This post seeks to advance a reaction to the film "Spotlight," an account based on The Boston Globe's revelation of the sexual abuse of children by Catholic priests in the Archdiocese of Boston. Emphatically, it is not presented as a critique in any formal sense - I thought the cinematic aspects, acting, direction, and screenplay were fantastic, but I'm no film critic! Moreover, insofar as I am certain that screenwriters and others involved in the production consistently sought to maintain a cinematic vision in general conformity to actual events, I cannot really contest the details of the film. The nature of my comments precisely concern my reaction, as someone who has definitively abandoned Roman Catholicism but who otherwise remains in contact with the Church by virtue of devout practice of the faith by family members and friends, as well as the legacy of my own past practice of the faith.
For the record, I practiced Roman Catholicism devoutly until I was thirty (that is, I went to mass every Sunday and holy day of obligation, attended confession/reconciliation at least two times a year, before Christmas and Easter, and attempted to become engaged in various liturgical practices, including a ministry to Catholics who had left the Church). I left the Church for a variety of reasons. However, I emphatically did not leave because of the clergy sexual abuse scandal! When I am questioned on the subject, particularly by people like my Episcopalian theologian friend Scott, I can definitively argue that I left for succinctly theological/Christological reasons. When I get around to it, I may start an entirely new blog to precisely elaborate my perspective on Christology and pursue resolution of numerous theological points pertinent to my life, but, briefly, as both a Marxist and a lifelong practitioner of Western monotheistic religion, I accept the existence of God but reject the Christian idea of the Trinity and question, in a somewhat dialectical sense, the divinity of Jesus the Nazareen. Emphatically, in regard to a broad array of Western theological issues, I think that we need to reopen certain Christological arguments otherwise settled for evangelicals by the gospel of John and various Pauline epistles. My present position on God resembles, at least in part, the positions of numerous Eighteenth century deists (represented in the American context notably by the religious beliefs of Jefferson, Washington, Franklin, and other American forefathers), augmented with a heady quantity of post-modern critical reflections on rationality and the possibility for human apprehensions of objective truth. Furthermore, as I may have stated previously on this blog, my family is almost entirely devout in its practice of Roman Catholicism, to the point that I have attempted, at least weakly, to downplay or otherwise conceal my rejection of Christianity, in general, and Catholicism, in particular. As such, my perspective on "Spotlight" is significantly shaped by my lingering (familial and theological) relationships with Catholicism, my personal rejection of Catholicism (for reasons wholly unrelated to clergy abuse scandals), and my innate conviction of religious practice, spirituality, and other evident sources of faith as motivational sources for the inherent possibilities for human civilization, however divorced from the larger development of a secular tradition of humanistic and existential philosophy.
Having asserted these points on my relationship to Roman Catholicism, "Spotlight" played out in a manner that seemed to represent a broader struggle between good (the muckraking media, acting in the best interest of its readers and the general public in the name of unvarnished, democratized civil discourse) and evil (the entrenched power of the Church in the name of religious seclusion and unquestioned implicit/secretive influence over civil governance in Massachusetts). And yet, the fine lines delineating good and evil are continuously blurred. The Catholic Archdiocese of Boston not only utilizes its influence over legal authorities to circumvent criminal proceedings against pedophile priests and sweep evidence of abuse away from public scrutiny, but also manages vast charitable resources, without which thousands of needy dependents on the good will of Catholic parishioners would be thrust onto a cruel and uncaring world of impersonal state bureaucracies and budgets balanced on the backs of individuals least able to care for their own needs. Significantly, at stake since the revelation of sexual abuse in the Church has been the fate of Catholic charities, reliant on the active monetary and volunteer support of parishioners but seriously impacted in a negative way by the reaction against settlements between the Church and victims of clergy sexual abuse - it's difficult for diocesan and parish level administrators to make demands of parishioners to give generously in support of liturgical missions and provision of care to marginalized populations when the same parishioners know that the diocese maintains legal liabilities from settlements in reparation from the actions of many pedophile priests.
Moreover, on some level, the Catholic Church continues to constitute a community in faith, structured by a 2000 year old apostolic legacy, in which faithful Catholic parishioners both bind themselves to the dictates of the Church and articulate, by their faith and their participation in myriad liturgical functions/roles, the relationships that define Roman Catholicism as a global human community. The body of the faithful (most notably, the laity) is at least as definitively Catholic as its head (the Vatican and its hierarchical structures, from Rome to every diocese and every parish community). In the absence of either, there is no Church. As such, responsibility for the evils apparent in the Church's clandestine response to localized incidents of clergy sexual abuse of minors resides in the hands of Church officials and, at least partially, in those of the laity from whom the former received a worldly blessing to administer to their spiritual needs and the material/charitable missions of the Church as they saw fit. Before I left the Church, it seemed as though various corners of the lay community, in my own parish and elsewhere, were starting to come to terms with their own culpability for enabling priests to abuse children with impunity. Groups like the "Voice of the Faithful" were actively demanding that diocesan level Church leaders account for their actions in the face of allegations against priests for sexual misconduct with children. In certain ways, the hierarchical structure of Roman Catholicism, from the Chair of Peter to each individual lay communicant, simply does not afford the lay Catholic community the capacity to wield democratic oversight over Church leadership - the Church is not now, nor has it ever been, a democratic body of the faithful.
On the other hand, if the Catholic lay community can gradually realize a deeper measure of responsibility, to the exclusion of the clergy, to minister to its own spiritual needs and, in more practical terms, separate the earthly liturgical/sacramental roles served by the clergy from the theological centrality of Christ as the transcendental head of the Church, then maybe lay Catholics will discover meaningful ways to "make do" on their spiritual lives without conferring on the clergy any excess capacity to serve as spiritual intermediaries beyond their sacramental duties. In this respect, I am neither suggesting that parish communities need to take on the democratic trappings of various Protestant denominations nor that lay Catholics should demand extreme changes to sacramental and liturgical practices to more fully incorporate lay participation if not direction. Rather, it seems conceivable that lay Catholics could organize themselves for collective spiritual and material/charitable practices in ways that might effectively marginalize clergy and Church hierarchy, remaining consistent with Catholic teachings and Church doctrine on spiritual/theological and social matters but enforcing a boundary between sanctified Church organizations and voluntary activism by the laity. Such a characterization seems to describe, at least in my understanding, what the Voice of the Faithful had been about. In my former parish, this group had been allowed by the pastor to meet in the parish hall. In my view, such a collaborative rapport between the Church and a lay group, especially one with a critical orientation toward Church policies, might never have been warranted. On some level, collaboration with the Church, even through the auspices of an open-minded parish pastor otherwise closely engaged with his community of believers, always portends the possibility of co-optation. In this particular case, at least in my memory, the collaboration ended abruptly when the Springfield diocese relocated the pastor in question and replaced him with a priest who was less collaborative with lay groups critical of Church practices. Alternatively, maybe the participants in Voice of the Faithful would have gained more from organizing collective prayer sessions, biblical and liturgical study practices, and/or spiritually-inspired charitable missions, out of their own homes and on other non-Church grounds. That is to say, any pretense of democratic engagement between Church leadership and the laity, otherwise fostered by the odd friendly pastor, is of dubious value within an essentially undemocratic/anti-democratic, hierarchical organization that, in any case, the laity need not confront directly to voice their concerns! In a certain sense, the sort of thing that I have in mind here might somehow approximate a "Reformation from within" by the laity that never actually threatens the Church hierarchy or its sacramental duties but permanently puts the same hierarchy in its place when it comes to the administration of extra-sacramental responsibilities. If, on the one hand, this is something that, as a Marxist, deist, ex-Catholic, I really shouldn't overly concern myself, then, on the other hand, as someone with numerous Catholic friends and family members, I can only cast a strong degree of sympathy for the present state of Roman Catholicism, globally, in the U.S., and, most directly, in my own backyard of the Boston Archdiocese. It is hard not to acknowledge that the wider world needs an active and engaged Catholic community of the faithful as much as Catholics need a Church that will acknowledge its responsibilities to change, repent its sins, and continuously resituate itself as an agency (however imperfectly democratized) in defense of a timeless moral and spiritual truth in action.
Approaching the other side in "Spotlight," it is clear that the Globe's muckrakers cannot be ascribed an entirely unblemished record with regard to the paper's treatment of Catholicism in the Boston Archdiocese. Here, of course, we are dealing quite substantially with the field of dramatization and, in this respect, we have to acknowledge that Hollywood screenwriters substantially produce the space within which they can tell a cinematically compelling story. Given my own lack of knowledge on the lives of the actual Spotlight team at the Globe, I cannot draw a dividing line between what is real and what is fiction. On the other hand, the real, whatever that might be, doesn't really matter when it comes to diagnosing the effects of a cinematic performance and, specifically, its capacity to reshape the way that we look at the given historical event that has been dramatized. As I have noted previously on this blog (specifically in regard to docu-dramatizations on the cable network History), the gap between reality and fiction is pertinent to the particular way in which an audience grasps history and how such appropriations impact the way reality in the present is lived.
With these warnings in mind, the (dramatized) Globe and its Spotlight team appear as active participants and facilitators in the Boston Archdiocese's prolonged history of clergy sexual abuse. The particular case that opens the door for the Spotlight team to begin an investigation into clergy sexual abuse, the Commonwealth's prosecution of Father John Geoghan for numerous instances of child sexual abuse in 2001, is only pursued under pressure from a relative outsider, newly hired editor Marty Baron (Liev Schreiber), who is continuously portrayed as a quintessential outsider ( a Jew from New York, coming to Boston from the Miami Herald, under the direction of the New York Times Company, owner of the Boston Globe, without any experience on the constellations of religious influence driving political power in extremely Catholic metropolitan Boston - as a welcoming present, Cardinal Law gives Baron a copy of an official Catholic Catechism, offered as a "guide map" to Boston). Otherwise, the Globe's staff appears initially cool to the idea of probing clergy sexual abuse in any significant capacity. Notably, Spotlight editor Walter "Robby" Robinson's (Michael Keaton) immediate supervisor, Ben Bradlee Jr. (John Slattery), appears continuously dismissive of the entire project, at least until it seems likely that the team will be able to uncover verifiable evidence of involvement in the early 1990s by Cardinal Bernard Law's office in the Geoghan case. Robinson, as a lifelong Bostonian and lapsed Catholic graduate of Boston College High School, apparently has his own record of dismissing widespread allegations of a cover up of sexual abuse claims in the Archdiocese. In the end, upon publishing completed investigative findings on sexual abuse by dozens of priests in the Archdiocese, the Globe awaits significant protests by supporters of the Church in reaction to the tarnishing potential of its reporting. Instead, the Spotlight team unleashes a torrent of testimonies from abuse victims, and, partly through its actions, instigates a broader reaction within the Catholic lay community, culminating in the formation of groups like Voice of the Faithful.
The larger point here is that Baron's decision to pursue an investigation on clergy sexual abuse inheres to his conviction that, in an age of alternative media and declining newspaper readership, the Globe had to discover ways to remain an relevant institution in the eyes of its readers. It raises a question, however, regarding the criteria for relevance of the print media, in particular, and media sources in general. If editorial staff for the Globe made a consistent choice over the course of the 1990s to ignore or dismiss claims made by attorneys and victims' rights associations that a widespread institution of sexual abuse by clergy and extra-judicial rectifying procedures by diocesan officials existed under Cardinal Law's watch, then, in some way, it reflects a conscious preference within the paper for participation in the maintenance of an implicitly adjudged benign status quo within the Catholic community. Furthermore, as screenwriters Tom McCarthy and Josh Singer forcibly imply, the lingering connections to Catholicism experienced by every staff member of the Spotlight team must have, necessarily, produced some underlying sense that the allegations they were tasked to investigate were too preposterously heinous to be true. As such, at least some measure of relevance in the media must exist in the passive validation of a status quo in which the boundaries of the conceivable and the inconceivable get defined and professionally enforced. If a capacity exists for the media to transform this relevance by challenging the status quo, then it remains to be asked how such a capacity it to be exercised. The screenwriters provide a simple answer - just bring in a Jew from New York who isn't entrenched in the Boston Catholic establishment to challenge the invincible political influence of the Church and treat the newspaper as his own personal vehicle for a radical social crusade. On the other hand, the story also seems to present small mutations in the mindsets of various staff members, most notably Michael Rezendes (Mark Ruffalo) and Sacha Pfeiffer (Rachel McAdams). It isn't entirely clear that such mutations could have taken place without Baron's decision to take on the diocese. In this sense, we are continuously left with the problem that there is no necessary reason why the free press will be especially inclined, as an inherent condition of their role in promoting public discourse in a democracy, to engage in dangerous, radical projects against entrenched political agents that have abused the public trust (or, in this case, the trust of millions of Catholic faithful).
