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

By Xan Brooks
The Guardian
February 14, 2013

http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2013/feb/14/mea-maxima-culpa-review

Sure-footed … Mea Maxima Culpa.

Alex Gibney's righteous, exhaustive investigation into child abuse inside the Catholic church arrives in UK cinemas as a kind of unintentional leaving gift for the outgoing Pope Benedict, though it is not one he is likely to relish. In his former role as prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, Joseph Ratzinger stands accused of knowing everything and doing nothing. On the rare occasions he was forced to publicly acknowledge the scandal lapping at his ankles, his concern was more for the fate of the priests than the children themselves.

The film's starting point is the case of Father Lawrence Murphy, a serial abuser at a school for the deaf in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, who was eventually called to account by the boys in his care. Murphy's defence is described as "noble cause corruption", in that he attempts to spin his abuse into a holy act, casting molestation as a form of sacrament. Or, as he puts it: "There was rampant homosexuality among the boys at that school. And I took their sins upon myself."

The Vatican has suggested that priests like Murphy are tragic anomalies, decent men who have fallen into darkness and are therefore deserving of our pity. Yet Gibney's sober, sure-footed documentary claims that the issue is widespread, bordering on the endemic, and that the church holds records of abuse within the priesthood that date right back to the fourth century. The Vatican's response, it argues, has traditionally been to deny the accusations, pay off the victims, and recycle the perpetrators – whether it be abusive Father Murphy or Tony Walsh, the notorious "singing priest", who the film shows merrily belting out Blue Suede Shoes on an Irish television show. At one stage, the church reportedly put a down payment on a Caribbean island, which it planned to run as a safe haven for paedophile priests. Considering that the scandals now look set to cost the Vatican an estimated $2bn in legal damages, the expense of an island would surely have been regarded as a small price to pay.