movie review of Spotlight, by Tom McCarthy and Josh Singer

Spotlight, 2015. written by Tom McCarthy and Josh Singer.

Directed by: Tom McCarthy

Starring: Mark Ruffalo, Michael Keaton, Rachel McAdams, Liev Schreiber, John Slattery, Stanley Tucci.

Running time: 129 minutes

http://www.spotlightmovietheaters.com/

https://twitter.com/SpotlightMovie


Spotlight follows the Boston Globe journalists who broke the story about the Roman Catholic priests who were raping and molesting children and the complicity of the Roman Catholic Church hierarchy in covering it up. By their actions, the priests deserve to be called sex offenders and to be imprisoned. This is not what happened.

The movie is authentic. The emotions portrayed by the journalists as they are investigating the story are wrenching. I knew these things because I knew some members of SNAP in a nearby city but watching the story re-created drove home the sheer horror of it all.

sapphoq reviews says: The problem with clerical abuse of children and teens was and remains widespread. I have zero confidence in what any authority from the Roman Catholic Church claims about a willingness to be transparent, removal of offending priests from parishes, or an idea that the victims and survivors of said abuse are more important than (R.C.) Church reputation. 

Part of the reason why I think this is because of Rwanda [http://radicalsapphoq.blogspot.com/2011/12/to-vatican.html] and the great cover up there, including the reassigning of one very guilty priest to a new parish in Florence, Italy and a new name to go along with his new parish. His name, that is. He is currently in prison for life for genocide, no thanks to the Vatican. The other part of the reason why I think this is because I've watched the process unfold, including the piteous awards given to survivors and how hard the locals fought to not have the priests held accountable in a court of law.

     I have known two Roman Catholic priests on a casual basis, including during the time when the scandal broke in 2002. One of them was a pedophile who was living in a nearby priest "retreat" house. At least he was then unassigned to a parish with ready-made child victims. What kind of treatment he was getting, if any, was not something that he shared. In fact, he did not share with us that he was an offender. The other one was not an offender. He would get horribly upset about "the poor priests" being accused of these wretched crimes whenever it was brought up. He would become so upset that any rational conversation was difficult. He uttered not a word about the victims.

Go see Spotlight. Highly recommended.