The inspiring story of a Venerable servant for justice

It’s great to come upon a programme that’s inspiring, informative and well made.

I got all three last Monday night with Heart of a Servant – The Father Flanagan Story (RTÉ One). It was a high-quality documentary about the Irish priest who founded Boys Town in Omaha, Nebraska.  I knew the bare bones of the story, but there was a lot that was new to me. Fr Flanagan believed in the equality and dignity of all people and had no time for the racist laws and attitudes of his time and place. When some objected to his mixing of races in his boys’ home, he moved the whole operation outside the city and set up his own town – Boys Town. We were reminded by scary footage that this was the era of the Ku Klux Klan, an organisation marked by antipathy towards non-whites and Catholics alike. I also hadn’t known about his work helping Japanese families interned in the USA after the attack on Pearl Harbour, nor did I realise how he had worked with others on child welfare reform through legislation.

The film Boys Town, from 1938, was hugely popular. The Oscar-winning star Spencer Tracy became a friend of Fr Flanagan and helped in the fundraising. I’m glad his high-profile tour of Ireland was covered. He gave lots of speeches at public meetings, but there was a sting in that tale – he was severely critical of the child care institutions in Ireland (“a disgrace to the nation”), which didn’t go down well … he was denounced in the Irish parliament.

Thankfully there were no awkward dramatic reconstructions, but there were engaging contributions from relations of his, historians, people from his home town if Ballymoe, Co. Roscommon and people who had passed through his care. On the Ireland side we heard from Bishop Kevin Doran and former prison governor John Lonergan. In the archive material I spotted an early photo young DeValera, and later Harpo Marx at a Hollywood bash. Early on, the Irish priest saw the value of the newly developing radio network to spread his message, and as a result his influence for good grew. Apart from effective use of media in spreading the Gospel, there was much in this that has relevance for today – re how we treat children and emigrants and how we confront racism.

This documentary, narrated by Jonathan Roumie (Jesus in The Chosen) was very professional, though more celebratory than analytical. The background music, typical of the genre, was unnecessary but well blended. When it appears on the RTÉ Player or other platforms I’d love to see it shared widely.

Catholics in the USA was also the theme of News in Depth (EWTN, Friday) on the occasion of the 250th anniversary of American Independence. In a discussion with historians Dr Kathleen Sprows Cummings of Notre Dame University and Dr Christopher Shannon of Christendom College. Dr Sprows Cummings pointed out how much discrimination there was against early Catholic emigrants, especially from places like Ireland and Italy – part of the problem was that they would be loyal to the Pope, who was suspected of having imperial designs on the USA! Dr Shannon thought it was difficult to find US Catholic politicians today on a national level who were supportive of the fullness of the Catholic faith – e.g. on ‘consistent life ethic’ issues.  That’s something of an Irish problem too. He found that ‘the numbers’ were good for US Catholicism, but current developments gave him pause – like the recent ‘dust-up’ between Pope Leo and the Vice President J.D. Vance.

The programme drew attention to other significant events for American Catholics – the election of the first American Pope and the upcoming beatification of Bishop Fulton Sheen, another American Catholic, who, like Mother Angelica, founder of EWTN, understood the potential of media in the service of the faith.

When faith comes into TV drama, the focus is often on the bad stuff – horror, abuse, cults. The latest episode of The Sommerdahl Murders (More 4, Friday) featured a very repressive religious group, with very strict moral codes and repressed desires bursting out – not a very positive representation of religion. On the other hand, it was very positive about the humanity of the unborn child, with a young couple following enthusiastically the development of their unborn child in the womb.

Good for the consistent life ethic, apart from those murders in the title.