A Dogged Fidelity

Harlem with a Human Twist

Cousin Bobby, a documentary about the ministry of a feisty Harlem priest, is described by award-winning PBS non-fiction film series POV (Point of View) as a "'home movie' with a difference." The difference is the story of dedication of one white cleric who works for social justice with his primarily African-American and Latino parishioners.

Cousin Bobby is director Jonathan Demme's story of reconnection with his cousin, activist Episcopal priest Robert Castle. Demme is famous for such feature films as Silence of the Lambs and Married to the Mob, but he has also offered such documentaries as Haiti: Dreams of Democracy and The Making of Sun City, as well as the Talking Heads' music video Stop Making Sense.

In Cousin Bobby, Demme captures intimate moments between himself and his cousin as they stroll the streets of Harlem and Jersey City.

Demme says this project began in response to the negative manner in which Harlem is often portrayed in the media.

"As a filmmaker, my response...was to want to contribute a little positive, humanity-based imagery to this media depiction of places like Harlem as being soul-less and deadly."

"Racism...is born into the fabric of this nation," explains Castle, whose own life was radically altered by his relationship with Black Panther leader Isaiah Rowley. "The whole attitude of approaching people of color as being inferior...it's just in the roots of this country."

POV is the sometimes controversial, always powerful film series that gives voice to alternative filmmakers. Since 1988, POV has broadcast series of documentaries on a wide array of topics and in a variety of formats.

This year's offerings include Philip Haas' Money Man, the story of an artist who makes money by painting money...and spending it; Building Bombs: The Legacy, by Susan Robinson and Mark Mori, which is the story of the environmental legacy and social impact of South Carolina's Savannah River Plant; Estela Bravo's Miami--Havana, in which families recount the difficulties of the great divide between the United States and Cuba; and The Women Next Door, a travelogue through the West Bank where Michal Aviad and a three-woman Israeli/Palestinian crew collect women's stories.

Cousin Bobby will be broadcast on most PBS stations on August 24, but, as they say in the biz, check those local listings for the time in your market. 

Be sure to do that; you don't want to miss this powerfully crafted and relevant story.

- The Editors

When I previewed the POV presentation Cousin Bobby, I thought to myself, here's one priest who hasn't mistaken big time for the end time, state for church, electronic hype for the gospel. Refreshing, instructive--even allow me an overworked term--inspiring.

He stands for others, this passionate man; and in more senses than one.

In this sense: In Harlem everything is going under, and fast. A few churches are just about the only thing still standing (and that, too, in more senses than one). A question naturally arises: What is to be done? Indeed, can anything be done?

Now and again, someone's life answers for them: I'll show you what can be done.

He stands there, for others, this Robert Castle. In Harlem, in the '90s. Something known elsewhere as "quality of life" hasn't arrived here yet. Or it came and then left, possibly by night. Maybe with the murder of Malcolm or of Dr. King.

Meantime, life in the ghetto, as described by priest and parishioners, is unassailably bleak, menacing, even lethal.

And yet a measure of light breaks through. A mother describes Head Start: We see the children smiling, trundled off to class. The priest reflects somberly afterward, on the small chance granted the children of living up to these early hopes. "You go from Head Start, then you run face into a stone wall!"

In another episode, the priest has the altar carried into the street. In the course of a Eucharist, in full vestments, he delivers a philippic against the city nabobs. We're shown the quality of their concern for Harlem; they've left a pothole in the street the size of the mayor's limo. (The hole is filled in afterward, we're told. Small victories.)

Conventional services are held in the church itself. There Father Robert preaches and baptizes, witnesses marriages, mourns the dead.

The film was made under skilled auspices. Jonathan Demme, already a well-known movie director, sought out his cousin Robert and decided to record the priest's life and work. The sequences amble along, reflecting the growing friendship and trust between the two, who hadn't met in nearly 40 years. The impression is one of informality, an hour spent with a family album, a stroll down memory lane, moving without haste, lovingly, among scenes of the priest's childhood, youth, marriage, and family.

In between we see the streets of Jersey City and Harlem, the awful housing, the fires and rats and drugs, the ubiquitous police, the people's nobility and struggle. And we see many going under.

Death abounding, grace barely making it. The cousins visit graves that might mark two deaths on separate planets. The first is the resting place of the priest's son, to all evidence a promising youth, drowned at 20 years. Then, in a neglected cemetery in Jersey City, they search out the grave of Isaiah Rowley, a Black Panthers leader.

The son died in a summer accident; the Panther was blown to pieces by a shotgun blast. The son was a college honor student and athlete; Isaiah was long enrolled in the hard knocks school of the streetwise, jailwise, deathwise blacks of his generation.

WHAT IS REMARKABLY hopeful about the story of Father Castle is the crossing over of a life; what classical theology would name an enactment of the paschal mystery. From grace to disgrace, and every step between. His ex-wife tells how, after repeated arrests in the course of his pastorate in Jersey City, one of their sons would ask, "How much was the bail, mom?"

Remarkable...hopeful. And rare. The priest whose chief and striking grace is...public disgrace.

Not many of us go that route. Clergy, in accord with the expectation of our training, our flocks, our superiors, and more often than not, of our own souls, are well-instructed; toe a responsible line. The dog collar binds and reminds, both. So do such entities as bishops, vestries, and something both imponderable, pressing, and seldom spoken of. It is known as "job opportunity."

The paschal goings-on, the tasting of so much death--and so much life--in Robert's story, the simple dogged fidelity, the concentration on literal flesh and bone of the gospel, these are attributable, I judge, to something quite simple. The priest seems to have had in his makeup not an ounce of personal ambition. Downwardly mobile he, from the start in unpromising Jersey City. And clear as to where he belonged, and with whom.

The poor be my portion, my inheritance. And let the chips fall (as they did, and still do, with a vengeance).

If I may be permitted in concluding to wax vatic ever so briefly.

Something like this. When the church no longer engenders, beckons forward, stands with, is prideful of the likes of Robert and his splendid idiosyncratic holiness, his blunt language lifted foursquare from scripture, his "theology from below"--on that day, we may take it for a certainty, we have lost it.

Lost it to the suburbs, lost it to investments, to real estate, to sucking up to power and mammon, lost it to politicians and generals and tycoons.

Lost the poor.

Lost the Christ of the poor, one and the same.

Daniel Berrigan, S.J., was a poet, peace activist, and Sojourners contributing editor, and served as a consultant on the 1986 feature film The Mission when this article appeared.