Tonight at the Oscars we may see a movie win Best Picture that dramatizes one of the most important stories about religion and powerful institutions that we’ve seen in many a moon. I’m talking about “Spotlight” the film about the Boston Globe’s investigative team which revealed the systemic child abuse that had been covered up for decades by the Catholic hierarchy in very Catholic Boston. It’s a truly amazing film, one of those “procedurals” but it’s about journalism, not police work, and it’s a story we already knew —a nd it’s fascinating nonetheless.
I hope it wins some prizes and that everyone sees it. But I have to say I think it’s pretty amazing that the biggest Christian church in the world has been revealed to have covered up thousands of cases of child rape over the course of many decades, perhaps centuries, and they somehow came out with their moral authority intact. This I will never understand. This wasn’t just a slip-up. These are among the worst crimes human beings commit, a total taboo, particularly in a church which has no compunction about policing the sexuality of its flock.
I’m not a Catholic so I guess it’s not my business. But whenever I see the pope exalted as this wonderful compassionate world leader these thoughts pop into my head. When I see the US media turn into shrieking fanboys and treat his visit as if he were a living saint come to bless us with his presence I think about this. Again, not my business. But it’s hard for me to see why anyone should take the Church’s moral teachings seriously after that.
This article in the New Yorker about the Spotlight team, in which Sarah Larson revisits the reporters and editors who wrote the stories revealing the rot in the Boston archdiocese is a fascinating look at what they went through in investigating these horrific stories of abuse. They had to listen to hundreds and hundreds of people describe what had happened to them and the ongoing destruction of their psyches throughout their lives afterwards. The interviewed very, very old people who confessed to what had happened as long ago as the 1920s for the first time in their lives. It was a harrowing experience.
But this really stuck out at me, something I had sort of been feeling but hadn’t put into words:
On my way out, Rezendes gave me a tour of the Globe library—the vast collection of clip files that the journalists consult, the photograph archives, the spiral staircase seen in the movie. Before I left, we talked about Pope Francis and his often disappointing response to the crisis, as well as the Church’s inflexible positions on the celibacy requirement, women in the clergy, contraception, homosexuality, and so on. I told Rezendes a theory I’d heard from the comedian and childhood-rape survivor Barry Crimmins: that Pope Francis is the Church’s way of changing the conversation without changing the Church. Rezendes looked thoughtful. “That makes some sense,” he said.
I’m glad the Pope cares about the poor and is talking about climate change. These things matter and apparently a lot of people still care what the Pope says. So that’s good. But this other thing, this big horrible, child rape thing, is still out there, rotting the institution from within.
