Below are two different kinds of films about priest victims: the drama Spotlight and the documentary Mea Maxima Culpa.
I. Spotlight (2015)
Although Tom McCarthy‘s Spotlight, based on The Boston Globe‘s uncovering (2001-02) of the extensive incidence of childhood sexual abuse that has been perpetrated by Catholic priests, is more about the press’s process and less about the priest victims themselves, it’s made clear there’d be no story at all without the courageous testimonies of the men and women “so traumatized they can’t find the words to describe what was taken from them” (Sheila O’Malley, rogerebert.com).
The investigative team is played by Michael Keaton (editor), Rachel McAdams and Mark Ruffalo (reporters), and Brian d’Arcy James (researcher). Lindsey Bahr, Associated Press: “It takes the arrival of a true outsider to challenge everyone to look a little harder at what’s happening. In this case, it’s the Globe‘s new editor in chief Marty Baron (Liev Schreiber). One character who questions his arrival notes he’s an unmarried Jew who hates baseball. But most damning of all — he’s not a local.”
Alonso Duralde, The Wrap: “As the Spotlight team begins digging, they find more and more victims willing to speak out against more and more clergy, but Baron eventually realizes that the story is bigger that that: it’s about Cardinal Law (Len Cariou) and a culture of silence wherein parents were pressured to settle while guilty priests were shipped off to new parishes (and new victims) after a few months of therapy.”
About the priest victims, Justin Chang, Variety: “Many…depicted here — like Phil Saviano (Neal Huff), head of a local survivors’ group, and Joe Crowley (Michael Cyril Creighton), who movingly recalls his treatment at the hands of a priest named Paul Shanley — function in a mostly expository manner, offering up vital but fleeting insights into the psychology of the abusers and the abused, but without taking pride of place in their own story.”
II. Mea Maxima Culpa: Silence in the House of God (2012)
Mea Maxima Culpa was written and directed by Alex Gibney. “Mea Maxima Culpa”: Latin for “My most grievous fault.” “Silence in the House of God”: The Catholic Church’s and pedophile priests’ cover-ups as well as specific instances of victimization that occurred at St. John’s School for the Deaf in Milwaukee.
Priest Victims
Victims of Father Murphy are given a voice by such actors as John Slattery, Jamey Sheridan, Chris Cooper, and Ethan Hawke.
Roger Ebert: “What makes his particular case so painful is that his deaf victims found it difficult to communicate their protests. Police and states attorneys said it was the church’s business. Lawsuits were dismissed. Many of the parents of the victims couldn’t speak American Sign Language, and the deafness of the school’s students made it commonplace for Murphy to visit them at night, moving unheard among the boys in their dormitory.”
Andrew O’Hehir, Salon: “One of the most intriguing tangents in ‘Mea Maxima Culpa’ involves the Rev. Gerald Fitzgerald, founder of the Servants of the Paraclete, a Catholic congregation established to help priests who were struggling with celibacy, alcoholism and other personal issues. A recently released trove of Fitzgerald’s letters reveals that as early as 1952 he had warned church leaders, including two popes, that there was a nationwide problem with abusive priests, and stressed that he believed priests who committed such crimes could not be cured and returned to their pastoral duties. Fitzgerald favored defrocking them or isolating them in monasteries, rather than turning them over to the authorities.”
Arguably, though not ideal, that would have been preferable to what actually happened. As described by John DeFore, Hollywood Reporter: “The church’s policy became to ‘treat’ priests known to have committed abuse, then circulate them elsewhere in the church, all without acknowledging their crimes to law enforcement.” Hence perpetuating the abuse.
Thanks for blogging about this. It was a really great movie that not only demonstrated the importance and power of investigative journalism, but also showed how self-serving, callous, duplicitous, and arrogant the Catholic Church has been on this issue (particularly former Cardinal Bernard Law). You could hear a pin drop as people were exiting the theater. Very moving and powerful story. (And great acting too!)