UNITED STATES
Concord Monitor
Sunday, December 6, 2015
The half-smile on Cardinal Bernard Law’s lips doesn’t really reach his watchful eyes as he looks at Marty Baron, the newly installed editor of the Boston Globe, who has been summoned to meet with the prelate in his private study.
“I find this city flourishes when its great institutions work together,” says the cardinal.
His words hang in the air for a few moments before Baron responds. “I’m of the opinion that for a newspaper to do its job, it has to stand on its own.”
This is a succinct summation of the drama at the core of the movie Spotlight, now showing (through Thursday, Dec. 10) at Concord’s Red River Theatres. The film, which opened last month to near-universal acclaim, tells – pretty much accurately – the story of the Globe’s long investigation into the pedophile scandal that enveloped the Catholic Church in Boston and eventually across the country and the world.
It was a case study of clerical power vs. secular power, and secular power won. The movie is brilliantly done. Although we all know what happened and how it ended, this story of the Church’s longtime denial of the existence of pedophile priests in Boston – even as it was shielding the offenders – is almost unbearably suspenseful. It’s well worth seeing.
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