Spotlight on My Heart, the Church

"I can't go up there! You're girls!" Fr. Jon whisper-shouted up the stairs, as we giggled and rebuked him with amusement. "No, not that! We need you for something!" We were spies, you see. As our parents and other adults partied downstairs, we were allocated to the second and third floors, and we were getting a bit, well, antsy. We were curious what those grown-ups were talking about. We needed to infiltrate their lines, without being caught, without going down there ourselves. We needed an ally. Fr. Jon fit the bill. Eventually he gave in to our pleas and walked up the back stairs to greet us. We handed him a tape recorder and instructed him to discreetly place it in the kitchen and press play. Not a word to another soul, we told him. He obeyed, or so we thought. Later, when we retrieved the tape, the most amusing thing we heard - in fact, the only thing I remember - was him telling one friend's mother, "it's for the girls." "And Justin!" we squealed, as we rolled over in laughter. So it turned out our chosen ally wasn't the most nonchalant after all; but that did not deter us from harassing him again and again.

This memory spun through my mind this past Sunday evening as I watched the movie Spotlight, the Academy Award winning Best Picture film about the sex abuse scandals in the Archdiocese of Boston.
With a plate of leftover salad and a slightly overcooked chicken breast, I watched the narrative unfold, watched the number of accused priests go from thirteen to eighty-seven, the victims from twenty to one thousand, and my heart hurt like it never hurt before. I heard my ten-year-old self giggling over Fr. Jon's refusal to come upstairs, so confused at the time why he would ever think talking to us suggested something improper. I took his safety and discretion for granted, a blessing that tragically did not belong to thousands of children around the world. "I can't go up there!" he said. How many suffering souls desperately wish their priest had said the same thing?

When the film came out in 2015, people told me not to watch it, that I "wouldn't like it" since it critiqued the Catholic Church, but that is precisely why I - and every other Catholic out there - should watch it. The movie was actually made for us, not for the disbelievers and disaffiliated who are already looking for reasons to rid the world of organized religion. No, what makes Spotlight so heartbreaking is that the crisis at hand - the secrecy and corruption of Church hierarchy - affected all the characters but one on a deeply personal level. Other than the Jewish editor, each and every person on the reporting team, at the newspaper - heck, in all of Boston they made it seem - had some relation to Catholicism. Even if they were lapsed or questioning or hoping to return, they were tied to the Catholic Church, and here they were: discovering the most horrifying facts imaginable about an institution that, even if they didn't believe the creed anymore, was supposed to be a safe haven, a guiding light. Yet here they were, unearthing that it was burying itself in darkness. The story is effective because every character has something to risk: their memory, their faith, their city.

What the Church got wrong, what my friends who told me not to watch the movie got wrong, what people in the world today continuously get wrong, is that critique is bad; that critique is meant to destroy. What Spotlight so brilliantly affirms is that critique is not meant to destroy, but to save. To save the lives of present and future victims of abuse. To save the Catholic Church from sin and corruption. To save the truth. If we cannot take critique, if we cannot hear the truth, then how can we ever move forward? How can we ever improve? How can we ever serve others?

From Borgia to Buffalo, the Catholic Church has seen her more than fair share of corruption, and she has handled the various crises with varying levels of effective success. The Boston Globe's Spotlight article in 2001 exposed the depth of secrecy and abuse among Boston clergy, and set off a movement around the world demanding the Church be held accountable for her perpetrators and her victims. In 2002, the Catholic Church began implementing trainings, treatments, and a Zero Tolerance Policy to protect children and ensure a safer future. While she has come far, she still has very far to go, and it is only with an openness to critique that she can hope to solve these problems. If she wants her pews full again; if she wants to bring about salvation; she must shout down the devil. She is hurting. Dwindling priest and religious vocations prove this; generations were scarred and pray no more. How can she recover? For she must recover. Education and philosophy and calendars and art and law and feminism and science - yes, science - would be nowhere without her.

My memory is full of priests: racing them to the finish line of the Act of Contrition; moving them into the house next door; celebrating Easter, New Year's Eve, birthdays, and even Friendsgiving with them; admitting my hardest struggles and insecurities to them across a screen divide or, when I was feeling brave, face-to-face; sitting through their homilies that made me laugh, cry, and fall asleep. Yes, my life would be incomplete without priests, and I cannot fathom any of these moments being compromised by danger, manipulation, and abuse.

As Lent draws to a close and Holy Week approaches, let us pray and hope that the Church in its entirety - priests, religious, and lay - has the courage to carry her cross and rise in new life again. It will take everyone working together. Just as Jesus met the crying women, Veronica, Simon, his mother Mary, and countless others; just as Jesus did something for each of them and they each did something for him; so we all must work together to set things right, to purify our hearts and minds, to see Christ lifted high again.

"Let the little children come to me, and do not hinder them, for the kingdom of heaven belongs to such as these." Matthew 19:14






Photo: Wikipedia Commons