{"id":335929,"date":"2026-05-28T13:44:16","date_gmt":"2026-05-28T13:44:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/335929\/"},"modified":"2026-05-28T13:44:16","modified_gmt":"2026-05-28T13:44:16","slug":"two-real-life-priests-inspired-hbo-crime-drama-task","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/335929\/","title":{"rendered":"Two real-life priests inspired HBO crime drama ‘Task’"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

I come from a family of priests and devoted Catholics. Catholicism is the blood in my veins. My father was not a disciplinarian, but if you lived under his roof you went to church. Saturday evening or Sunday morning, didn\u2019t matter, you went. My four siblings and I were not miscreants, but we drank beer and sneaked out, and I was once cited for stealing liquor. I can\u2019t recall my father ever yelling at me for anything other than missing Mass. <\/p>\n

My great-uncle Dan was a diocesan priest at St. Charles Borromeo in Drexel Hill, Pa. Dan was a fire-and-brimstone hard-liner. Every Thursday we\u2019d gather as a family for a roast beef dinner at my grandmother\u2019s house. Dan would drink Manhattans \u2014 plenty \u2014 and if someone expressed a view of God contrary to his own, he\u2019d say, \u201cIt\u2019s awfully hot down there.\u201d \u201cThere\u201d meant hell. My uncle Ed, my mother\u2019s eldest brother, was an Augustinian. Patient, compassionate, inclusive, Ed\u2019s God was very different from Dan\u2019s. While discussing God, Ed would quote Michael Himes, \u201cThere is nothing we can do to make God not love us,\u201d and the Trappist monk Thomas Merton, \u201cMercy, within Mercy, within Mercy.\u201d <\/p>\n

Sports was in my family too \u2014 basketball, specifically \u2014 and I came to view Dan and Ed as head and assistant coach, respectively. The head coach shouting harsh critiques from the sideline, the assistant coach there to put his arm around you when you made it, crestfallen and ashamed, back to the bench. I loved them both, but I aligned with Ed\u2019s view of God. Dan passed away a decade ago. Ed has since left the priesthood and married a kind and patient woman named Kathy. Over the years, Ed\u2019s views on God have changed drastically. We meet for dinner once a month to talk about life and faith, and it was during one of our conversations that \u201cTask\u201d<\/a> was born.<\/p>\n

\"Mark <\/p>\n

Mark Ruffalo in \u201cTask.\u201d<\/p>\n

(Peter Kramer \/ HBO)<\/p>\n

Tom Brandis, played by the singular Mark Ruffalo<\/a>, is a former priest-turned-FBI agent who has lost his faith. Everything he held as truth in his life has come crashing down in the wake of a family tragedy. Tom believes he was called by God to adopt two children, Emily and Ethan. Adopting these children has resulted in the death of his wife, Susan. Matricide. What kind of God allows that? I have struggled with my Catholic faith over the years, but nothing has perplexed me more than the idea of suffering. The poet Archibald MacLeish wrote, \u201cIf God is God, He is not good \/ If God is good, He is not God.\u201d The message is clear: If God is God, the author of everything, then He created evil and suffering and therefore cannot be good.<\/p>\n

In \u201cTask,\u201d I wanted to explore a crisis of faith with honesty and without easy answers, because that is exactly how I have found my own faith journey \u2014 arduous and circuitous. I believe in God, but I find that belief tested daily. Faith and religion are separable. Tom\u2019s journey in \u201cTask\u201d is a journey of faith. In the fifth episode, Tom is kidnapped by the criminal Robbie Prendergast, played by the brilliant Tom Pelphrey. During a long and tense car ride to the Poconos, Robbie tells Tom that he doesn\u2019t believe in God. Never has. God is an idea conjured to make life bearable. \u201cThere\u2019s nothing after this life,\u201d Robbie says. Tom doesn\u2019t argue. His own beliefs have veered in that direction. The car pulls into a secluded, wooded area. Facing death, Tom suddenly wants to call his son, Ethan, and forgive him. Robbie doesn\u2019t allow it. Instead, he walks Tom to the edge of the woods, tells him he\u2019s a decent man, and sets him free. Because Robbie has his own plan: to sacrifice his life in the hopes of providing a better one for his family. It\u2019s through Robbie\u2019s act of mercy that Tom regains faith. He believes in goodness again.<\/p>\n

\"Brad <\/p>\n

Brad Ingelsby.<\/p>\n

(Ian Spanier \/ For The Times)<\/p>\n

In the final episode, Tom finds himself taking care of a young and suddenly parentless boy, Sam. Sam reminds him of his own son, Ethan. Sam wants to live with Tom. And Tom desperately wants Sam to stay with him. But Tom also recognizes that Sam would be better served in the care of a young family capable of meeting his needs. Sam shouldn\u2019t be stuck with an old man like him. Tom lets Sam go; he believes the boy will be taken care of. That is Tom\u2019s act of faith.<\/p>\n

When Ed and I met for dinner last month, we talked about how his idea of God has changed over the years. He no longer sees God as a bearded white man tallying our sins and waiting to judge us in heaven. He thought God was everywhere, all the time. The love that exists between people. He thought he could feel God right then, among us at the table as we laughed. We talked about Camp Mystic. The young girls swept away. Why, God? They were there to serve You. We didn\u2019t have any answers. We never do. But the food and wine were good, and we talked about great-uncle Dan, about how he was so different from us but how much we loved him anyway, and how, when he drank Manhattans \u2014 plenty \u2014 he could turn harsh and opinionated, but it didn\u2019t matter because he loved God. He loved Him with his whole heart, and we thought about the unimpeachable dignity of that and what an amazing gift it would be \u2014 to believe and never doubt.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"I come from a family of priests and devoted Catholics. Catholicism is the blood in my veins. My…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":335930,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[138769,6161,1431,14876,138768,6195,48,52,51,1637,47,50,49,73158,82849,95831,48688,138766,138767,18120,72],"class_list":["post-335929","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-los-angeles","tag-ethan","tag-faith","tag-family","tag-god","tag-great-uncle-dan","tag-kind","tag-la","tag-la-headlines","tag-la-news","tag-life","tag-los-angeles","tag-los-angeles-headlines","tag-los-angeles-news","tag-mercy","tag-robbie","tag-sam","tag-task","tag-tom-brandis","tag-uncle-ed","tag-view","tag-year"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/335929","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=335929"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/335929\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/335930"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=335929"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=335929"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=335929"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}