EXPOSING THE VIPER’S BROOD

If you have not already seen the movie “Spotlight,” starring Michael Keaton, Rachel McAdams, Mark Ruffalo, Liev Schreiber and Brian d’Arcy James, go see it! It’s time and money well-spent. Spotlight is the behind-the-scenes story of The Boston Globe’s investigation of sexual abuse by priests in the Catholic Church and the systematic cover-up of that abuse by the Catholic hierarchy. The movie is both accurate and insightful in portraying the newspaper reporters who broke the original story as well as the church leaders and their lawyers who fought the Globe’s investigation and drive to bring the sexual abuse scandal to light. Spotlight is not just a well-crafted movie. It’s a piece of compelling social commentary and deserves any awards it musters.

I was thinking about Spotlight yesterday when I read that Peter Saunders, himself a victim of sexual abuse by a priest, resigned from his position on the Catholic Church’s papal commission on sexual abuse by the clergy. Saunders has been highly critical of what he perceived as “foot dragging” by the Vatican and the commission he departed when it came to acknowledging the true sources of the sexual abuse scandal and committing to concrete and effecting reform in the way victims are treated and their abusers are handled. It is sad that the Catholic Church continues on the ruinous path of denial. The effect of its foot dragging is the loss of moral authority.

You cannot turn a blind eye to the raping of thousands of children and then lay claim to a mantle of morality. There’s a reason why Jesus called the religious leaders of his day hypocrites and a vipers brood. The Pharisees and Sadducees, as they were known, spent countless hours denouncing the morality of those who didn’t conform to the dictates of the Hebrew religious elite, but those same leaders bore the poisonous fangs of a serpent without a trace of human compassion or warmth in their hearts. The Catholic Church today exhibits the same venomous tendencies as the Jewish clergy in Jesus’ day, and that is why it loses more members each day than it gains.

When a man like Peter Saunders throws in the towel, a man’s whose love for the Church remained strong despite having suffered sexual abuse by a priest, something is terribly wrong with the core of the Catholic Church and change is desperately needed.

The nuns in school always claimed that the laity was the Church. If that’s the case, the people in the pews have their work cut out for them.