Last night, my wife and I went to see Spotlight, the new movie starring Michael Keaton that tells the story of his character, Walter V. Robinson, and team of journalists he led at The Boston Globe in that paper’s coverage of the sexual abuse scandal in the Roman Catholic Church. It is a very powerful movie, and a good deal of its power, I think, comes from the way it focuses less on the horrors of the abuse per se–though we do get to hear some survivor stories–or even on the impact the abuse had on families and other personal relationships, than on the dogged and painstaking research the journalists had to do to uncover not just the fact of the scandal, but also some sense of just how uncomprehendingly widespread it actually is. This focus brings home to the viewer, in a way that telling survivors’ stories would not, the institutional nature of the scandal, the way the church not only covered up the scandal, but knowingly enabled those priests who were sexually violating children to continue doing so.
Given that the Roman Catholic Church is perhaps the quitnessential patriarchal institution on the planet, that sexual violence should have been institutionalized in this way should surprise no one, though beyond that intellectual response and a complex of emotions that still leaves me more or less speechless, I don’t have all that much to say. One of the more powerful moments–for which I cannot find a clip–came when Keaton’s character, Robinson, admits that someone, one of the lawyers involved in the cover-up, had handed him the story at least a decade before the events depicted in the movie and he had essentially buried it. The scene is powerful because it demonstrates just how deeply people of good will can become complicit in institutional silences and silencings without even realizing it.
Even though I am a survivor of childhood sexual violence, I did not expect the movie to effect me as deeply as it did. I came home and sat with the lights out for an hour or more, sipping a tumbler full of scotch in my living room, just thinking about my own experience, the men who violated me, and the silences around that that have been so central in my life. I’m glad I went to see the movie with my wife. We haven’t really talked abou it, but it was important to be sitting next to someone whose love, understanding, and compassion I know I can count on.
As a victim i thought movie could be triggering so i brought a friend. She became visibly upset and angry and i felt a sense almost of relief. I thought the subject was handled well and the actors were fantastic. I think the relief was that more people will see the film and keep the topic open for discussion.
I was raised in a very Catholic family (I was an altar boy, and at one point in my early adolescence entertained the idea of becoming a priest), and although I haven’t been a practicing Catholic for almost 25 years I still have strong memories and feelings about it, some very conflicted. I was confirmed by an archbishop who later admitted to having sex with a parishioner (at least on the surface consensual, and she was above the age of minority, but still just a tad hypocritical in terms of what he was preaching). On the other hand, the priest who did my first sacrament of reconciliation was falsely accused of assault by a woman with a mental disorder and a drug problem probably related to that, and he completely forgave her and helped her get treatment – he was a wonderful role model (even if he scared the shit out of me during reconciliation – he was a stern fellow).
That’s all a long-winded way to say what’s probably already obvious to everyone – individual Catholics can be amazing or terrible or anything in between. And the Church does some amazing things – my mom is president of a chapter of St. Vincent de Paul, a Catholic lay organization that does a ton of good for the poor and mentally ill. And when I used to live in St. Louis, a lot of the public schools were crap and many people had to go to a private Catholic school to get a good education. And the Church spent a _ton_ of money supporting poor kids whose families couldn’t afford tuition.
But I still find it jaw-dropping how completely evil a lot of the hierarchy was and has been over the child sex abuse tragedy. Of course the reporting started in Boston, but as we all know it’s been a huge scandal in many other cities. In the biggest city in the state where I currently live, the local archdiocese is dealing with multiple lawsuits and may declare bankruptcy; there’s a lot of clear evidence that church leaders shuffled around priests they knew were at least significant risks, if not clearly guilty, in order to keep things quiet. It’s just abhorrent.
This whole post has been kind of long-winded, but that was my reaction to seeing the trailer. My wife and I may see it at some point, but probably not any time soon. I was never abused, and to my knowledge none of my parish priests were implicated in any abuse, so in that way I’m very lucky. But it’s still jarring to see something so awful from an organization that was such a big part of my life until I was about 16 (we were _really_ Catholic…), especially since most of the people I knew “on the ground” were really decent people.
I’m a little surprised this isn’t getting more comments.
One thing I’ve wondered about– is the last bit about almost all the response to the big Globe article being from victims accurate? I’d have thought they’d have gotten some pushback from people defending the church.
Does anyone have the text of Marty Baron’s pep talk? The Spotlight team are beating themselves up for not having broken the story earlier even though they’d had a lot of the pieces for years or decades, and he tells them that people spend most of their time stumbling around in the dark, they’d done good work, and he expects them to continue to do good work.
Nancy,
I saw the movie over the weekend. I don’t have a transcript, but my memory is that Marty Baron said something like, “We forget that we spend most of our lives stumbling around in the dark. Somebody shines a light, and suddenly it looks like there’s a lot of blame to go around. I don’t know what went on before I got here, but right now we’re doing the kind of important work I got into journalism for, and everyone’s been giving their best, blah blah blah.”
By the way, the movie is excellent. Really taut and tensely paced for a 2+ hour investigation movie with no guns or car chases.
I saw it three weeks ago, and I thought it was tremendous. I went alone, and though I didn’t tear up once during the main body of the film, as soon as the credits rolled I started crying (and continued for a good long while). I went alone, but I didn’t feel alone — and in the final moments of the movie, I felt vindicated. Just imagining what it might be like, in a city whose institutions are so important to the fabric and rhythm of life and relationships, for one of those institutions to break the silence and declare themselves firmly on the side of those who had been wronged, and provide a venue for people to share their stories and have their experiences be heard and upheld. Not to mention the courage and dignity of all the survivors.
All of that made me feel not only seen, but welcomed into the broader discourse and community. None of the sexual harassment/attempted assault I have experienced has been associated with any religious figures or communities, but I felt a powerful sense of connectedness and fellowship with the survivors depicted regardless. I think I see it again this week.
Thank you for sharing your reflections, Richard, and for providing a space for the rest of us to contribute our own.
I’m taking a break from end-of-semester tedium, and I just wanted to say thanks to all who commented. It is important to remember that individuals are not institutions and that no institution as large as the Catholic Church can be defined entirely by a single facet of what goes on within it, even something as insidious, pervasive, and essentially evil—even, it seems to me, on the Church’s own terms—as the cover-up and the further abuse the cover-up enabled.
At the same time, we should not allow the values that drove the cover-up to be diminished, trivialized, dismissed as something marginal within the Church, not just because the cover-up itself went so high up the ladder—speaking to its centrality—but because the values that drove it have been and continue to be central to so much of our own culture and to the other cultures where the Church exists.
Dragon_Snap, your comment about feeling seen rings very true for me, and I think part of that experience comes from watching, first, the journalists’ responses as it dawns on them precisely what they are seeing and working to make visible for others, and then, second, their commitment to that work despite the obvious and convenient excuse that 9/11 could have given them to allow the issue once again to drop completely out of sight. Their commitment to seeing what would have been so easy—and what they were in fact pressured—not to see, is part of what was so moving for me about the movie. So thanks for bringing that up.
And now back to my regularly scheduled grading.
I finally got a chance to see this movie and it was great! Nothing really substantive to add, though. I did make a whispered Hulk joke [“he’s always angry”] after the scene where Mark Ruffalo has an argument about when they should publish things.
I did find the line that went along the lines of “If it takes a village to raise a child, it also takes a village to abuse one” striking. Though I would say it doesn’t take a village to abuse one child, but it takes a village for abuse of this magnitude.
It’s such a good movie.
Just absolutely gripping and intense and beautifully shot.
And the way that the survivors are portrayed is so very, very honest.