people do prefer it, to ask God forgiveness

as a congregation.

We were a mixed denomination so that's all that would fly.

Military?

Army.

How long since you've been in a confession booth?

Five, six years.

I definitely confessed right before I went over.

I wanted a clean slate.

Welcome back.

Thanks.

Whattaya got?

I'm a bad person.

God made you.

You're a good person who did some bad things,

like everybody else.

No, that's not me.

You were at war.

Do good people go to war?

I mean, sign up to go fight?

Do good Christians enlist to fight?

I mean, there's not a dictate in the Bible

about whether to serve.

Paul describes a Christian as a 'fellow soldier'

and um, you know, Jesus healed the servant of a centurion, so--

So Jesus liked soldiers.

Well, some... soldiers crucified him.

Right.

I believe in the basic goodness in people

and I understand that when you're in battle, in war,

you have do things that are less morally clear cut.

Why are they less morally clear cut?

Because people are trying to kill you?

Yeah, in their homes. On their streets. Not mine.

Tell me if I'm wrong on this one, but when you're a soldier,

right, you don't decide where you're going to serve.

You just go where they tell you, right?

You do what they tell you to do.

Or you go to jail.

What, do you think that makes you a bad person?

I guess that's just, the kind of thing you figure out.

What's your name?

Iggy.

Iggy. Iggy, do you have a confession to make?

I hit my kid.

Why?

The mayhem, the noise. Sometimes I just can't take it.

Like um... post-traumatic stress disor--?

No! I was a dick to my kid before I went to war.

Stop making excuses for me!

Jesus Christ, I told you I'm a bad person!

So you just hit your kid for being noisy?

Yeah.

Yeah, I mean that's, that's a sin.

But it doesn't make you a bad person.

There was a kid, a bomber, thirteen years old,

blew up a vest, took out four British soldiers.

Everybody was talking about it.

You know, word got around, they're using little kids.

Little kid suicide bombers.

So you keep your eye out, you know,

that's one thing, they have success, they reproduce it.

Instantly. They don't give you time to learn.

Just boom, boom, boom.

Two or three days after that, after the British soldiers

got killed, I see a kid, one of these kids,

out of the corner of my eye.

And they have these, these loose outfits,

you know, lots of fabric but you can tell,

from where I'm standing, that she's loaded up.

She's puffed out evenly; you know, chest, belly,

under her arms, back, it's a vest.

And she's walking directly at a group of soldiers, my friends,

and I'm like forty feet away but it's like, seconds.

And she's stepping towards them.

If she detonates from where she's standing, they're dead.

I can't yell out to her, 'cause all she's gotta do

is push a button or whatever, when she's caught. So, I shoot.

And I hit her... and she fell to the ground and bled out.

And was she? Loaded up?

It was food. She was loaded up with food.

She was hungry.

Who knows who she was trying to feed,

she'd stolen a bunch of food, strapped it around her body,

under her robe, her skirt.

I killed a little girl 'cause she was hungry.

And what happened?

That's it. She's dead. She's dead.

No, no, I just-- I mean... to you.

What happened? Did they investigate, were you punished?

I walked away.

Guys said they would've done the same thing if it was them,

thanked me for looking out for them.

That's it?

Yup. I'm not paying for it in this lifetime.

But you expect to pay for it in the next.

It was a mistake.

I shot a girl with a C-7 assault rifle. It wasn't a mistake.

I made a risk assessment to protect my unit.

If it was a mistake, there would've been repercussions.

Do they not try to, I don't know, to negotiate with these,

ah, these suicide bombers, right?

Can you get them to take the vest off?

I don't know, go for mental health care, rehabilitation?

There's no rehabilitation. You kill them.

Who's gonna rehabilitate them?

Their government?

Their government isn't gonna teach 'em not to hate us.

Their government, our government can't do shit, really.

It's hard to hear but... it's not surprising.

I think we know by now what goes on during war.

Yeah, so how does that work, then, sin-wise?

There's no easy answer for that.

What does the Bible say?

Well, not to murder.

After that it gets murky.

The bible's murky?

Alright, well if you kill a thief in your home,

you don't have to atone by killing an animal, right?

That much is clear but that's-- it's Old Testament.

Look, Jesus said, 'All who live by the sword

shall die by the sword'.

That's fairly easy to extrapolate to a suicide bomber.

If you put on the vest you're gonna die either way.

Humph, I signed up to be there.

I traveled halfway 'round the world.

I had a gun, lots of guns, with the intent to kill.

And after all that I can still claim self defense?

It doesn't sound like that's what you're saying.

I left her on the street, like garbage.

She was somebody else's kid.

Now I come home and hit my own kid.

That's a bad person.

Maybe being a good person is like being religious.

It's something you do.

Like, personally, I don't believe that people

are good Christians just because they say

that they believe, okay?

Religion is a practice.

Just like being a good person.

Goodness isn't something you are,

it's something that you do. You practice at it.

You practice being good, that's how you get to be good.

Alright, a lot of people hit their kids.

You make your peace with it and you don't do it again.

What about the other thing?

Could be harder to put behind you,

but it's not something that could ever happen to you here,

in your real life. Right?

I tell myself that but... it's my life. All of it.

But, I mean, you don't have to worry about shooting somebody.

Not in your home.

Do you? You're not, you're not talking about--

I don't keep guns in the house. Not with kids.

See, that's great! You're practicing already.

You don't have to make the same mistakes.

I'm not confessing my mistakes!

I meant to hit my kid!

I meant to kill that girl!

There were things I did, on my deployment that were sinful.

They weren't errors they were orders.

Shooting at insurgents, interrogating civilians--

more than interrogating, beating them, scaring them.

It's not my mistakes that make me a bad person!

Does that mean you're confessing these things, right?

You obviously feel bad about them.

This sacrament is about absolution.

If there was ever a situation where you can have a fresh start

it's coming home from war.

Your sins don't have to follow you.

You didn't even want to do them.

You can leave this all behind.

You can start right here, right now,

today, in God's eyes, through God's forgiveness.

I'm not putting things behind me, I'm going back.

I redeploy in eight weeks.

You're going back.

Yeah, not to the same place, the same general... desert.

Okay.

I'm here to clean my slate again, get forgiven my sins,

before I go back, in case I get my head blown off.

Of course. Duh. Sorry.

That's okay, it was nice to hear.

I've got eight weeks at home and then I ship out.

That's a lot of time right, to make it up to your kid?

It's no time.

Trust me, lots of people only wish they had eight weeks

with their father.

I don't want them to remember me just for that.

They won't.

You've gotta remember, right, that this could be the last time

that you have with them.

I mean, if you get your head blown off.

Is that actually like-- is that a real possibility?

This one time, clearing out of a village near Ghazni

and this parade of Hajis comes barreling into town,

down the road, kicking up dust, shooting launchers at us.

Shooting at everybody.

They didn't care about collateral damage,

they're doing the death blossom.

I got bullets whizzing past my head.

So I dive for the closest cover.

That's what you do, right? Yeah.

There I am, backed up against crates

that we were loading in before all this was going on.

Look over my shoulder, that's when I see

the print on the side of the crate.

I'm like, Jesus Christ, I'm hiding behind 4 crates of ammo.

Explosives... Idiot!

So I'm pinned there and I gotta get the hell outta there, right?

I see my guys and I'm like 'Guys! Can somebody cover me?'

They can't hear me so I just start clawing

at the wood, the side of the crate, just praying.

And I peel back a plank.

Just one side of a plank and I reach in, I'm like 'Please'.

I pull out a grenade.

I throw it, just into the dirt,

it goes up into a big cloud of smoke, I run.

Pow, the grenade gets their attention, boom!

They hit the crate. Fireworks, fireballs, ignitables.

Yeah man, I can get my head blown off.

Well, don't forget about that.

Be the man that you want your children to remember.

Anything else you want to confess?

'O King enthroned on high,

filling the earth with your glory.

Holy is your name, Lord God Almighty.

In our sinfulness we cry out to you to take away our guilt,

and to cleanse our lips to speak your word,

through Jesus Christ our Lord.' Amen.

Amen.

Say ten Hail Marys.

Ten Hail Marys?

Yeah. Do you know it?

Yeah, I know it.

That's the life of a little girl? Ten Hail Marys?

That's the penance that restores balance?

No.

Trust me, there aren't enough Hail Marys in the world.

That's not the point.

I wish I never went there.

I know.

What you said, earlier, about seeking God's forgiveness,

after the war's over.

I'm gonna think about that. When I'm over there.

Goodbye Father... Goodbye.

Next time on 'Forgive Me':

Um, this is Bishop Belliveau-Brown.

Yes, of course.

It's about a Jonathan O'Leary.

You know who that is?

His mother told Gene about it.

And Gene told you, you covered it up.

And how do you know all this?

They want me to tell you;

you can get more money if you settle out of court.

What do you think?

Should I settle?

You went into the archives and you provided materials

to someone you knew would use them against the church.