Review: Mea Maxima Culpa: Silence in the House of God

Paedophilia in the Catholic Church from the POV of several grown men who as children at a religious school for the deaf, suffered unspeakable acts of abuse in the 1950s by Father Lawrence Murphy, one of the religious teachers at the school. Unable to communicate with non-signing parents, Fr. Murphy (whose own son knew how to sign) preyed upon the defenceless boys knowing he could get away with it. After getting one good-intentioned priest to listen to their stories and do something about it, that priest is never heard from by the boys ever again. Was he ‘gotten to’ by those wishing to cover things up? Eventually they decide to print up fliers in the form of ‘Wanted’ posters with Fr. Murphy’s face on them. The Church didn’t want to hear about it, lawsuits went nowhere. Former Pope Benedict, then Cardinal Ratzinger was the man in charge of looking into cases of accused molestation by Catholic priests, and is painted as a man with great knowledge and little if any action on the issue as the institution gets treated as being more important than anything else, even innocent children.

 

Filmmaker Alex Gibney (the also fascinating and disturbing doco “Going Clear: Scientology and the Prison of Belief”) tackles the subject of paedophilia and cover-up in the Catholic church in this gripping, horrifying, disgusting 2012 documentary. It also has a perfect title: Silence because the victims were without hearing, and silence is what the church essentially reacted with. I know that I’m an Agnostic Atheist saying this, but watching this I couldn’t help but think 15 minutes into the film if you still didn’t have pause about institutionalised religion, I don’t know what to tell you. 25 minutes in, and it just keeps getting worse and worse. If I were Catholic and heard about this many cases of child molestation underneath the watch of my church, I’d stop being a Catholic or at least stop aligning myself with the institution itself, if not the faith/teachings under it. There are statistics brought up in this film that will make you want to throw up in your mouth. Fr. Murphy alone apparently molested over 200 boys between the 1950s and 1970s. Staggering. I won’t bring up all of the statistics and accusations, because I don’t want to spoil the film for you, but this is disgusting and staggeringly abhorrent stuff. These priests targeted not only innocent children, but deaf children at that, even more vulnerable targets. And don’t even get me started on the penguins, they come off just as bad here, no Sally Field in any of these situations, I’m afraid.

 

Explored in this doco are a priest by the name of Fr. Murphy, who ironically had a son who could sign, given that he banked on his victims’ deafness keeping the abuse secret. We also learn about ‘The Singing Priest’ an Irish priest named Tony Walsh, who had an Elvis impersonation act that might make it all seem like a joke, but was an absolute monster paedophile; The constant use of the word ‘canon’ (or ‘Canon Law’) throughout this film says it all to me: Canon= cover up. The Church enabled what are basically pathological, sick criminals to keep committing their crimes, whilst judging the rest of us simultaneously. Gibney spends quite a bit of time implicating former Pope Benedict and (AKA Cardinal Ratzinger) in the cover-up. At first he comes across as a guy somewhat concerned with what was going on, but not really wishing to rock the boat, either. As the film goes on, he comes across even less admirably, and remember, this is a guy already known for being part of the Hitler Youth. At least there you could argue that perhaps it wasn’t entirely consensual, as every young Aryan lad back then basically joined the Hitler Youth (And even then, I’m only saying ‘perhaps’ you could).

 

However, the one figure who comes across here as absolutely unspeakably awful is Cardinal Sodano, the film’s Emperor Palpatine, basically. The former Vatican Secretary of State, Sodano was supposedly the chief protector of known paedophile priests and even Ratzinger (who was in charge of overseeing the cases against supposed paedophile priests) was pretty powerless against this guy. Honestly, Sodano, Ratzinger and the Vatican seemingly thinking of the priests first in these instances is just disgusting. Protect the Church at all costs? Fuck you, protect children at all costs, you freaks! But when an elderly Fr. Murphy offers up ‘I thought I was taking their sins on myself’ as a rationale for his paedophilia, you really shouldn’t be surprised by the warped views going on here. Really, you’re blaming your victims’ ‘homosexual tendencies’ and claiming to be the ‘cure’? What a monster.

 

The only problem with the whole film for me is that with all of these names and faces brought up, some get a lot more coverage than others. I would’ve liked to have found out what happened to Fr. Murphy’s son for instance, or the Irish Elvis impersonator priest. We don’t find out, because Gibney is more concerned with the more conspiratorial/institutional aspects, and that’s perfectly understandable. It just felt a tad incomplete to me, perhaps others won’t mind so much. It’s a good movie made even better due to the important issue at hand. It becomes essential viewing. See it. You need to. Perhaps not the best documentary of the last few years, but certainly one of the most important.

 

Rating: B