UNITED STATES
America Magazine
Sam Sawyer, S.J. | Nov 6 2015
Letting go of looking the other way
I dreaded the sight of satellite trucks as I drove to daily Mass. It was the winter of 2002; I was actively discerning a vocation to priesthood in the Jesuits, and most days, I went to daily Mass at St. Ignatius, just a stone’s throw down Commonwealth Avenue from the chancery and cardinal’s residence of the Archdiocese of Boston. Satellite trucks outside the archdiocesan offices meant more tragic news, more revelations of priests who had abused children, more damning evidence that the church had moved them around, covered them up and kept the victims quiet and out of sight rather than removing the abusers from ministry.
Many days, there were satellite trucks.
There were, after all, so many victims, so many years of cover-up all coming to light at once, following the Boston Globe’s breaking the story in January of 2002. The closing scene of “Spotlight,” in which calls start to pour into the Globe’s investigative team with even more stories of abuse than they found initially, was just the beginning of the story for the rest of us in Boston. The revelations, the disappointment, the scandals and the disgust kept coming for months and years, marked, for me, by satellite trucks outside the chancery. It spread beyond Boston, too; but that stretch of Commonwealth was the part of the scandal I could see, and had to see, just before Mass.
Knowing that I had seen “Spotlight” early at press screening, many fellow Jesuits in my community have asked what I thought of it; asked from one priest to another, the question carries inevitable subtext: How bad was it? Was it fair? Did it pile on, joining the collection of cheap jabs that call the whole church hypocritical and tar all priests as if we’re predators?
In order: not bad at all; yes, it was for the most part very fair; and no, it didn’t pile on.
It was all the more gut-wrenching for being so good a film and for telling its story so carefully and fairly.
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