NEW YORK (NY)
America Magazine
October 11, 2017
By Jim McDermott [S.J.]
Living in Los Angeles and watching the cascade of horror that is the unraveling story of Hollywood uber-exec Harvey Weinstein and his abuses of women, I have had a strange sense of déjà vu. I was a seminarian studying for the priesthood in Boston in January 2002 when The Boston Globe began publishing its astonishing series of articles on child sexual abuse in the Catholic Church.
Those reports began a lot like the Weinstein story, with allegations surrounding one man, John Geoghan, who had been committing horrific acts of abuse for decades throughout the Archdiocese of Boston.
I suspect the Weinstein story is just the beginning of a much larger set of revelations about abuse and power in the entertainment industry.
I suspect the Weinstein story, too, is just the beginning of a much larger set of revelations about abuse and power in the entertainment industry. And 15 years into the Catholic crisis, having witnessed the choices the institutional church has made (some of them disastrous), I suspect there are things that Hollywood could learn from that experience right now. Here are five that come immediately to mind.
1. It’s all going to come out …
2. There is an even bigger issue you have to face, and it is everyone else …
3. When cultural expectations change, they change overnight and with no tolerance for the allowances of the past …
4. Changing the rules is not the same as changing the culture …
5. Reap the whirlwind …
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