Spotlight

Spotlight is the dramatization of the investigation by group of Boston Globe reporters in 2001 that led to the expose of the cover-up by the Catholic Church in Boston of the abuse of minors by Catholic priests.

The movie sets the stage by opening with a scene in a Boston police station in 1976. The bishop is overheard telling a young mother with her children, that the priest will be taken out of the parish. Two police officers in station talk about what is happening and it is mentioned that the priest, Father Geoghan will never face an arraignment. When the lawyer arrives, he tells them to keep the press away from the station.

Fast forward to July 2001. Marty Baron has just become editor of the Boston Globe and decides he wants to shift the paper towards investigative journalism that focuses on local stories. "Spotlight" is a four person investigative reporter team which reports to Ben Bradlee Jr. When Marty arrives, Spotlight is in the process of trolling for its next story.

Around this time Globe columnist Eileen McNamara had just published another column on the Father John J. Geoghan case which she has been following since it broke in 1996. Geoghan was eventually defrocked and by 2001 he was facing criminal charges as well as 84 civil suits. McNamara questioned how the Catholic Church, specifically Cardinal Bernard Law of Boston could repeatedly place Geoghan in new parishes after he reportedly went on "sick leave" and not have known he was re-offending. While Baron wants the investigative team to pursue this and to apply for the sealed documents to be released, the rest of the Spotlight team remains skeptical until they begin researching.

Walter Robinson, the lead editor on the team advises that they start with the Father Porter case in which dozens of kids were molested in Fall River ten years earlier. Eric MacLeish represented the victims in this case and when they talk to him he warns them to be discreet so that Cardinal Law does not learn of the investigation. Walter Robinson and Sacha Pfieffer, also Spotlight reporters, meet with MacLeish and he informs them that the cases are difficult to represent because the statue of limitations on abuse is three years and is complicated by the fact that many victims do not come forward until they are adults. Most of the victims were kids from tough neighbourhoods. MacLeish tells Walter and Sacha that he believes Mitch Garabedian, who is representing the victims in the Geoghan case has nothing on Cardinal Law and that he is bluffing in order to obtain a bigger settlement. Mike Rezendes reaches out to Mitch Garabedian, the eccentric lawyer for the Geoghan victims, in the hopes of speaking with some of the victims. Garabedian is reluctant at first but later agrees.

After having clips and other material pulled from the Globe's archives, they come across Phil Saviano who is a victims advocate and who has formed a group called SNAP - Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests. Sacha is requested to track him down. The Globe archives also reveal that another priest,  Liam Barrett molested kids in Philadelphia, was transferred to Boston, reoffended and was moved again. His case was settled in 1977. This leads Robinson and the team to believe that there might be a pattern involved in the abuse.

When the reporters talk to Saviano he tells them the abuse is not about being gay but that it's about priests raping boys and girls. Saviano reveals that he was preyed upon by Father David Holley of Worcester and that most of the victims were poor kids who feel special when a priest shows them attention. Saviano shocks the team by telling them that he believes the extent of the abuse is widespread, encompassing all of America and the world right up to the Vatican. He knows of thirteen priests in Boston alone who are abusing children. Saviano also directs them to talk to Richard Sipe, an ex-priest who worked in the one of the church's treatment centers and who has studied priest-abusers.

Both Mike Rezendes and Sacha Pfieffer interview victims who explain how they were targeted and what kind of abuse they suffered. They also learn that Eric MacLeish represented a number of these victims and obtained settlements for them. After learning this, Walter now wants to expand the investigation and goes to Ben for permission to do so.

Meanwhile Mike interviews Sipe extensively. He tells him the church wants people to believe these are isolated cases but they are part of a larger recognizable phenomena which he believes relates to the church's requirement of priestly celibacy. As the team goes deeper into the investigation they make startling discoveries about how the church is dealing with the priest-abusers, the families of the victims and run headlong into the enormous influence the Catholic church has in Boston. Undeterred, Spotlight eventually publishes its expose in early 2002. It is a bombshell that rocks Boston.

Discussion

Spotlight accurately portrays the Boston Globe investigation into the child abuse scandal that rocked the Catholic church in Boston. The expose, when finally published, eventually led to the resignation of Cardinal Law and a Pulitzer Prize for the group of reporters. More than that, it caused thousands of people to come forward acknowledging their abuse. The revelations were far-reaching and dramatic, eventually revealing the abuse of children by Catholic clergy to be a worldwide phenomena. In Boston alone, 249 priests were discovered to have been abusing children over a period of several decades. It also revealed that the Catholic church attempted to cover up the abuse scandal by paying out small settlements and making victims sign confidentiality agreements, promising to remove the abusers from parish work. In fact, as we now know and as many Catholics in America and Canada can attest to, priest-abusers were merely moved from one parish to another, sometimes after "treatment" only to re-offend and abuse more victims.

The film leaves off listing the number of priests found to have abused children in Boston and lists the areas in the world which were directly impacted significantly by the abuse of children by Catholic priest. Seeing two screens listing all the cities is disheartening to be sure, especially considering there are places in Canada not even listed in the movie in which significant problems existed.

Spotlight  never fully explores why the Boston Globe never acted on information it received years earlier about the possible abuse of children by Catholic priests. Eric Macleish, when confronted by Walter Robinson, mentions twice in the movie that he sent the Globe significant information concerning twenty cases many years ago, but it was buried.  Likewise Phil Saviano also tells Walter Robinson that he sent all of his information to the Globe five years earlier but apparently they weren't interested. In Spotlight, Robinson and Marty Baron are quick to excuse themselves for not acting (Robinson says he has no recollection of receiving MacLeish's information).  

It also doesn't delve into why, given the number of priests involved in abuse in Boston alone, the Catholic community remained silent. Both Robinson and his team are astounded that so many people who were abused and their families, remained silent. Given that there were 249 priests involved in the scandal in Boston alone, it would seem that someone in the community might have acted. However, the stigma of abuse, the fact that it involved priests who were supposed to be good men, and the tendency to victim-blame, led many victims to desire confidentiality. 

In some ways, Spotlight depicts a simplistic view of how the Catholic church responded, ignoring the fact that initially the church relied on the current professional psychological opinion that these abusers could be rehabilitated. Of course when this obviously was not successful, bishops and cardinals never changed how these priests were dealt with, instead enabling the priest-predators to continue working and subsequently allowing more children to be harmed. Jeffrey Mirus in his article, Three Great Lessons of the Abuse Scandal (https://www.catholic.com/magazine/print-edition/three-great-lessons-of-the-abuse-scandal ) provides some of the background as to how the Church has functioned and how certain weaknesses led to the scandal. While the Catholic Church now has in place some of the strictest requirements for the reporting of abuse and for action against priests who abuse children, it is clear the abuse problem is not quite fixed.

Spotlight, which was directed by Tom McCarthy, endeavours to be as realistic as possible; the choice of actors who look like the real life persons involved is quite remarkable. Michael Keaton, Mark Ruffalo and Rachel McAdams all turn in exception performances. A fan favourite, Stanley Tucci portrays the eccentric Michael Garabedian.

While the focus is on the investigative team, the victims are not ignored either and their portrayal is also realistic and deeply moving. We get a sense of how deeply harmed these people were by what happened to them and by the fact that this harm was never acknowledged by both the Catholic church and their community. Their courage and determination is evident.

The following resources may be of use for further exploration of this issue:

Reporting An Explosive Truth: the Boston Globe and Sexual Abuse in the Catholic church - this website is a case study for investigative journalism for Columbia University's Journalism School.

https://ccnmtl.columbia.edu/projects/caseconsortium/casestudies/14/casestudy/www/layout/case_id_14.html 

Father Geoghan case: https://ccnmtl.columbia.edu/projects/caseconsortium/casestudies/14/casestudy/www/layout/case_id_14_id_148.html

I, Galileo by Bonnie Christensen

I, Galileo tells the story of one of history's most famous scientists, Galileo Galilei, in his own words accompanied by the beautiful, bold illustrations of author-illustrator Bonnie Christensen.

The story opens with an elderly, blind Galileo reminiscing about his life beginning with his childhood. Galileo was the oldest child in a large family. He was inquisitive and wondered about the natural world around him. His father taught Galileo music and mathematics but at age eleven he was sent to a monastery for a more formal education. When Galileo showed interest in becoming a monk, his father had him brought back to Pisa to be educated  to become a doctor. However, Galileo was captivated by mathematics but like his father he often had disagreements with others. This resulted in him leaving the university. Galileo moved to Florence where he began teaching math and giving lectures. His lectures were so popular that he was offered a teaching job at the University of Pisa.

Galileo continued his questioning ways and made enemies by challenging some of the ideas the beloved philosopher, Aristotle had proposed many centuries earlier. He lost his job at Pisa but was soon hired by the University of Padua where Galileo began to conduct experiments and invent new things. His most important improvement was to a Dutch invention, the telescope, a new type of spyglass that greatly magnified objects far away. Galileo worked to perfect his telescope making it more powerful and when he turned it to look at the heavens he made some astonishing discoveries. These discoveries resulted in Galileo securing the patronage of the grand duke of Tuscany, Cosimo II de' Medici.

Devoting himself full time to experiments, Galileo came to believe that the sun and planets did NOT revolve around the earth but rather the earth and other planets revolved around the sun. He made this deduction by observing the phases of the planet Venus which is situated closer to the sun and shows phases just like the moon.

This deduction was in complete opposition to what Aristotle had claimed and what the Catholic Church supported. In 1616, the Catholic church ruled that teaching the earth revolved around the sun was heresy and Galileo was ordered to stop. This model of our solar system was called the Copernican theory after Copernicus who first proposed this theory. Copernicus had no way to prove his theory, but Galileo's observations suggested that his theory was probably right.

For seven years Galileo did not teach this theory but when his friend, Maffeo Barberini became Pope Urban, Galileo thought he would be able to write again about heliocentrism. According to the author, Galileo wrote and published Dialogue on the Two Chief World Systems which outraged the pope because he believed Galileo had portrayed him as a fool in the book. Galileo was ordered to face the Inquisition in Rome and was sentenced to imprisonment for the rest of his life. The book ends with Galileo making that comment that the truth will find the light - implying of course that science eventually defeated the ignorance of the Catholic Church.

Discussion

Christensen's picture book, I, Galileo,  is simply written and of course treats the Galileo affair in a basic manner as one would expect from this format. However, there are some errors in the story as presented by Bonnie Christensen. Galileo's run-in with the Catholic church was more complex than portrayed in this book as both sides were at fault to some degree. The fallout of the Galileo affair remains; the Catholic church and religion in general are now seen as antithetical towards science. What follows is a summary of George Sim Johnston's discussion of the events in his book, The Galileo Affair published by Scepter Press.

The Catholic church believes that faith and science are not at odds. The church completely supported the work of Nicholas Copernicus who surprisingly was NOT the first to suggest that the earth and other heavenly bodies revolved around the sun. This was suggested in ancient times by the Greeks. The church supported Aristotle's theory mainly because it seemed to be supported by scripture and scripture was interpreted more rigorously in past centuries than now. Also science in the time of Copernicus was not interested in determining scientific truth but in making sure that ideas and theories previously presented (such as Aristotle and Ptolemy's theory of the sun revolving around the earth) were preserved. Scientific reality was not considered important.

However Copernicus turned this way of explaining the natural world on its head; in fact he was afraid to publish his book, not because he feared the church (which actually supported his work), but because he feared his fellow academics.

Galileo learned of a remarkable new instrument, the telescope which had been made by the Dutch. He made his own and soon made many interesting discoveries as Bonnie Christensen mentions in her book; the discovery of the moon's true surface, four satellites of Jupiter and the phases of Venus. A leading Jesuit astronomer, Christopher Clavius was at first skeptical but soon verified Galileo's observations. Even Pope Paul III was interested and agreeable to his theory.

But the disagreeable nature of Galileo that Christensen highlights in her story came back to haunt the scientist. He became determined to force the Copernican view of the solar system onto a public that was not ready to accept a very different cosmic view.  According to George Sim Johnston of "The Galileo Affair",

"But Galileo was intent on ramming Copernicus down the throat of Christendom. The irony is that when he started his campaign, he enjoyed almost universal good will among the Catholic hierarchy. But he managed to alienate almost everybody with his caustic manner and aggressive tactics. His position gave the Church authorities no room to maneuver: they either had to accept Copernicanism as a fact (even though it had not been proved) and reinterpret Scripture accordingly; or they had to condemn it. He refused the reasonable third position which the Church offered him: that Copernicanism might be considered a hypothesis, one even superior to the Ptolemaic system, until further proof could be adduced."

With Galileo moving the controversy into the realm of scripture, the church had no choice but to act. In the context of the times, post-Reformation, where protestants focused on the private interpretation of scripture, it seemed as though Copernicanism was in direct opposition to the strict interpretation of scripture that the Catholic church held. Either scripture had to be re-interpreted or the theory was wrong. Since there was no way to prove Copernicanism at this time, Galileo could not present it as fact. Why he chose to force his theory into the realm of scripture is probably a function of his obstinate, prideful nature.

The first two submissions to Rome resulted in his case being dismissed. Then Cardinal St. Robert Bellarmine wrote Galileo a letter requesting he either prove his theory (which was perfectly acceptable to hold) or to leave the matter alone. Eventually in 1616, at his first trial, Galileo was told to neither "hold or defend" his theory which he abided by. However, in his file there was also a mysterious and controversial directive stating that he could not discuss it either, which Galileo claimed he was unaware of. When he published his book, Dialogue on the Two Chief World Systems, this violated that term. But even worse, the book seemed to mock Pope Urban VIII for his scientific views. At his second trial in 1633, which did not see Galileo tortured or recant his theory, he was judged to be "vehemently suspected of heresy". Galileo's condemnation, according to Johnston was unjust because Copernicanism was never judged to be heretical. In fact, "in 1822, at the behest of Pius VII, the Holy Office granted an imprimatur to the work of Canon Settele, in which Copernicanism was presented as a physical fact and no longer as an hypothesis."

Sadly the church has never seemed to recover from fallout as a result of the Galileo affair despite that fact that numerous Catholic scientists over the last four hundred years have been responsible for many scientific discoveries.  Modern science considers religion hostile to science. It is not.

Galileo's voice in I, Galileo, is accurately portrayed as belligerent and arrogant. Galileo's stubbornness and determination to aggravate ecclesiastical authorities comes across in this telling.  However, there are several inaccuracies in I, Galileo. First, according to Johnston, Galileo never did conduct the experiment with two objects from the Tower of Pisa. It is widely held that this was a "thought experiment". Secondly, the church never did rule that Copernicanism was heresy. And thirdly, Galileo was not imprisoned, but lived comfortably near Florence in a home. These inaccuracies pretty much cancel the simplicity of the story and the accurate voice of Galileo in this book. Which is unfortunate, because, as a picture book, it is aimed at educating young readers, but instead instills a bias against Catholicism and religion in general. As a result, I, Galileo simply perpetuates some of  the misinformation around this historical conflict - an event that is often used to make the claim that religion rejects science. Nothing could be further from the truth. 

Young readers who might be interested to learn more about Galileo are encouraged to read Along Came Galileo by Jeanne Bendick.

For those who might want to read George Sim Johnston's piece in its entirety, please see The Galileo Affair at https://catholiceducation.org/en/controversy/the-galileo-affair.html

Another excellent piece is The Dispute Between Galileo and the Catholic Church by Donald DeMarco and can be found at https://www.evangelizationstation.com/htm_html/Essays%20on%20Science/dispute_between_galileo_and.htm.

Christensen's book has a Chronology and a list of Galileo's Experiments and Galileo's Inventions and Improvements, Astronomic Discoveries, a Glossary, Bibliography and Websites at the back of the book.

Book Details:
I, Galileo by Bonnie Christensen
New York: Alfred A Knopf    2012