Public television to air documentary on Bernardin

UNDATED _ Even though spirituality has managed recently to filter through the realm of popular TV dramas and sit-coms, producers of in-depth documentaries that explore the soul have, with such rare exceptions as Bill Moyers’ specials, found it harder to break the secular prime-time barrier. Now, two independent filmmakers hope to convert network brass with […]

UNDATED _ Even though spirituality has managed recently to filter through the realm of popular TV dramas and sit-coms, producers of in-depth documentaries that explore the soul have, with such rare exceptions as Bill Moyers’ specials, found it harder to break the secular prime-time barrier. Now, two independent filmmakers hope to convert network brass with a PBS documentary entitled”Bernardin,”the story of a very public churchman whose personal trials engrossed the nation. The hourlong program focuses on the late Roman Catholic Cardinal Joseph Bernardin of Chicago, who endured the humiliation of false sex-abuse charges before succumbing to cancer two years ago. Co-producers Frank Frost and Martin Doblmeier are basking in the warm reception of their film by PBS affiliates nationwide. Programmers have given”Bernardin”choice time slots, mostly in early July. But the producers know the final judgment will arrive after the showings, when ratings are tallied. And so”Bernardin”is shaping up not only as a public television event, but also as a test of whether serious films about faith will make it on prime-time television.”If you can’t deliver the audience, you can’t come back again later,”said Frost, whose credits include”Spiritual Homepage,”a 20-part series now appearing Wednesday nights on the Odyssey Channel. Frost and Doblmeier, who are both Roman Catholic, each have their own production company but teamed up to tell the story of the cardinal. In part, the film tracks Bernardin’s rise up the hierarchical ladder but focuses mostly on the cardinal after he became a national figure in the 1980s, when he rallied the traditionally pro-military bishops to condemn the morality of nuclear warfare. Referring to Bernardin’s role in the war-and-peace debate, Lutheran historian Martin Marty says in the documentary,”I think it taught us a lot about how to reason in the public order, a lot of us who aren’t Catholic.” But Bernardin did not become an object of intense media interest until 1993, when a former seminarian falsely accused the cardinal of sexually molesting him when he was a teen. A few months after he was vindicated, Bernardin learned he had incurable cancer.”I think he was clearly in the center of issues that helped define America,”said Doblmeier, who pointed to Bernardin’s presence in public debates over the morality of abortion, nuclear arms, and capital punishment.”And in the last couple of years of his life, America watched as he was called to define himself.””Bernardin”the film deals mostly with those final years. During his ordeal of false allegations, Bernardin prayed every day for his accuser, Steven Cook. After the young man recanted, claiming false memory syndrome, Bernardin visited him and the two embraced in a dramatic moment of reconciliation. His final moments of self-definition were encapsulated on the cover of Newsweek _”Teaching us how to die.”The 68-year-old cardinal allowed the public a close-up view of his struggle against pancreatic cancer, and the peace he found in the face of death. On the program, Newsweek’s Ken Woodward says Bernardin educated the public by”restoring the classic meaning of death with dignity.” Doblmeier said he didn’t make instant believers out of PBS programmers when he proposed the idea of a Bernardin documentary at their national convention in Dallas last November.”Public television is really skittish about anything having to do with religion,”said Doblmeier, adding that he could say the same about the commercial networks.”But it has really embraced this film. We’re getting national, prime-time dates all across the country.” He attributes the good reception to the film’s portrayal of a person, a national figure, rather than a particular faith or denomination. Doblmeier’s productions have included”Grounds for Peace,”a PBS presentation that first aired on Good Friday 1991, profiling an ecumenical Christian community in Northern Ireland promoting peace among Protestants and Catholics. Off the religious theme, he produced the two-hour 1995 PBS documentary,”Thomas Jefferson: A View from the Mountain,”his most critically acclaimed film. Both he and Frost have burst through a number of media barricades, including what Bill Baker, president of WNET in New York, described as a”built-in bias against doing programs about religion.”WNET has chartered some new religious waters for public television _ it also produces the weekly news program”Religion & Ethics NewsWeekly _ and is presenting”Bernardin”to stations around the country.”There is a fear among some (program executives) that once you open it up, every one of a thousand religious groups will demand time, because you’re perceived as favoring one group,”said Baker. Public television programmers are also prone to fuzzy notions about church-state separation and whether they’re allowed to show religious programs on government-funded stations, he said. One cure for this spiritual phobia is robust ratings. The producers of”Bernardin”acknowledge they have both eyes trained on this worldly gauge of artistic worth.”It’s up to us to prove there’s an interest in this kind of story, that people genuinely care enough to turn on the television and watch it,”said Doblmeier, who runs Journey Films Inc. in Alexandria, Va. Indeed, the filmmaker added, he believes there is a”spiritual hunger”for such programming. The favorable time periods given to”Bernardin”are already a sign of change.”Ten years ago, there would have been no interest in this at all,”said Frost, who owns a production company that bears his name in McLean, Va. Asked to explain the interest now, he said,”We in the business call it millennial fever _ It’s OK to talk about spiritual things.” Frost noted the new millennium is nearing just as baby boomers are reaching the age of spiritual searching, asking deeper questions about the meaning of life. Still, it’s a hard sell.”It’s getting easier,”Doblmeier said of the struggle to make prime time ready for religious documentaries,”but we have a long way to go.”

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