Product description THIS TELLS THE STORY OF A MAN WHO CONFRONTS THE TRAUMA OF PASTSEXUAL ABUSE AS A BOY BY A PRIEST, ONLY TO FIND HIS DECISIONSHATTERS RELATIONSHIPS WITH HIS FAMILY, COMMUNITY & HIS FAITH. .com There's no easy way to address a highly charged subject like the sexual abuse of young boys by Catholic priests, but with Twist of Faith, director Kirby Dick has taken a straightforward approach, using neither fanfare nor frills to create an unflinching but highly personal documentary about this disgraceful episode. The 2004 film's focus is on one place, Toledo, Ohio, and primarily on two men. On the one hand, there's fireman Tony Comes, mid-thirties, married with two kids. Some twenty years earlier, he'd been molested by his then-priest; callow, impressionable, in need of love, Comes found himself in a situation he describes as "too screwed up to question," with the result that he was "so confounded that (he did) nothing." On the other hand, there's Dennis Gray, the priest in question; a thoroughly repellent individual, Gray is seen in a 2003 legal deposition, evading questions on the advice of his lawyer. But Comes is far from silent. Having spent two decades racked with guilt and shame and thinking he was the only victim, Comes is galvanized into action when the abuse scandal becomes national news. He shows remarkable courage and honesty, keeping nothing from his wife and young kids, joining a support group, even visiting the cottage where Gray committed his unspeakable acts; determined to make not only the pedophile priests but those who ignored, lied about, and covered up the abuse acknowledge and take responsibility for what happened, he also files a lawsuit. All of this is done at considerable personal cost. What happened to Comes and the other victims we see here went even deeper than the nightmares and family problems they experienced; it shook their very souls, calling into question their lifelong faith in the essential benevolence of an institution that has betrayed them. Grim but compelling, Twist of Faith makes for very sobering viewing. --Sam Graham
M**R
A Falsehood Created a Horrible Shift
I am a faithful Catholic who was going to give this documentary five stars...until the 1 hr and 5 minute mark. This is when Tony's lawyer told him, and the documentary leads viewers to believe, that there is Canon Law which states that it is okay for someone to lie in order to protect the Church. Now I am not saying that it's out of the realm of possibility that someone in the Archdiocese of Toledo or an Archdiocesan lawyer said this was so to Tony's lawyer. This might have been the case, but that, in fact, was a lie. There is no such doctrine in the Catholic Church called "Mental Reservation" which is protected by Canon Law. Ethics and morality scholars of many religions, both ancient and modern, have accepted that when there is a conflict between justice and telling the truth, justice should prevail - but the common Catholic teaching has formulated the THEORY of mental reservation as a means by which the claims of both justice AND veracity can be satisfied. Catholic teaching is that it is never allowable to tell a lie - even to save a life. A lie is something intrinsically evil, which means that it is never justified.THIS FALSEHOOD delivered by Tony's lawyer is what sent him into a tailspin. The documentarians should have investigated this claim. It's so outlandish that it warranted investigation. Not only did it bring MORE harm to Tony, but anyone without knowledge who watches this documentary, now thinks this is a teaching of the Catholic Church, thus sending the lie and more harm right on down the line.Many in the Church hierarchy need to be swiftly and harshly dealt with, but there is enough actual evidence to convict them without using lies to do so. Personally, I want to know who told his lawyer that was Canon Law. I also want to know why his lawyer, being a lawyer, did not look into that herself. This is a MAJOR flaw in an otherwise great documenatary.
K**Y
Sad but truthful
This documentary bluntly shows the tragic and helpless, and also the most foolish act of people who belong to Catholic to follow their traditions despite the most apparent truth that Catholic is directly against what the Bible says.After the main character's life was completely annihilated by the Catholic priest, and then even after he discovers that the heads of Catholic decide not to punish the perpetrator according to their "canon law" which "allows" them to lie for the benefit of Catholic, the main character still decides to raise his daughter as a Catholic.I, as well as the main character in the documentary, was simply shocked to discover that Catholic had their own "rule" to allow people to lie for the sake of Catholicism, which directly goes against the God's Words. It is obvious that the Catholic priests, and whatnot, have been abusing this "rule" they made up that defies the Words of God directly to commit numerous crimes without getting caught throughout centuries, which makes it apparent that the Catholic institution is an institution of the devil and not of God. Yet, so many people who were raised as Catholics do not make the right decisions for the sake of convenience or "tradition" even if such acts go directly against the Words of God.It is so appalling to see how stubborn and brainwashed the victim's mother is, as she keeps advocating the Catholic institution despite what his son had gone through; it is simply despicable how she tries to say excuses after excuses rather than simply accept the truth and then act on that. It creates a knot in my stomach to see that Catholicism is just another institution which is as evil as communism or dictatorship that defies God. It is an institution that nurtures all these abominable and despicable criminals and perpetrators inside the institution, protecting them from the full justice, in the "name of God," which in fact ends up being in the name of the devil.
L**N
The damage never ends......
…..not only to the abused victim but to the family as well. My son, now 48, was sexually abused at 10 yrs old and hecontinues to this day to have problems associated in one way or another to the abuse all those years ago. It didn't haveanything to do with the Catholic church. The abuser was a messed up kid in the neighborhood. So if someone out there is reading this and has been abusing someone, STOP IT and think about the psychological harm you are inflicting not only to your victim but to the family and others affected by your sick twist of a mind!!!
L**S
Heartbreaking events
This was an eye opener for anyone that didn't know this went on behind the church doors. I just think they could have condensed it quite a bit. I finally did a fast forward because I did want to know what happened to the one man that had been molested and the priest that did it to him.
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