Passings: Dr Phillip Roy Reeves

One of my best friends, Dr Phil Reeves, passed away early Saturday in a sudden and unexpected complication from dental surgery. He passed peacefully in his sleep and was discovered by his partner in his bed.

Phil was an accomplished cellist, having played on tours with the likes of Johnny Mathis, Frank Sinatra, and various incarnations of the Rat Pack Reunion Tours, as well as occasionally sitting in with the Philadelphia Mandolin Ensemble. He turned to Psychiatry and had been in practice for several years. I first met him when he asked me to be his personal assistant part-time about 6 years ago, and he also helped me with my own mental issues. After I adopted Sophie cat, he adopted a brother and sister pair of kittens, Albert and Victoria. When Phil and his delightful partner Graham would go on one of their frequent trips, I was usually the designated Kitty Sitter.

I am going to miss his dry sense of humor, his love of classical music, the way he doted on his two cats and would put them into hilarious photo montages, and the obvious love for his partner, Graham. But more then anything, I am going to miss a man who was not only an amazing friend, but would go out of his way to help me whenever he could, and in times when I was in very dark places. He stood by me when many would not. I have lost one of my life's few anchors and the world is a sadder place today.

(The photo Of Dr Reeves was taken by me at a co-worker of Phil's baby-shower in January. Albert and Victoria were about 4 at the time of their picture.)

If only the reverse was more often true.

 

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My Amazon Movie Reviews: "Deliver Us From Evil"

Deliver Us From Weasels
4 out of 5 Stars

Director Amy Berg and Father Thomas Doyle deserve a lot of credit for their bravery. Even braver are the victims in this harrowing documentary of child abuse and rape by a California Catholic Priest and the ongoing cover-up. From the seventies and into the nineties, Father Oliver O'Grady was sexually molesting children of both sexes, including the rape of a nine month old infant. But each of the numerous times he was caught, his superiors would deny there was any problem, then promise the problem would be taken care of, then whisk O'Grady off to another location where the cycle would start over.

The difference between this and many of the other abuse scandals to strike the Catholic Church is that O'Grady genially admits he is a pedophile, forcing those in charge of the clean-up detail to whitewash the aftermath of the stated facts. Father Doyle is seemingly the only one in the hierarchy to exhibit any common sense in the matter, and his grilling of Bishop Roger Mahoney (now the Cardinal of Los Angeles) paints an evil picture of a man willing to throw his Christians to the Lions if they came in-between him and his ambitions to higher office. His frigid denials are enough to turn your stomach. Mahoney refuses, over and over, to acknowledge that O'Gardy's actions were criminal or even merited disciplinary action, even denying he recalls any problems with molestations at one point (by claiming it would be the obligation of the church's attorneys).

The pattern is maddening. O'Grady takes a Church, destroys lives, gets caught, gets a promotion to another location. When he finally gets into a scandal he can't wriggle out of, the church buys his silence with an annuity fund. After serving seven years, O'Grady is deported to Ireland, where his sex crimes are unknown and he is free to live out his life as he chooses. Basically, O'Grady is walking free among families (when the film catches up with him, he is living with a family and their children, they have no idea he's a convicted child molester) with the full blessing of the Church and on the Vatican's payroll.

In O'Grady's aftermath, you see a victim's father angry denounce God and religion as fake, a Pope granted immunity from prosecution from President Bush as the scandal creeps towards the top, and - again - O'Grady walking the streets of Ireland. In an interesting side note, the prosecutorial immunity that Bush gave Pope Hitler Youth Ratzinger from the scandal may not protect the Pope from the Irish abuse scandal that now swarms around Cardinal Sean Brady's repeated covering up of abuses. Or maybe, like the despicable laissez faire attitude the Vatican took over Boston's Cardinal Law, they'll just fly Brady in to head a basilica in Rome. As "Deliver Us From Evil" shows, it would just fit the pattern.