In Mea Maxima Culpa: Silence in the House of God, documentarian Alex Gibney explores the Catholic Church’s decades-long cover-up of priest abuse from a Wisconsin parish to the top of the Vatican (and I mean the top). The film begins with the horrifying and disgusting abuse of the most vulnerable – children at a residential Catholic school for the deaf whose devout parents cannot communicate with them through American Sign Language.
At first it seems like another story of Church leaders suppressing the truth to avoid bad publicity and lawsuits – and it is for the first few years. But then we learn about an American bishop trying to remove a pedophile from ministry, but being thwarted by superiors across the Atlantic. As Gibney pulls apart the onion, the focus of the story climbs the Church hierarchy. The brilliant and prolific Gibney’s work includes Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room, Client 9: The Rise and Fall of Eliot Spitzer, Casino Jack and the United States of Money and the Oscar-winning Taxi to the Dark Side.
I also recommend another documentary on this difficult subject, Deliver Us From Evil, which made my top ten list for 2006. That is the story of a serial pedophile priest moved from parish to parish in the Diocese of Stockton, California. This has become, sadly, a familiar narrative, but what distinguishes Deliver Us From Evil is its breathtaking interviews with the pedophile himself.
Mea Maxima Culpa: Silence in the House of God is now playing on HBO.
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