\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0<\/em>============================<\/strong><\/p>\n By Catherine Dunphy, Mary Johnson and Linda LaScola<\/strong><\/p>\n We discuss our favorite scenes<\/strong><\/p>\n Linda<\/span>: My favorite scene was when reporter Michael Rezendes<\/a>, asked about why he had left the Church, responded, \u201cOh you know, all the usual crap.\u201d \u00a0As if that was enough to explain it. And it is for many Catholics.<\/p>\n Mary<\/span>: You saw how it affected him so deeply, but he still had hope. He began that conversation talking about what the church had meant to him, and I think that is how it is for many people \u2013 they still hope somehow they might be able to go back.<\/p>\n Catherine<\/span>: I really gravitated to Rezendes. He seemed to be the conscience of the group. Though all the characters were struggling, it was playing out most vividly with him.<\/p>\n The scene that struck me the most was near the end when he goes to visit the lawyer, Garabedian<\/a>, to give him an advance copy of the report. Garabedian tells Michael he has to go because, \u201cI have new clients.\u201d He looks through the window and he sees two young kids (siblings), who have both been abused by a priest \u2013 and the look on Michael\u2019s face in that scene, hits you in the gut. It is a subtle yet impactful way of communicating to the audience, \u201cWow \u2013 this is still going on!\u201d<\/p>\n The other scene that stood out for me was the one with reporter Sacha Pfeiffer<\/a>, when she tracked down a retired priest accused of sexual abuse. She asked him directly if he had abused children. His jargon sounded eerily familiar to me. Standing on his porch, dressed like an everyday demure, harmless older gentleman, he responded honestly that he had had sex with children, but, \u201cI didn\u2019t get any sexual gratification from that.\u201d That pushing of responsibility onto the victim is something I\u2019ve heard in the church before. Then the priest admits that he himself was raped, which is something most people are probably not aware of \u2013 that, as children, many priests were themselves victims of priests.<\/p>\n Characterizing the predators and their victims<\/strong><\/p>\n Mary<\/span>:\u00a0That scene was extremely unsettling, because as you said the guy comes to the door, and he looks like this jolly old fellow and Sacha asked him very directly about the accused abuse. He responds, \u201cOh sure, I fooled around with kids,\u201d but just as you said, Catherine, because he got no sexual gratification from it, in his mind it didn\u2019t matter.<\/p>\n For him, a priest who was probably trained in the 50\u2019s when all the emphasis was placed on sin, the fact that he didn\u2019t have any personal satisfaction from these acts meant that he was not as guilty. It\u2019s obviously totally absurd with no real moral sense whatsoever \u2013 but that is the way people were trained. They didn\u2019t think about their own culpability, but rather about breaking the rules.<\/p>\n Catherine<\/span>: Yes. My experience with the bishop of my former diocese was, \u201cThe victims are also culpable, because they participated in the abuse.\u201d When Sacha speaks to the victims, she hears how the priests groomed<\/em> their victims. The use of that word was crucial.<\/p>\n Mary<\/span>: The victims were very often from poor single-parent families and priests would get close to the family under the guise of helping them, only to abuse the children. There was a definite pattern to it.<\/p>\n I recall the scenes that took place in Michael\u2019s kitchen, after work, getting those phone calls from Richard Sipe<\/a> [psychotherapist and former Benedictine monk]. You do not ever see him. You only ever hear his voice over the phone, always talking to Michael, and he tries to explain that this is a real problem, that he has been after clergy about this since 1985. In the movie, they say that only about 50% of priests are celibate, but if you read Sipe\u2019s work, you see that he says, \u201cAt any given time only about 50% of priests are practicing celibacy.\u201c Therefore, over a lifetime, many priests have violated their vow of celibacy. I think that is accurate \u2013 but it\u2019s usually with consenting adults. But that 6% that he pinpointed as the number of Catholic clergy acting out sexually with children is just mind boggling \u2013 that he was able to predict the number! When he was asked, \u201cDo you think it could be as many as 13 priests?\u201d he said, \u201cNo, I think that number is very low.\u201d It turned out to be 87. Close to the 90 he predicted.<\/p>\n When they told their boss, he said, \u201cWe need more than a metric from a hippy ex-priest.\u201d As an ex-nun I know that is how former clergy are generalized. We don\u2019t get lot of credibility, especially former Catholic clergy.<\/p>\n Catherine<\/span>: Listening to those phone conversations between Michael and Sipe, I was wondering if we would ever see Sipe. When we didn\u2019t, I found myself thinking that he was kind of like the voice of God. Without Sipe, the reporters wouldn\u2019t have known what to look for, like the discovery of the annual directories. That was an epiphany, when they began combing through the books and circling the names of the priests who had gone on leave. It showed that the diocese was actually documenting this phenomenon.<\/p>\n Mary<\/span>: The big thing about the Boston Globe reporting that was different from earlier reporting was they weren\u2019t just exposing individual cases; they were determined to show that the corruption went all the way to the top; that this was a cover up, that this was something even bigger than the Boston Archdiocese, that it is endemic throughout the church. They were the first journalists to do that.<\/p>\n Catherine<\/span>: At the end the film where they list the dioceses where major sex abuse scandals were confirmed, I saw my former diocese among those listed. That was a strangely uplifting moment.<\/p>\n Mary<\/span>: I went to the Vatican website and read the review of the movie in Italian, and it\u2019s interesting. It starts with comparing how the airplanes flew into the twin towers: \u201cAs airplanes shook the twin towers, quietly just a few miles to the east there was a shaking of the foundation of the Archdiocese of Boston, unbeknownst to many people and about to be revealed.\u201d They talk about the journalists\u2019 vocation. Good for the Vatican!<\/p>\n Catherine<\/span>: I\u2019m going to be critical about the Vatican\u2019s reaction, because the former archbishop of Boston was promoted and moved to Rome. The Vatican would say that this is a problem of the American Church. Well, in my mind, it\u2019s the church in general. We are looking at information from North America and Europe but I imagine that in the developing world, this problem is much, much worse.<\/p>\n Mary<\/span>: In Africa, I don\u2019t know about the abuse of children, but I am aware that many priests see convents as places where they can go for free sex. This is a widely reported phenomenon. Sometimes they\u2019ll make deals with the Mother Superior \u2014 \u201cWe\u2019ll give you food, and you\u2019ll give me Sister So-and-So.\u201d<\/p>\n [Linda gasps.]<\/p>\n Catherine and Mary on Catholic Treatment Centers<\/strong><\/p>\n Catherine<\/span>: I think this movie is the tip of an iceberg. In seminary, I was keenly aware of this institution called Southdown, started in the 60\u2019s, which is just north of Toronto. It is basically where all priests go when they get into trouble, whether it\u2019s mental health, alcoholism or pedophilia. Their motto is \u201chealthy leaders for a healthy church.\u201d<\/p>\n Mary<\/span>: Those centers exist all over the place. I was in a center briefly, while I was on leave from the Sisters, that did not accept pedophiles. They did help a lot of people, but there were people there who had been caught in other sexual scandals, or addictions, or just trying to make decisions about their vocation. I feel like I am on the inside of the story because of my knowledge of this treatment center.<\/p>\n This reminds me of another thing that I loved about this movie. Matt Carroll<\/a>, the database researcher, discovered that there was a treatment center just a block from his house. He wanted to break the story but also wanted to protect his kids, so he put a note on the fridge with a photo of the house telling his kids not to go near that house. Then when they finally published the story, on the Feast of the Epiphany of all days, Matt drops a paper on the front step of the house, and I thought, \u201cYes!\u201d<\/p>\n![\"Mary](\"https:\/\/wp-media.patheos.com\/blogs\/sites\/468\/2015\/04\/Mary-Catherine-Linda.jpeg\")
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