Cubussoli Very very predictable, including the post credit scene !!!

Actuakers One of my all time favorites.

Intcatinfo A Masterpiece!

Mandeep Tyson The acting in this movie is really good.

tomgillespie2002 Never a film-maker to shy away from trying to make sense of a somewhat catastrophic event or subject matter, Academy Award winning documentary film-maker Alex Gibney tackles the subject of paedophilia in the Catholic church. From the bottom, where apparently celibate priests have free reign over their own church relatively unsupervised to take confessions inside a broom cupboard and prey on children while they sleep, to the very top, where cardinals cover-up or ignore the problem, and the Pope fails to acknowledge the many flaws in their beloved system. It's a film of two halves, each powerful and expertly crafted in their own right, but failing to come together into a cohesive narrative.The first half is the most powerful and heart-breaking. Throughout the 1960's, priest Lawrence Murphy sexually molested in the region of 200 young boys. At the St. John School for the Deaf in Milwaukee, four men tell their own unique and frightening stories of the abuse they suffered and the lack of help available. Similar to many families in this period, their families could not sign and therefore could not understand their cries for help. Signing to the camera and narrated by actors Jamey Sheridan, Chris Cooper, Ethan Hawke and John Slattery, the four men's disabilities become a metaphor for the years of silence endured by other victims of no handicap, who over the course of time have heard their cries fall on closed ears, especially when it came to calling out for justice or at least an explanation from the Vatican itself.When the film shifts into its second phase, it becomes more conspirational and less human, throwing us facts and archive imagery as Gibney looks under every rock he can find. What he uncovers is hardly surprising - a huge Vatican cover-up and the relocation of many priests finding themselves under scrutiny from the locals were covered in somewhat less detail in Amy Berg's unsettling Deliver Us From Evil (2006) - but he is searching for some kind of explanation. Hearing of abuse cases dating back hundreds of years among the priesthood, it seems the Vatican see the problem more as an inevitability. It often feels like Gibney is clutching at straws, trying to find a link to every corner of the corridors of power, and the absence of any spokesperson from the Vatican is an admittedly unsurprising disappointment. But it avoids the pitch-fork waving approach, and tells us of a very real problem for which we have few answers for.

Steve Pulaski A documentary is only as good as its subject matter, and Mea Maxima Culpa: Silence in the House of God is a phenomenal examination and magnification of sexual abuse in the Catholic church, specifically at the St. John's School for the Deaf in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. The film interviews four deaf adults who claim to be molested by Father Lawrence Murphy when they were young, and continued to be molested until they graduated high school. They've kept quiet until now, apparently.When Terry Kohut, Gary Smith, Pat Kuehn, and Arthur Budzinski first arrived at St. John's, they marveled at the delicate, castle-like infrastructure and beautiful statues of Jesus Christ that stood proudly in the yard. They met the likes of several schoolboys their same age, made friendships, became close to the nuns, and even enjoyed the company of their priest, Father Lawrence Murphy. The men reflect on how they strove to meet Murphy's standards and tried ever so hard not to disappoint or upset him.Then the unthinkable happened; all four men, at separate times, were lured into Murphy's office and were told to either unclothe themselves or pleasure themselves in the presence of Murphy himself. The boys cooperated, as good Catholic children so often do, and immediately knew something wasn't right. Later on, they saw him molesting other boys, entering their bedrooms at all hours of the night and molesting them while they lay in bed. We're told that Murphy specifically singled out kids whose parents couldn't sign so they couldn't communicate with them and tell them what happened. Many of the children, when they received visitors from family, had to communicate through Murphy, so no word was ever even spoken about it.Even when the children sucked up the gumption to tell their parents, they didn't listen. Many thought of priests/popes as aesthetically and morally "perfect." They were the men of the Lord and how could they dare commit the atrocity that is child molestation? This went on for many years, as Murphy continued to molest deaf children and those already ill-equipped of formal communication. The boys had to find ways to tell people on the outside the horrors that went on in St. John's and actually made "Wanted" posters for Father Murphy, urging he was a "serial child molester" and needed to be stopped. Such courage from children should be admired, not silenced.After about fifty minutes of exploring the horrors in St. John's, director Alex Gibney shifts the focus to molestation and sexual abuse in The Vatican, and how the broken laws of the monumental church say that a priest convicted of molestation must be removed from his site, "rehabilitated," then sent back into another community perhaps having not learned a single thing. It explores how Pope John Paul II and Pope Benedict XVI's involvement with the questions raised about priest molestation and how the legislation should be adjusted or kept the same.The facts brought forth in Mea Maxima Culpa (which, in English, means "My most grievous fault") are appalling and disturbing. It was news to me that after being convicted of molestation, Cardinal Bernard Law was sent to another division of The Vatican, where he resided in a luxurious and illuminating palace. Is this what we show people what happens when you harm and endanger children? Even commentary on the issues by Popes shows they are more concerned about the well-being of the priests than the actual victims of the tragedy. The first statement they make is how they are horribly ashamed of the man committing the atrocities, rather than the young, corrupted youth who were on the receiving end. It becomes depressingly clear that they are more concerned about the church's name and well-being than the thousands affected by this.Alex Gibney, who also narrates the picture, is one of the smartest and most prolific documentarians working today. His Oscar-winning feature, Taxi to the Dark Side, exposed the Bush administration's acts of torture in the ongoing "War on Terror." His film The Last Gladiators details the lives of hockey enforcers that put their life and safety on the line in order to protect the team as a whole. His newest feature, We Steal Secrets: The Story of WikiLeaks, magnifies the controversial event of Julian Assange's website that is known for leaking confidential documents of the U.S. Government. Gibney is not just a brave soul, but one that does the job Frederick Wiseman would continue to do if he was younger. That job is exposing shady institutions and reading between the headlines in order to formulate a compelling feature. He is one of the smartest - if not, the smartest - documentary filmmaker in the business today.Lisa Rinzler's cinematography is akin to that of a horror movie revolving around the church and The Vatican. Reenactments of events are always shown in shadow, with a disturbingly bleak layer of black covering most of the screen, the interviews with the four men are conducted behind a pitch black backdrop, with light shining on their torso-area in one of the most stylistic approaches to an interview I've ever seen. The whole film has an eerie vibe, especially for a documentary about something as allegedly innocent as the church. From a stylistic/aesthetic standpoint, the picture is beautiful in its depiction of the terrible.If anything, we can say that we as a society have greatly moved past the senseless, empty-headed "godlike" worship of priests and popes, and are aware that many priests' actions have led to children having incomprehensible problems and lasting trauma due to sexual abuse and torment. Mea Maxima Culpa may inspire sickness, outrage, hatred, and condemnation towards the Catholic Church in The Vatican but, most importantly, now we know more about this issue and we must try to repair it. All it took were a countless amount of unfortunate children and a brazen documentary.

cinematic_aficionado Are you aroused by molesting, abusing or raping young boys? If you could work for an employer that would let you indulge in these perversions whilst at the same time safeguarding you from prosecution, would a career with them be appealing? If the answer is yes, then the Catholic Church might be the place for you.The above, sadly, does not come from my deranged mind but it is the key theme in this harrowing documentary.It turns out that the combination of old fashioned "such blasphemous accusations come from enemies of the church" combined with a collusion form Mussolini that granted Vatican a state status thus exempting its leader from any prosecution, has resulted in an unprecedented cover up of crimes against humanity - essentially what child rape is.The story focuses on three individual cases of deaf boys in a Catholic school in the US, who although molested repeatedly by a priest-predator their cries were totally ignored as it turns out the agenda of the church was not to protect victims but its very own name and reputation.Whilst the unfolding of the story is devastating for the viewer (would have been so if it were fiction, let alone when it is reality) at the same time the perseverance of these victims and their refusal to give up pursuing this, not for the purposes of revenge but to ensure no other child suffers such fate is utterly moving and inspiring.More shocking than the facts alone, was the revelation that there has been an array of offending priests and an entire hierarchy going all the way to the highest echelons of the Vatican have joined forces to cover up such incidents, makes it hard to find any words to describe the river of emotions the viewer experiences.Ultimately, whilst Jesus remains the epitome of selfless philanthropy, it is a church that has an unfortunate track record not only in perversions committed but also perversions covered and perverts protected; no other instance comes to mind where so many sex predators can get away with so many committed crimes.I can only hope that the loud cries of these deaf boys, now men, can bring about winds of change and those who genuinely care about the reputation of the Catholic church ought to ensure that perpetrators are brought to justice.An emotional, difficult but highly recommended and didactic viewing.

Frances Farmer This film does a fine job of documenting the groundbreaking, courageous and tenacious efforts of a group of deaf men to expose a pedophile priest who ran a school for deaf children and preyed on those children for many years.The nature of the crimes and the pervasive lack of action by the catholic church to discipline the criminal priest and aid his victims is truly disgusting. Similar circumstances in Ireland are also reviewed where priests were well known to have abused children in their churches and yet they were never appropriately disciplined either by the church or turned over by the church to the civil authorities. It is extremely important that these heinous crimes and the institutional resistance in the church to deal with them are made known by films such as this one. The story of how these men who courageously pursued their search for justice prevailed despite tremendous church inaction and resistance is inspiring.My only quibble with the film is when it uses contemporary dramatizations to give viewers a feeling for what it would have been like to have been a child in these environments. These are not so much dramatic re-enactments as brief glimpses very much at the periphery of the actual abuse. Still, I thought they were unnecessary as the testimony and documentary footage provided ample information and were more than enough to make my blood boil.Do see this film and support it for the important work it does in exposing a very serious abuse of trust by an institution of tremendous power that still doggedly refuses to hold itself accountable for so many horrendous crimes.