UNITED STATES
Huffington Post
Kerry Walters
William Bittinger Professor of Philosophy and Peace and Justice Studies, Gettysburg College
I rarely cry at movies. But I did a few days ago while watching Spotlight, the film about the Boston Globe’s 2002 exposure of Roman Catholic priests who sexually abused children and the prelates who covered up for them.
The Globe’s story was only the first wave of what became a tsunami of scandal. Fifteen years later, hundreds of similarly sordid cases of clerical misconduct and ecclesial concealment have come to light, not only in the United States but also throughout Europe, Australia, and Canada.
Watching Spotlight brought back all the shame, anger, and grief that seared me fourteen years ago when the scandal first broke. The sexual exploitation of children is horrible enough. But that the predators were priests, servants of God revered, trusted, and upheld as role models by the very families they betrayed, was a body blow no one saw coming.
For generations of American Roman Catholics, it was simply unimaginable that priests were capable of such things. As one man abused as a child told the Globe, “We were taught that priests were God’s representatives on earth. A priest would walk in and nuns would bow.”
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