Spotlight On Abuse!

I went to see the film Spotlight yesterday.
It deals with the Boston Archdiocese's cover-up and mishandling of the sexual abuse of children by its priests in the late 20th century, and the Boston Globe newspaper's exposure of the affair.

It was a masterful film, and everything was superb.

Except for the fact that the story was more like a report, like journalism than a story.

I suppose it suffered from the fact that we had seen Brooklyn just two days before, and that was a story about a young Irish girl who emigrated to the USA. That was a story that was filled with characters, love, tension, conflict, suffering, and achievement.
It was the stuff of enchantment.
When it was over, I looked at She-who-must-be-obeyed and said I could not believe how fast the time went by.

During Spotlight, however, in the far reaches of the film, I was often aware of my wallet... which being in the general area of meiner toches, began to frequently remind me of how Harry Cohn of Columbia Pictures used to rate movies: if his toches began to go numb and he moved around in his seat, the film was a loser.
Towards the end, I was moving around a bit and began to pray for closure.


I regretted that the intensity of the film tends to focus on one class of events and ignore others. By watching this film, we probably forget that it is open season on children everywhere in the world. Within the orchard of youth there are fruits for every abusive taste: sexual, verbal, spiritual, physical... Everything.

We forgot children killed in present wars.
We forgot children enslaved in present poverty.
Why we even forgot the tear-jerking photos of drowned children from Syria washing ashore upon the golden sands of the Mediterranean. We forgot the soon to be dead children behind barbed-razor-wire fences on the verges of Europe...

WE FORGOT  the Governors of our own United States saying,

"We don't want them Syrian refugees here!"

In Spotlight, the question was frequently asked,

"Why did we not do anything? Why did we not take a stand?"

Well?
Why do we not do anything?

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