Anger and Complicity

“Possibly the greater theme of the film… is the idea of societal complicity and deference…”
- Tom McCarthy, director of Spotlight

The movie Spotlight wrecked me. Maybe because I spent so many year working in churches as a youth pastor. Maybe because one of the churches I worked for had a history including an youth pastor who sexual abused students. While this incident was officially spoken of as “handled correctly” hardly a week went by during my 9 years there without some unexpected reminder of the web of human destruction it caused. Maybe because I have seen from the inside how church-goers refuse to see the obvious hypocrisy of their own church/tribe (while generally being hypercritical of other groups).

Whatever it was, spotlight hit deep. For a while now I’ve said to people, “tons of people ‘hate’ Facebook, but almost nobody is actually going to delete their account”. I actually really love social media - but the point is more about our moral laziness when taking a strong moral stand will cost us something important or connections to people we love.

Read Tom McCarthy’s Full interview here: http://americamagazine.org/content/all-things/why-director-spotlight-has-hope-catholic-church-interview-tom-mccarthy