Based on a true incident in County Wexford, Ireland, this film tells how one family's problem in dealing with a religious decision swept up first a town, and then a country. Sean and Sheila Cloney (played by Liam Cunningham and Orla Brady) are Catholic and Protestant. In order to marry in the Catholic church in Ireland, Sheila signs the required Ne Temere pledge that she will raise any children from the marriage as Catholics. She honors this pledge for a long time as her little girls part to go to Mass with their father on Sundays while she goes to services with her father and sister. However, she draws the line when the local parish priest, Father Stafford (Tony Doyle), insists on her oldest daughter goint to the Catholic school without any regard for the idea that the parents have the right to make this dicision.