TV REVIEW : ‘Father Clements’ Digs Into Story of a Priest’s Impulsive Adoption

“The Father Clements Story” (Channels 4, 36 and 39, Sunday at 9 p.m.) is the second unusual adoption story within a week on NBC. Last Monday, “Eye on the Sparrow” showed us a blind couple attempting to adopt a baby; “Father Clements” is a fact-based story about a black priest who adopts a teen-ager.

“Clements” is by far the better film. Its subject, Father George Clements, is a genuinely inspirational figure, but writers Arthur Heinemann and Ted Tally don’t just accept his goodness at face value. They dig deeper, and their efforts are fleshed out in a probing performance by Louis Gossett Jr.

According to the film, Clements plunged into adoption on impulse, as he was challenging the parishioners at his Holy Angels Church, in Chicago’s inner city, to adopt some of the neighborhood’s homeless kids. After he vowed to adopt someone himself, one of his first thoughts was to make sure that his stance was publicized, so that others would follow his example.

The kid (Malcolm-Jamal Warner, doing his best to look surly) whom Clements adopts senses that the Father is becoming a father out of a feeling of public responsibility, not because of any personal connection between the two of them. At one point, he claims he has become the priest’s “show dog.”

The writers ignored a few promising opportunities. The opposition of the cardinal (Carroll O’Connor at his crustiest) vanishes too easily, with a magical call from the Vatican. The other priests who share a rectory with Clements also oppose the adoption--couldn’t this have created an interesting scene, when the social workers checked out the boy’s potential living quarters? In the movie, no social workers come to call, and the other priests simply shut up.

Still, Ed Sherin has staged some tense confrontations with gang members as well as with that cardinal, and Gossett and Warner beautifully enact the conflict at the core of the film.