A GLENGORMLEY priest is featured in a new film described as a 'portrait of Ireland through the lens of the confession box'.
Sins of Ireland was released earlier this month in over 25 cinemas across the country.
In a society that has been utterly transformed over the past 40 years, the film, – which is directed by Alex Fegan – offers a nuanced exploration of the Catholic Church in Ireland through the lens of the sacrament of confession as a way of understanding our past, as well as where we are now and where we are going.
Fifteen Irish priests who have long listened to the sins of others, offer their own confessional on the rise and fall of a sacrament that now epitomises the turbulent changes in faith and spirituality in contemporary Ireland.
The documentary is a nuanced and uncynical examination of confession, as the priests themselves acknowledge how a rite meant to offer absolution and guidance had for many years become a tool of control and shame, with devastating consequences.
One priest featured is Fr Conor McGrath, from Glengormley who at 32-years-old became Ireland's youngest parish priest of Glenravel in Co Antrim in 2019. He is the current parish priest of St Colmcille's Parish in Ballyhackamore, East Belfast.
Speaking about the film, director, Alex Fegan said: “Growing up in Dublin in the 1990s, the grip of the Church over our collective psyche was loosening.
"I was at once intrigued by the rituals and appalled by the abuses of the Church.
"As the years went by, I found myself questioning everything about what the Church had meant in people’s lives over the decades and centuries, including what we may have gained or lost as people have moved away from religious traditions.
"I have always been fascinated by the concept of forgiveness, which I feel is one of the most fundamental aspects of what it means to be human. And when my son was on the altar making his first confession with the parish priest, as I observed this I went into a sort of daydream and wondered about this ancient rite of passage – to some this must seem absurd in the extreme, repulsive even, and to others it must be moving and sacred.
"I set out to speak with and understand priests in Ireland in the 21st Century through the prism of the confession box – these people about whom most of us know so little, yet have heard so much.
"Making the film taught me many things about them, myself and life itself. If people get even a small bit as much from watching Sins of Ireland as I did from making it, I will be delighted.”
