Spotlight

I haven't seen it. I think I probably will. (Frankly, I pay so little attention to movies, except for superhero epics, that I hadn't even heard of it until seeing lists of Oscar winners this morning.) And then two stories I ran across this morning brought it right front and center.

First, from Digby, a post about the background story:

But I have to say that I think it's pretty amazing that the biggest Christian church in the world has been revealed to have covered up thousands of cases of child rape over the course of many decades, perhaps centuries, and they somehow came out with their moral authority intact. This I will never understand. This wasn't just a slip-up. These are among the worst crimes human beings commit, a total taboo, particularly in a church which has no compunction about policing the sexuality of its flock.

I don't know that I agree with the "moral authority intact" part: granted, the Church never had much moral authority with me to begin with, but after the revelations of child sexual (and other) abuse not only in Boston, but in Chicago, in Ireland, in Germany, in Australia -- globally -- what little respect I had for the Church is gone. Not even in tatters, just gone.

And then I ran across this story:

Vatican finance chief George Pell admitted Monday the Catholic Church “mucked up” in dealing with paedophile priests and vowed he would not “defend the indefensible” before an Australian inquiry.

The jaw-dropper was this comment:

But he denied the Church’s structure was to blame for the way it handled paedophile priests, despite counsel assisting the commission Gail Furness saying many inquiries around the world had found those in senior positions did not take proper action.

“I don’t think it calls into question the divine structure of the Church which goes back to the New Testament, the role of the pope and bishops,” he said.

The Church's structure has had everything to do with the way this was handled, starting with the Church's contention that it is above the law and with its first priority: protecting its privilege.

Australia, at least, has called a Royal Commission to investigate. One wonders why the House Witch-Hunt Committee wasn't on top of this.

And for those who thought Pope Francis was going to fix everything, Digby has this quote from an article by Sarah Larson in The New Yorker:

Before I left, we talked about Pope Francis and his often disappointing response to the crisis, as well as the Church’s inflexible positions on the celibacy requirement, women in the clergy, contraception, homosexuality, and so on. I told Rezendes a theory I’d heard from the comedian and childhood-rape survivor Barry Crimmins: that Pope Francis is the Church’s way of changing the conversation without changing the Church. Rezendes looked thoughtful. “That makes some sense,” he said.

(Emphasis added.)

Granted, Francis has a lot of very conservative inertia to overcome, but the idea that his election is a way of deflecting attention from the moral bankruptcy of the hierarchy makes a lot of sense.

And for those who haven't seen it, here's a trailer for Spotlight:

>p align=center>