Let Us Pray

I saw “Spotlight” tonight.   While I was aware of the scope of the Abuse scandal in the Catholic Church, I was not aware of how the story in this country broke.  The film is amasterful piece of storytelling that lays bare the intense, personal stories involved with bringing this particular truth to light.

What struck me most about the film (and is still reverberating around in my brain) is how such horrific deeds could be buried and simultaneously suppressed and seemingly forgotten by so many people.  So many people.  Mothers, fathers, priests, victims, reporters, police, clerks, lawyers, judges, bishops, sisters, brothers.  Everyone seemed to know about the systematic sexual abuse of children and its cover-up and few did or said anything to bring the awful truth to light.

When it was spoken of, or mentioned, or reported, it was often swept under any variety of rugs…rugs of denial, rugs of regret, rugs of inconvenience, rugs of misunderstanding, rugs of legal maneuvering, rugs of shame and rugs of white-hot fear.

The complicit cover-up was and is astounding.  It hit home for me — not only the importance of telling the truth, but of speaking up and telling the truth that lays dormant, unspoken and unseen.

This film is as much about the sins of action as it is about the sins of inaction.