Alex Gibney, Irish filmmaker behind “Mea Maxima Culpa” talks about why he holds the Catholic Church to account - VIDEO

Cahir O'Doherty speaks with Irish filmmaker Alex Gibney

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CAHIR O'DOHERTY,

Irish Voice Arts Editor

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Oscar winning director Alex Gibney's latest film explores the abuse crisis in Ireland and America.

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The cover up was clearly driven from the top he adds, pointing directly to Cardinal Ratzinger, now Pope Benedict XVI. 

The third part of what motivated Gibney to make the film was the participation of the former students themselves. “It gives the film a deep poignancy but it also fills you with hope that they will be vindicated, so they emerge as everyday heroes by the film’s end,” he says.

Some might wonder what all these revelations have done to Gibney’s own faith? 

“My faith in organized religion was shattered before the making of this film,” he admits. “I’m a cultural Catholic, I’m not a church going one. I got furious with the church years ago for its creation of what I’d call a cultural ghetto. 

“The abuse crisis didn’t shatter my faith. But it was haunting for me to discover that this was part of the culture when I was growing up.”

One thread that seems to recur in Gibney’s films is how a culture of abuse and cover up can flourish in almost any human enterprise, alongside what happens when a whistleblower decides to alert the whole world.  

“There’s no question that this subject matter is about as bleak as it gets. But there’s a rather powerful ray of hope in the fact that these characters who had no voice – often literally – still managed to be heard,” he said.

Gibney is referring to the sign language employed by the deaf men, which becomes increasingly impassioned as they sign how traumatized they were by what happened to them. 

“Pope John Paul made the decision to have the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith handle every single abuse claim made against the church,” Gibney says, referring to the film’s most explosive claim. 

“That meant that after 2001 then Cardinal Ratzinger saw every single case that was announced. He is probably the most knowledgeable person about clerical sex abuse on Earth.”

As he made the film Gibney believed he had already sensed the scope and scale of abuse crisis. But it was only when he studied the details of the Milwaukee case that he understood how much evidence there was to see it as a global criminal conspiracy. 

“We went over to Italy to research the film and while there we found there was a school for the deaf in Verona where a similar abuse crisis had erupted. That brought home to me the idea that patterns of abuse repeat themselves.” 

Calling it a criminal conspiracy is fighting words, he knows. 

“The reason I say it is that it that there have clearly been organized attempts to cover up this behavior. You can see that in the Murphy case. You can that in Irish cases,” he said.

“Part of what was revealed in the Irish government investigations was how civil society finally came forward to take responsibility for the abuses that were carried out. They also take responsibility for ending the horror and cover up by the church. So there’s tangible evidence already to call this an international criminal conspiracy.”

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