Mea Maxima Culpa: Silence in the House of God, 2012.
Directed by Alex Gibney.
SYNOPSIS:
Documentary-maker Alex Gibney narrates a harrowing insight into cases of paedophilia and sexual abuse within the Catholic church.
The measure of a truly great documentary – and maybe even a great film full stop – is its ability to convey an explicit message through implicit means. It’s in the fundamentals of a good argument; gently modulating the audience’s information and understanding until they arrive at the author’s conclusion. Get it wrong and the message is compromised, the argument reduced to cheap speculation. But get it right and the material speaks for itself, or at least seems to.
Alex Gibney’s Mea Maxima Culpa is not just a great documentary or piece of filmmaking. It is an unswervingly powerful case against the corruption of the Catholic church and its abuse of power. Fuelled by a palpable rage yet measured with the deftest touch, Gibney presents a perfectly indisputable argument through a mastery of the documentary form.
Perhaps this shouldn’t be surprising. That the Catholic church is embroiled in some pretty unsavoury affairs scarcely needs reiteration, and Gibney is a veteran documentary-maker, having covered everything from Jimi Hendrix to Enron. The success of MMC is that it bypasses the desensitised apathy of its educated audience, playing the intensely prsonal stories of those affected against the outrageous bureaucracies of the church
The film is nominally structured around Father Laurence Murphy’s tenure at St John’s School for the Deaf in Milwaukee. This alone would make a fascinatingly appalling subject. While not hearing impaired, Murphy was a gifted signer and used his position to molest the young boys who would not be able to report his aberrations to their hearing parents. With the aid of entirely un-starry narrations from Ethan Hawke, Chris Cooper and John Slatterley, Gibney gives a literal voice to the surviving victims who dared to challenge Murphy’s abuse. The effect is entirely mesmerising, the beautiful nuances of sign language extrapolating the impotent rage and pain of the abused, perfectly contrasted with the insidious PR of the Vatican.
Perhaps more shocking than the individual acts themselves is the extent of this pervasive cover-up. As the film progresses, more and more evidence suggests that the Vatican knew of these crimes (and there were/are thousands more) and failed to act accordingly, treating them as ‘sins’ to be forgiven rather than crimes to be punished. Gibney never sways into an outright attack on Catholicism or religion itself, but more interestingly explores how easily systems power can corrupt. There’s a deeply unnerving implication that the perpetrators do not view their actions as inherently wrong, backed up as they are by an organisation so fiercely defensive and non-transparent.
Somewhere in the second act, the film shifts gear to focus on the later career of Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, none other than recently-ex-Pope Benedict XVI. Incredibly, Ratzinger was appointed head of the division specifically tasked to deal with case of paedophilia within the church, meaning that every case since 2002 went via his desk. Gibney allows a few moments of black humour in detailing their ludicrous means to avoid legal prosecution – the church briefly entertained the idea of purchasing a small tropical island to rehabilitate deviant priests. Benedict’s eventual resignation (the only pope to ever do so) proves the perfect natural endpoint; Gibney refuses to hammer the point home, simply letting the wealth of collected evidence speak for itself.
It would be very easy to adopt an entirely different tack, especially with crimes of this incendiary nature. Gibney’s triumph is to avoid reductive sensationalism, channeling generations of hatred into a chilling neutrality – it’s impossible to imagine anyone watching this and not coming away deeply moved and outraged. This isn’t a film about the evils of religion, so much as the evil necessitated by such a comprehensive miscarriage of justice.
There’s a beautifully poignant moment where a deaf interviewee, unable to translate this lifetime of trauma, quietly stares into the camera, beyond the point of tears. A picture may speak a thousand words, but this documentary speaks volumes.
Flickering Myth Rating – Film: ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ / Movie: ★ ★ ★ ★ ★
Peter Gigg
Originally published June 21, 2013. Updated April 11, 2018.
