The Vatican said the wisest thing…think about it.
As far as my interest in the film, the Boston incident is quite old now and I really have no need or desire to open up a very raw wound in myself. I see nothing at all to be gained except to be hurt all over again.
Because this movie has been such a hit, it is quite likely this will lead to a sequal or another one quite like it.
These people never go after any other organization because we are the most convenient and open. Dragging this out again and again just opens up old wounds over and over, and it isn’t just the real victims wounds, for we are all victims.
And frankly I don’t care about all the good intentions cited, it will still do a lot more harm. And just to prove a point … has anyone ever forgotten it? And how does it make you feel? And if it makes you feel that way, then how will it make non-catholics feel?
I have a relative who left the church for this very reason. Seeing this movie will just make them more determined than ever. Thank you Hollywood.
I have not seen the film. I am not sure I want to because it might open up an old wound for me, as well, however sometimes opening up an old wound can help remove scar tissue so to speak. I was molested by a priest, but it wasn’t until I wanted to be a CCD teacher’s aide and went through the training about how to spot a sex offender and report it that I truly understood how guiltless I was. I cried through the entire training sessions, because it could have been the priest that molested me that they were talking about. It talked about all the tricks the perverts use. I didn’t even realize that deep inside me, I somehow blamed myself for what happened to me. He always told me it was the way I smiled that made him do what he did to me. I stopped smiling for years. The training said that the perverts try to make the victim feel complicit in their abuse. I went back and looked at pictures of myself. My smile was very sweet and innocent. Although the training was extremely painful, it helped me.
I have had people say to me that they can’t understand how I could go to a church that encouraged and hid sex offenders. I tell them that the church is an institution just like the public school is an institution. Would you say how can you send your child to school because every year there are teachers who are exposed as child molesters? Would you say schools are a terrible institution because child molesters work there?
I think that anyone who leaves the church because there are child molesters who are priests, janitors, etc. is looking for an excuse to leave the church. It’s like saying that a person shouldn’t be a football fan because football is notorious for having drug using, wife beating, dog baiting athletes.
There have been some really bad players in the church, Cardinal Bernard Law being the worst. When I answered the phone at the rectory of the priest who was a child molester, then Bishop Law wanted to know how old I was, how often I was at the rectory, how I came to be at the rectory, who else was at the rectory, etc. If he didn’t suspect the priest was a molesting me, I don’t think he would have asked all those questions. Later, another girl’s parents were going to file charges against that priest, the girl told me that he had molested young girls in other towns where he had been a priest. Years later, after all Boston stuff, I called to tell the diocese where the molesting had happened to me and told them about what had happen to me and that Law had probably done the same thing there that he had done in Boston. They took down the information, but they told me there were no records of any priests being child molesters in the diocese at that time. I personally view Bernard Law as being complicit with child molesters.
Bernard Law is not the Church. The Church never taught the clergy that it was okay to molest children, just like schools don’t teach it is okay to molest children. The Church never taught that it was okay to hide chid molesters. I think that, other than Bernard Law, which is a situation I know about personally, the Church’s biggest mistake was naivete and ignorance. I think that the Church, as a whole, was slow to believe that evil could hide itself under the guise of goodness, and it was completely ignorant about how to handle the situation it was faced with.
If this movie truly shows the pain and betrayal the average layman felt when it was discovered that people they trusted were evil, then maybe this movie can help people understand why Catholics love God and follow the Church’s teachings.
And here’s a thought, everyone that volunteers and comes in contact with children at Church **must **take a training class on how to spot and report perverts. This is not a requirement for public school teachers. There are child safety seminars that are held on teacher inservice days, but the teachers I know say they can choose which seminars they want to attend.
