Dear Editor, Fionn O’Grada took issue with my review of the film Philomena (IC 14/11/13) citing the review header ‘The Sins of the Mothers’ as apparent evidence of the fact that I ‘only’ saw sin in the fact that Philomena became pregnant outside marriage and not in the cruel way she and the other young mothers were treated in the Magdalen homes.
The header was meant to be ironic; I didn’t mention the word ‘sin’ in the review itself, or allude to it. What I was trying to get at was the perception of the time, which led to the cruelty Mr O’Grada mentions. In my review I also wrote about the cruel treatment accorded to Philomena.
Mr O’Grada goes on to talk about Philomena’s great quality of forgiveness as being something I overlooked. In fact this was the very quality I emphasised at the end of my review as being what the film was essentially concerned with.
Mr O’Grada also has a problem with my use of the expression ‘the Church’. When I used this, it was obviously shorthand for ‘Church authorities’. One needs to understand context in situations like this. I never suggested, nor would suggest, that Philomena wasn’t part of ‘the Church’. What I was speaking of was clerical abuse so the context of my remarks would have been immediately clear to most readers.
Yours etc.,
Aubrey Malone,
Film Reviewer,
The Irish Catholic.