MAGNITUDE
The timeline unfolds without much fanfare. Little by little, the magnitude of the number of priests, victims, and the span of years and cover-ups becomes clearer. Since we, the audience, presumably know the sordid story and outcome, there are few surprises and no real highs, lows or even serious crisis points.
The kicker is that all the evidence was hiding in plain sight. Much is made of the fact that B.C. High (a Catholic Jesuit boys high school that some of the reporters themselves attended, maintained an infamous priest-coach molester on staff) is directly across the street from the Boston Globe building.
Ironically, both the Catholic Church in Boston and the Boston Globe were at the height of their influence at the beginning of the new millennium, while a third character–the internet–is just becoming a serious player.
WHO’S TO BLAME?
Very self-effacingly — and I would say unnecessarily and misplaced — the film blames The Globe itself in a big way for not reporting the story years earlier when lawyers and victims provided plenty of damning information that went ignored. Whatever culpability The Globe bears, they more than made up for it by compiling overwhelming, carefully-researched evidence that wouldn’t be just another isolated story that would get buried. “The Church” and Cardinal Law are distant, cold, uncaring shadows. The abusing priests are sick and distorted men — almost excused. The names Geoghan, Shanley and Talbot (among others) will conjure up ugly memories for all who lived at the heart of this nightmare or on its peripheries.
FOCUS ON THE VICTIMS
The faces and voices of the victims are given three-dimensional reality and the major focus. Even the heroic, crusading lawyer, Mitchell Garabedian — who insisted on bringing victims’ cases to the courts to expose the Church’s wrongdoing — is modestly underplayed.
DENIAL
Part of the initial incredulity of sectors of the public and the average Catholic in the pew to the Globe’s scoop was due to the Globe’s notorious anti-Catholicism since its very inception in 1872 (not unlike most of the old Boston WASP establishment). And many just didn’t believe that so many heinous crimes of this nature could have been so well hidden for so long. If it were true, surely we would have known? Surely we would have heard some rumors and gossip? Whoever did know something was silenced with hush money, or gave up when crushed by the power of the Church’s legal and “moral authority” arsenal and sway. But it didn’t take long for the undeniable, verifiable veracity of the charges to grip the city and the world.
NO AFTERMATH
There is precious little aftermath in the film, as it wraps up on the day the first big story is released (there were a total of 600 stories run relentlessly about the scandal for at least a year afterward in the Globe). A few words of Epilogue are given, and then we are left with a gaping wound of sadness.
THREE FLAWS
As I see it, three minor drawbacks to the film are:
1) They got Cardinal Law a bit wrong. They made him a much older man (he was only 68 in 2001) with a hint of an Irish accent (Wha?). They made him a rather flat — although bold — stereotypical bureaucratic figure, when in reality he was a magnetic, charismatic personality who had actually been a media favorite when he first came to Boston.
2) The feeble, brief explanations given for the (unfettered) abuse were screaming to be explored and were even contradictory.
- “Celibacy is the issue. It creates a culture of secrecy.” Really?? So if one attempts to practice (priestly) celibacy they have a good chance of being/becoming a depraved, predatory pedophile? And how are celibacy and secrecy related? This makes no sense. And sadly, most sex abusers of children? Married men.
- Another reason given is that some of the priests were “psycho-sexually stunted at the level of a 12-year-old” — which may be very true, but that does not make one an automatic repeat child molester. The one priest molester we see being interviewed begins to say that he was raped, but the thought was not continued. (The rest of that statistic is that it was discovered that some priests who molested children were molested by priests themselves when they were children. They grew up, become priests and continued the cycle.)
3) I would like to have seen some rage in the film. Some of the rage that I felt and still feel in the pit of my stomach. Perhaps the filmmakers are leaving that up to us, the audience.