WISCONSIN
FemPop
By Josephine Maria
It is extremely rare that a film makes me question anything about my life. I went into Mea Maxima Culpa expecting to hear another sad story, in another town, about something so far removed from me that I would come out, write a review, and move on. Instead, Mea Maxima Culpa made me question everything I know about the Catholic administration in my hometown of Milwaukee. Then it kept going.
I am not Catholic, and there is no clergy or administration who I have ever given my confidence or total trust. The intimate relationship a person has with their priest or minister is foreign to me. However, my family at large are devout Roman Catholics. It was not until this film that I realized how ingrained in me was the assumption that the Catholic hierarchy was doing what it thought was best, and would never allow harm by one of its members to continue. My assumption was wrong.
In cases of assault and rape, we often forget that men can be the victims. Mea Maxima Culpa is the story of 4 men fighting against their abuser, Father Lawrence Murphy. The place where these men were assaulted as children, along with hundreds of other, took place at a school for the deaf that was a couple of blocks from my childhood home. By the time I was growing up there, Father Lawrence had retired and died a year before my family moved- without going to court. The trail doesn’t stop there.
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