UNITED STATES
The American Spectator
By Mary Claire Kendall – 1.6.16
“Continuing my walk I reflected that a Church which could inspire such confidence in a child, making its priests, even when unknown, so easily approachable could not be as scheming and creepy as so often made out. I began to shake off my long-taught, long-absorbed prejudices.”
— Alec Guinness, Blessings in Disguise, referring to an incident during filming of The Detective (1954)
The recent film Spotlight should be commended for featuring the Boston Globe’s storied investigative team and their Pulitzer Prize winning reporting that, as Cardinal Sean P. O’Malley, Archbishop of Boston, said in a late October statement to the Pilot, forced the church “to deal with what was shameful and hidden.”
Directed by Tom McCarthy, who also wrote the screenplay with Josh Singer, the film stars some of Hollywood’s brightest lights — Mark Ruffalo, Michael Keaton, Rachel McAdams, John Slattery, Stanley Tucci, Brian D’Arcy, Liev Schreiber, and Billy Crudup — and has solid production values.
But, it doesn’t get everything right.
The Church, the film posits, is institutionally flawed. Priests cannot possibly live a celibate life. Therefore, until the church reforms its rule requiring priestly celibacy, it will continue to have problems and lose adherents, including, notably, the reporter Sacha Pfeiffer, played by McAdams, whose faith, in contrast to that of her beloved grandmother, crumbles before our eyes; or in the case of Mike Rezendes, the lead reporter on the case, whose faith continues to lie fallow.
Yet, in his statement to the archdiocesan paper, O’Malley also said, “The Archdiocese of Boston is fully and completely committed to zero tolerance concerning the abuse of minors. We follow a vigorous policy of reporting and disclosing information concerning allegations of abuse.”
Would that Hollywood would adhere to the same strict rules when it comes to its own pedophiles which, in its case, are not just a small fraction but rather omnipresent.
Not to put too fine a point on it, but Hollywood’s own institutional child abuse scandal dwarfs by orders of magnitude that in the Church. Even child actress Shirley Temple was sexually abused by producer Arthur Freed when she was 12, according to her 1988 autobiography, Child Star.
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