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“Spotlight” — is this what a liberal movie looks like?
######################################################
:date: 1970-01-01T00:00:00
:status: draft
:category: faith
:tags: cultureWar, Catholics, review, homosexuality
So, we went to see the movie. After all, we were living in that
time in Boston, our congregation (non-Catholic) bought its first
church building from the Catholic church trying to collect money
by selling empty church buildings, I am deeply interested in
stories of hurt people, and yes, I hoped that with so many great
actors, it will be a great movie.
I was not disappointed, it is a great movie. I do not feel
qualified to have much deep comments on the acting, so it seemed
to me (as usual) almost perfect. Of course, every male is at
least partially in love with awesome Rachel McAdams, so I really
cannot comment on how perfect her acting was. Perhaps, the only
small exception would be the person played by Mark Ruffalo. Is
Michael Rezendes really such a nervous wreck with a tic, or was
he bit overacting? I don’t know, but it was a bit distracting.
Anyway, I really should not be allowed to comment on the artistic
qualities of the movie, so I won’t.
Obviously, even more important for this movie than movie-making
technique is its message. So let me deal in this post just with
one question put in as extreme tone as possible: is this
a vicious anti-Catholic liberal [#]_ attack?
First of all let make it clear that I do not think that being
critical means to be an enemy. Even less, being a critical to the
Church (or any parts of it) means that one is anti-Christian.
I think Christians should be the first people to understand value
of honesty, confession, of the Luther’s persuasion that “We are
beggars”. I am Czech, I would consider myself reasonably
patriotic, and yet I am a sharp critic (and lobbying for more
admitting) of the `expulsion of Germans from Czechoslovakia`_. In
all this I keep in front of me the person of Nehemiah, who in 1:7
of the book named after him prays to the Lord God:
We have acted very corruptly against you and have not kept
the commandments, the statutes, and the rules that you
commanded your servant Moses.
Nehemiah here confesses sins as one of the sinners (although, he
probably did not commit all those sins himself), he clearly
speaks in the name of whole his nation. So, yes, I believe it
right for me to confess, that, we, Christians [#]_, and we,
Czechs, did plenty of quite horrible things. The only way to the
wholeness, health, and freedom is to admit our sins, to repent,
and seek new fresh way towards the God, towards the Life, towards
maturity.
Also, when standing in the place of confessing sins, it is
probably no good to start with `pointing to others`_ who are
doing the same thing. So, yes, for the movie to be complete
balanced sociological scientific paper on the abuse of minors, it
should mention that there are many other institutions caring for
minors who have problems with sexual abuse (Scouts, Protestant
organizations).
.. _`expulsion of Germans from Czechoslovakia`:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Expulsion_of_Germans_from_Czechoslovakia
.. _`pointing to others`:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/And_you_are_lynching_Negroes
.. [#] Yes, I know that Americans are confused when using the
word “liberal” while meaning what we Europeans would call
Social Democrat or generally lefty. Yes, I would consider
myself friend of liberalism in the tradition of Adam
Smith, Adam Ferguson, Edmund Burke, Frédéric Bastiat, or
from more recent authors Friedrich August von Hayek and
Milton Friedman, and I ask for forgiveness to all here
mentioned (and my late father) for misusing the word, but
we are talking here about the Boston of early 2000s, so
I will follow their customs and talk about liberalism as
the leading ideology of that time and that place.
.. [#] This is certainly not the time to dwelt much on
distinctions between denominations, so, as a Protestant,
I do not think that I should complain too much, when
accussed by unbelievers for sins of Inquisition. Yes,
technically speaking, I have nothing to do with them, but
if we take seriously our belief in one Body of Christ, we
have to accept even the sins of our Catholic brethern.
----
* yet, it is strange, that for its alleged liberalism the movie
has no consideration for the priests themselves (yes, there is
that one priest who admits he was raped himself, but the movie
never develops on it, and all Catholics priests are viewed only
as enemies, devils without character)
It was probably understandable for the original Spotlight team,
because they have literally no access to any of the priests,
and it was more important to report on the case, than to
develop some deep understanding of psychology of abusing
priests, but now? Fifteen years later?
* It is not anti-Catholic, because “Wir sind Kirche” and the
people who violated the Catholic Church in the movie (and in
the reality) were exactly the pedophile Catholic priests and
people who covered their tracts, even so many of them were big
heads in the structure of the Catholic Church. All those
parishes which were forced to be closed, all those people whose
faith was questioned, and of course first of all those minors
who were abused, are the Church and they were all brutally
violated.
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