Trailer: "Mea Maxima Culpa: Silence in the House of God" Exposes Catholic Sex Abuse Cover up

By Bison Messink
The Ology
August 18, 2012

http://www.ology.com/post/200558/trailer-mea-maxima-culpa-silence-in-the-house-of-god-exposes-catholic-sex-abuse-cover-up

'Mea Maxima Culpa' delves into the systematic cover up of Rev. Lawrence Murphy's decades of sex abuse.

Set to premiere in September at the Toronto Film Festival, Mea Maxima Culpa: Silence In The House Of God looks to be a chilling expose of the Catholic Church's systematic cover up of decades of sex abuse by Rev. Lawrence Murphy (trailer video below). Murphy worked as a priest at a Catholic school for deaf boys in Wisconsin, and preyed upon hundreds of boys during his tenure there, from 1950 to 1974.

Rev. Murphy's abuse, and the Church's organised cover up, was written about extensively in the New York Times in 2010. As far back as the 1950s, Murphy's victims told everyone they could think to tell about what Murphy had done to them: other priests, nuns, priests, three archbishops, two police departments and a district attorney. But the allegations were repeatedly shrugged off or not believed.

The Vatican never defrocked Murphy, even though word of his abuse travelled as far as the Vatican, and to then-future Pope Benedict. In fact, Benedict appears to be at the center of the Church's non-action and cover ups of sexual abuse for more than a decade now. He ignored two letters sent to him in 1996, detailing Murphy's abuse.

"From 2001 forward, every single priest sex abuse case went to [current Pope Joseph] Ratzinger. He has all the data," says testimony in Mea Maxima Culpa's trailer.

For all the outrage and anger that has boiled over the Jerry Sandusky sex abuse scandal at Penn State, it is all the more remarkable that the Catholic Church got away with -- and continues to get away with -- its deplorable record of shielding pederasts and protecting their sacred institution. If there is anything good that can come out of the Sandusky abuse and cover up, perhaps it is that awareness of the issue has been put in the forefront of public consciousness, and that as a society we might begin to demand more of a Catholic Church that has egregiously abused children for far too long.