Original subtitles

Female Narrator: Previously on 'Forgive Me':

I'm not crazy. I'm not mentally ill.

It's just every time I tell people I'm not afraid to die

everybody acts like I've lost my mind.

Even the other priests.

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 just--

it'll give them a chance to cover it up, 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.

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 a 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.

It's not all about money, is it?

For me, and the church it's-- just move on.

Put it behind us, just clean it up.

Should I settle?

I don't know.

I mean, I don't think that you should worry

about what the church is gonna do,

they have people thinking about that, believe me.

I'm a church member, how can I not think about

what's good for the church? It's , it's one and the same.

It's about uh, Jonathon O'Leary.

You know who that is?

Yeah.

Mr. O'Leary is alleging sexual abuse

in his history in the diocese.

Do you know anything about that?

Not that I can talk about.

About the abuse?

Alleged!

Alleged abuse?

I don't know how to answer. Mr. O'Leary is penitent.

Have you spoken to him outside the booth?

A couple of times.

Did you give him the letters?

♪ 'Ave Maria' by Christopher Frances Mitchell ♪

♪ 'Ave Maria' by Christopher Frances Mitchell ♪

What, is he staying here now?

You want to send him to a motel?

a choir in this. Hello.

Morning.

Morning.

I was just telling the Bishop that we no longer have a choir.

He thinks that's a bad idea.

You sing?

I'm uh, more of a rapper.

A rapper?

Well, we're all rappers.

I'm not.

Me neither.

What's wrong with you?

Did you fall in there?

No. Sorry I just-- I thought I saw something.

I was wrong. It startled me.

What'd you see?

I, I thought that was all done with, you said.

They're back?

They never went away.

You lied to me?

I just, I just didn't want you to worry about me.

You worry enough about me.

What does the doctor say?

Same as ever.

Brain tumour causes the visitations,

only they say hallucinations.

And what are they doing?

I don't want to treat it.

What are you talking about?

I don't want to fight God's plan.

You treat the tumor, they don't like it.

Who?

Saints... angels.

Are you shittin' me?

Look, look, the tumour's not growing. Okay?

They can attack it and they wanna attack it.

I just-- I don't know if I should put my faith in,

like, a bunch of doctors.

I've always put my faith in God.

We have faith in both.

God and doctors.

But that's not faith.

I wanna live, but these treatments,

they don't, they don't diminish the visitations, exactly.

I mean, the-the treatments exacerbate them,

they don't like it.

What do you think these visions are?

Visitations.

And what, what do you think they're trying to tell you?

Maybe this... isn't neurological.

Maybe it's psychiatric.

Maybe it's religious.

Right? Like why?

Why is that the one possibility you're not open to?

That's not how God speaks to you.

Maybe he's never spoken to you.

Is this appropriate?

Forgive me Father, for I have sinned.

There must be somewhere else that you can confess.

This is the parish where I'm spending my time,

thanks to you.

How far do you think I should drive to receive a sacrament?

It's been one week since my last confession.

Okay.

I resent you.

Is that the confession?

You've raised anger inside of me

like I haven't felt in a long, long time.

I've even hoped that that tumour in your head

would rip you from this earth sooner than later.

I'm sensing a theme here.

Mmm.

Yes. Yes.

In making me hate you, which you did so easily,

you forced me to examine my feelings.

Of course it's not you that I hate.

It's my own sins that I hate.

The ones buried deep in the past,

festering for decades, half a lifetime.

Like your friend, Johnny O'Leary.

I don't think I wanna hear this.

What?

I said I don't think I want to hear this.

Is, is that how this sacrament works?

In your mind?

You, you pick and choose what sins you want to forgive?

Maybe you should be talking to the police.

Maybe I should. Maybe I have.

Have you?

Police don't listen to sins. Huh?

I don't listen to crimes.

But you've wanted nothing more than to hear what happened,

lo, those forty years ago.

Not in here.

Then where? Somewhere you can use it against this church?

I don't do anything to hurt this church.

Give it as an offering to Johnny O'Leary and his lawyers.

Fine.

Then go ahead.

Ask for forgiveness.

It's what you've imagined, we chose the welfare of the parish

over the welfare of a child.

We being?

The Prelate, myself, your Father Genesius.

Higher than that?

Higher than that, we didn't go.

That man, the choirmaster who molested your friend O'Leary,

was passed on to us from some rural parish,

and we sent him on.

You weren't ordered to send him to another parish out west?

We just ran him out of town.

He decided where to go. He had friends out there.

I see.

So you covered up a child abuser and sent him to another parish.

No.

You just said that.

You're hearing what you want to hear.

We didn't cover up a crime.

The abuse was a suspicion.

Alleged.

The mother suspected was all.

The, the boy wouldn't admit it, nobody named it.

Nobody pressed charges.

Did anyone confess it?

Maybe to God.

What did the choirmaster say?

Outside the booth? Denied every bit of it.

Outside the booth.

Were you his priest?

I was a priest here, in this parish.

Did the choirmaster confess it to you?

This is my confession, remember?

Is it?

Are you sorry?

Oh, yes, I'm sorry.

Because you've been clear that somebody was very hurt,

and because I didn't do everything

that I possibly could do,

and other people got hurt, other children.

Sin of hubris.

Short-sightedness.

Thought I was protecting the people here; my people,

that I'm responsible for.

Except a teenage boy.

Especially the teenage boy.

His mother, Mrs. O'Leary, she comes and says her son is moody,

fragile, and she finds some signs he's been tampered with.

Soiled pants, blood stains or some such, some bodily fluids.

So we decide Genesius will speak with the boy,

see what he can find out.

And Johnny didn't give him the details. I know.

Okay, I know, because he was scared.

We were all scared! Like you are now!

I'm only thing I am scared of is doing the wrong thing.

Making it worse for John O'Leary.

That's what we all want.

Then and now.

But you have a lot more than that

to be scared about, don't you?

The walls of the church aren't deaf, Father.

There's been talk about your sins for some time now.

You think that my secrets have more power

to harm the parish than yours?

I didn't know it was a contest.

"It's never the sin, it's the secrecy, the cover up."

Didn't you say that?

Sounds like me.

You could've chosen a less conspicuous place

to hide your love child than your own grandmother's house.

I dunno, it just... seemed best at the time.

Exactly!

So you do understand.

Is that why you're here?

I want you to be careful, Father.

We both have matters in our past

that we'd like to have handled delicately today.

You're negotiating with me.

I don't need to negotiate with you.

I'm trying to help you understand.

Trying to make you see that we're not so different.

That every sin bears forgiveness.

Every mistake. Yours... and mine.

My mistake was being a careless teenage boy.

What you did should be a crime.

I don't know if it is, it should be.

You're putting me together with rapists and abusers.

All I did was fire an employee and leave that family in peace.

You obviously don't know the O'Learys.

I don't think they've had a moment of peace.

Not because of my sins.

What about the sin of diminishing the Catholic church?

Turning people away from God.

Destroying people's faith.

Oh, no one's left this congregation because of me.

Can you say the same?

People think this whole religion is a crumbling institution,

because of people like you.

I don't know how the church will ever be the same.

I don't know how this parish will ever be the same

in anybody's eyes.

When people say they want to return to the past,

to restore the church, or restore the country,

for that matter, restore it to its former glory--

what they're really longing for is to return

to some moment in the past,

before they lost their own optimism. Mm hm.

When they were still hopeful about the future.

Some moment of childhood, before life crushed their spirits,

dashed their hopes.

It's not some historical time, it's a psychological time.

What would we be so nostalgic for?

A hundred years ago?

World war one? Great Depression, things were better?

World War Two, Black-only water fountains,

KKK lynchings, gay castrations, Vietnam, 9-11?

When exactly were things so good we should go back?

Did things go awry when we gave women the vote

or when we freed the slaves or just now?

Same with the church.

You don't need to long for the good old days

of residential schools and corporal punishment

and bent over altar boys.

Was a bigger church; richer, more influential.

Wasn't a better church.

You just long to feel what you need to feel,

or what you used to feel about it, before you grew up.

Yeah. I long for the church that I knew, before I knew about you.

Well, I can see you're determined to be my enemy.

We're certainly not gonna be friends.

You're gonna look back on this one day and see

what a naive and foolish young man you are now.

All the black and white you see.

The magic powers you think you have.

As if there was anything I could do to take away that boy's hurt.

People didn't want people to know, then.

The worst thing was for people to find out.

It's not like today.

I wonder what goes on in this booth today.

This used to be the one place in the world

you could speak your shame aloud.

What do people have to confess now,

that they haven't already posted online or twittered?

No one hides anything.

I think you might be surprised.

No, I wouldn't be.

I knew... about the choirmaster and the O'Leary boy.

There was no evidence, no witness.

Nothing actionable.

Then how? How? How did you know?

You're gonna hear things in this booth that you'll spend

the rest of your life wishing that you never heard.

Wishing you could un-hear.

You will carry things to your grave that will eat your guts

and rot your stomach.

Things that test you and haunt you.

I think I already have.

Then in the name of God... please forgive me.

Next time on 'Forgive Me':

I've made mistakes.

I was a terrible person, I was a terrible mother.

There is a difference between accidental mistakes.

and what you did, which is deliberate cruelty.

I'm begging for forgiveness here!

I'm not capable of that level of generosity, I can't.

I need your forgiveness.

Can I give him a kidney?

Don't even think about it.

Even if you were healthy, no!