'Spotlight' now streaming on Netflix

[kenny]

Apparently it's been up for a while but I just noticed.
Superb film!!!

It's about what the investigative reporters of the Boston Globe's had to go trough to bread the story of the widespread child molestations by priests, the the RCC's cover up, in 2002.
It is an astonishingly well made film.
It won lots of awards.

After watching it I wrongly assume the RCC could come out swinging against the film.
I was wrong.
I think the RCC 'gets it'.

Snip from Wikipedia's entry about the film:

Reactions from the Catholic Church
Prior to the film's release, Cardinal Sean O'Malley of the Archdiocese of Boston issued a statement in the archdiocese's official newspaper, stating that the "media's investigative reporting on the abuse crisis instigated a call for the Church to take responsibility for its failings and to reform itself—to deal with what was shameful and hidden."[36] O’Malley had not seen the movie at that time but planned to do so according to a church spokesman.[37]

On November 9, 2015, a review published by the Catholic News Service called the film a "generally accurate chronicle" of the Boston scandal, but objected to some of the portrayals and the film's view of the Church.[38] On the Catholic News Service, auxiliary bishop of Los Angeles Robert Barron said that it is "not a bad movie", as it shows that the wider community shares the responsibility for sexual abuse committed by priests, but that the film is wrong to insinuate that the Church has not reformed.[39]

Vatican Radio, official radio service of the Holy See, called it "honest" and "compelling" and said it helped the U.S. Catholic Church "to accept fully the sin, to admit it publicly, and to pay all the consequences."[40] Luca Pellegrini on the Vatican Radio website wrote that the Globe reporters "made themselves examples of their most pure vocation, that of finding the facts, verifying sources, and making themselves—for the good of the community and of a city—paladins of the need for justice."[40][41] In February 2016, a Vatican City commission on clerical sex abuse attended a private screening of the film.[42] Following the film's Best Picture win at the Oscars, Vatican newspaper L'Osservatore Romano ran a column assuring that the movie is "not an anti-Catholic film", and Vatican Radio revealed that clerics in Rome have been recommending the film to each other.[43][44][45]

 

[kenny]

Of course the problem couldn't be limited to Boston.
But I had no clue it was this widespread.

Apparently it's every place that this job exists, for which men are ordered to not marry women or even use their penises.

Here are four screen captures from the end of the film ...

 

[missy]

I agree it was a powerful movie and I was shocked and upset at how widespread the problem is. My dh is Catholic and went to Catholic school when he was young and he was not surprised like I was. I wonder what else is being kept from the public/being kept secret that we would find as shocking as this.
So upsetting and what an important movie this is to get this issue out in the open as much as possible. Shedding light on this is the only way to make sure it stops happening.

 

[tyty333]

Have not seen it (dont have Netflix ). Just so sad that so many lives were affected/ruined by the Catholic Church. Then
the cover up .

 

[distracts]

I watched this a week or so ago when I noticed it on Netflix. It was a great movie - more about the power of investigative journalism than about the particulars of the Catholic priest molestation scandal (nothing prurient, really, which I was worried about when I first heard about it). The moment where they are on the phone with the expert and ask if he thinks 13 molesting priests sounds like the right number for Boston and he says no, he'd expect the number to be more like 90 - chilling, absolutely chilling. I highly recommend the movie.

 

[kenny]

I watched this a week or so ago when I noticed it on Netflix. It was a great movie - more about the power of investigative journalism than about the particulars of the Catholic priest molestation scandal (nothing prurient, really, which I was worried about when I first heard about it). The moment where they are on the phone with the expert and ask if he thinks 13 molesting priests sounds like the right number for Boston and he says no, he'd expect the number to be more like 90 - chilling, absolutely chilling. I highly recommend the movie.

... to continue a bit ...
The reporters looked up the 13 suspects in the Boston RCC's thick annual directories of priest assignments.
They noticed all 13 had ambiguous entries like sick leave, transferred, or unassigned.
Then, suspecting that those terms may be code for 'the problem' they meticulously poured over every page of every annual directory adding up all those under those ambiguous categories.
Chillingly, the total was 87 ... very close to the prediction of that researcher, 90.

I also found the film to be very fair and not Catholic-bashing or overly focused on the titillating.
They easily could have gone there, and they didn't.

And yes the riveting aspect of the film, for me, was the intelligence and hard challenging work of those reporters, and how much opposition they got from even government officials (often Catholics themselves in Boston, a very Catholic city).

The film reminded me of another fine film from 1976, "All the President's Men" staring Robert Redford and Dustin Hoffman.
It was about Washington Posts' reporters investigating Nixon's campaign's break in and bugging at the Watergate hotel.

Reporters have a real challenge when faced with very powerful folks and organizations who do very bad things.
But thank god for them.

I lament that we are witnessing the end of real jounalism.
I wonder what bad things that bad people and orgs are getting away with now, and will in the future.

 

[distracts]

It was really amazing to see all the work that went into the story, and really gave me a lot to think about re: "24-hour news" and this "infotainment" news - so much of the news we consume is just the basic "what happened today" with a little bit of analysis, and work like this is so much more valuable but it is hard to justify it while it is being done.

 

[ksinger]

Yes, that was a very well done movie. I saw it a while ago and enjoyed it.

In keeping with my eggheadish-ness, I followed the Catholic Church pedophile scandal(s) pretty closely back in the day. I found - and find - it fascinating from a "what were they thinking" human standpoint. And it was fascinating to watch the machinations as the church tried to wriggle out of everything. It was projecting and denial on a grand scale. I read the Boston Globe almost daily as it was breaking and as information came in. Their reporting on that was nothing short of amazing, and there was SO much of it. I also forced myself to read the Massachusetts AG's report on what happened. Tough read.

More recently I've read "Clerical Sexual Abuse - How the Crisis Changed US Catholic Church-State Relations", by Jo Renee Formicola, a Political Science professor at Seton Hall.
"The book discusses the changing relationship between American Catholic Bishops and civil authorities in the United States, as civil authority has eclipsed traditional Catholic ecclesiastical privilege and clerical exemption resulting from the hierarchical mismanagement and cover-up of clerical sexual abuse in the United States."
The pedophile scandals are still reverberating, even here in the US. One thing that has most definitely continued apace, is the reversal of the deference that was once given to canon law in American courts. Those salad days are over, yet the canon lawyers just still can't wrap their heads around it and keep trying their old legal strategies, and nowadays they just keep losing.

 

[kenny]

This, from that Wiki snip above, astonished me.
Floored me, actually.

"Following the film's Best Picture win at the Oscars, Vatican newspaper L'Osservatore Romano ran a column assuring that the movie is "not an anti-Catholic film", and Vatican Radio revealed that clerics in Rome have been recommending the film to each other.[43][44][45]"

This gives me hope.
I really believe this problem will eventually go away, or shrink to being no more common than it is in the general population. ... of course, not that ANY child molestation is acceptable.
Considering their job description lower than the general population should be expected.

IMO allowing priest to marry would drastically change (actually, I'll just say it, improve) the kind of person this job attracts.

 

[distracts]

When I visited the Vatican this summer, I was shocked to see this statue right upon entering...

This photograph does not fully capture the way it appeared in person, because it definitely looked like the Pope was taking this man from behind (from many angles you cannot see the leg sticking out of the marble so it looks more like the man is bending over than striding away). I think I stared at it for a full ten minutes, completely puzzled by the choice. I could not find a better picture online. I'll see if I took a decent one while there.



eta here we go:



I'm still really puzzled by who thought this was a good idea. My entire family stopped and looked at it and was like, "huh, buttsex. The Pope buttsexing someone. And spanking them? Okay. That's very Catholic."