Very disappointed :(

Boring, long, and too preachy.

I am only giving this movie a 1 for the great cast, though I can't imagine what any of them were thinking. This movie was horrible

It is a whirlwind of delight --- attractive actors, stunning couture, spectacular sets and outrageous parties.

One of the reasons I watched this documentary is that I have a deaf daughter who herself attended a Catholic deaf school for a few years. The other is that I am an ex-therapist who used to work with sexual abuse victims and perpetrators (the latter, I came to realize are beyond the scope of therapy--hence my biggest reason for retiring from the field). Sadly, however, I cannot show this documentary to my daughter, as the folks didn't bother captioning the film--only what's being signed by the deaf folks being interviewed! This is ridiculous--how can they make a video that many of the victims cannot even watch and understand?! Crazy--and I can't think of a worse film to do without captions. Despite this HUGE problem, I still recommend the film to everyone--and perhaps deaf people could hopefully have an interpreter translate the film, though this is very unlikely. For this reason, the film loses a point."Mea Maxima Culpa" is a film that begins with a deaf school. During the tenure of a piece of human garbage (otherwise known as 'Father Murphy') at the school, he repeatedly sexually abused the kids. Not only did he victimize the most vulnerable population, within this group he targeted the most vulnerable--those deaf kids whose parents did not use sign language and/or had strained relationships. The saddest part of the film is NOT that the kids were abused by Murphy but the abuse by the Church--which repeatedly did everything it could to prevent Murphy and other pedophiles from being punished in any way. And, surprisingly, in this and so many other cases, the victims were threatened with excommunication if they came public*!! It's enough to make you want to toss something at your television and I found myself yelling at the film several times! In addition to the Murphy case, the film discusses a few other international cases (such as in Ireland, Italy and Latin America). And, it spends much of the time discussing the actions by John Paul and Benedict that impeded investigations and kept pedophiles in close contact with children.Overall, this is a very well done documentary (aside from the captioning) and very, very compelling. It's hard to imagine anyone watching this without becoming energized--and that's a good sign of a documentary.*In one case, the Church had a deaf adult sign a statement saying HE was sinful and was repenting for damaging the Catholic Church by 'lying' about the molestations. Many deaf adults are illiterate or nearly illiterate, so the notion that he had no idea what he was singing was very likely based on my experiences in the deaf community--plus they had no interpreter there during the meeting where he was asked to sign! Doing such a thing is further reason I found myself yelling out loud during the film. For shame!!

Firstly just to express total solidarity with the deaf men of Milwaukee Wisconsin who suffered at the hands of serial child sex abuser Fr. Laurence C. Murphy. Secondly to say I'm an Irish Catholic and knew the singing priest Fr. Tony Walsh - 'Fr. Elvis' - as a boy. A number of pedophiles accessed my family, sexually grooming and serial abusing and in the Dublin of the day the culture of pederasty was pervasive. Thirdly allow me open by asking people to consider Fr. Murphy's excuses - offered in therapy:A). 'There was rampant homosexuality amongst the boys. I fixed the problem'; B). I thought if I played around with a kid once per week they would have their needs met'; C). I thought I was taking their sins on myself'; D). It was self-education for them they were confused about sex'; E). Would feel penis. If erect would masturbate them'; F). Afterward I prayed and went to confession'.The man felt he was doing good not evil. How then was his moral compass so distorted and disorientated? Would cyber porn producers and users of child porn today offer better excuses? - we've heard them and know them to be equally self-serving and delusional. Being homosexual was universally taboo up until the 1980's and it was considered better to be sexually disorientated or sexually dysfunctional with a view to a life of celibacy, secular or priestly. But for all their crimes no perverted Roman Catholic priest that I am aware of was ever charged with the crime of rape and murder common enough among pedophiles and rapists. Now this may be difficult but consider modern porn and its rapaciousness. Consider the fact that most porn is not only about the objectification and exploitation of women but also about their brutalization. Pedophilia is rampant and causally peppered through main stream cyber porn which rapidly descends from relative eroticism to utter abomination.So what has happened is that consent is all that's is required to make sexual abuse permissible today even if the person is a minor; even if the woman simply signed up for sex and not the brutalizing desecration of her body; even if the sex was consenting but the permission to broadcast & circulate was not. Cyber porn is so controversial that Google maintains it is not responsible for acting as the international traffic cop and seemed curiously resigned to compromising its own browser Google Chrome with its competitors search engines. Because Google understand the corporate tornado on the horizon, cyber porn being a record - in most instances - of sex crime, knowing that many of the victims will sue. It makes me feel like signing up for a course in Swedish rape law because this makes the Juliann Assange case - which involved the charges 'Sex by surprise' and 'Sex with too much asking', - seem like a great idea. How about 'Sex with brutalizing & degrading consequences'; 'Sex for the purpose of making porn without consent'; 'Sex with adolescents too stoned & too immature to know the implications of what they were doing', and 'Sex for the purpose of sexually re-orientating and dis-orientating the victim'? So what has happened is that we have simply changed the definition and function of sexual terrorism from repression to 'sexual liberation'. The Catholic Church has stood up to the plate, paid the price and yet the accusatory finger still points towards the past. But the Church must reform the celibate model of priesthood which according to former Benedictine Richard Sipes 'Selects, cultivates, protects, defends and produces sexual abusers'.This is a marvelous and sympathetic movie about a wonderfully courageous group of deaf men who show us the meaning of the word solidarity. It provides a valuable and necessary understanding of the errors of the past without seeking to agitate, animate or radicalise. But one must ask the Director Alex Gibney to consider the far more perilous issue of cyber porn and modern sexual values and just where we are heading with the rate of homosexuality rising towards 25% in Cosmopolitan & Metropolitan areas where stable 'straight',and monogamous family units are rapidly becoming vestigial. Judging from cyber porn there are those so liberated that it is a wonder they are not permanently incontinent. Can a woman really have animalistic sex with two men hung like donkeys and ever hope to function properly again; and why do women cast themselves in the role of sexual gladiators? In terms of the police phrase used in the documentary to describe pedophilia in the Catholic Church 'Noble cause corruption', might not those advocating the GLBTQ, Libertine and Hedonist agendas consider whether the term now also applies to their sexual crusade?At the Sea of Tiberius as Jesus watched St. Peter leap from the boat with almost nothing on he knew St. Peter had sexual issues and was at least immodest in that most sublime of Biblical scenes from John 21 titled 'The Restoration of St. Peter'. He had also chastened the Disciple Nathanael at the time of his recruitment, three years earlier, for spending too much time under "The Fig Tree", (John 2: 48). And yet Nathanael is at the scene at the Sea of Tiberius to witness the risen Jesus prepare a meal for his followers and take St. Peter aside, to chasten and prepare him for the way ahead. Please God Pope Benedict XVI's successor Pope Francis is up for a restoration of the priesthood. And as a secular adult community surely we can also rise to this debate given that we see fit to rise to just about every and any other kind of bait? Let me conclude by offering a quote from the retired gay Archbishop of Milwaukee Most Reverend Rembert Weakland (1977-2002) for this is by far the wisest statement to emerge from this challenging documentary:We're a Church of imperfect people. Jesus wasn't afraid of humanity and we shouldn't be either'

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.

After looking at the world of NHL pugilists in last year's outstanding The Last Gladiators, Mea Maxima Culpa: Silence In The House Of God finds director Alex Gibney returning to investigating abuses of power, a theme that has served him well in past efforts like Enron: The Smartest Guys In The Room and the Oscar-winning Taxi To The Dark Side. This disturbing exposé on the problem of child and youth sexual abuse in the Catholic Church focuses partly on the stories of five deaf men who are thought to be the first individuals to ever publicly protest abuses by clergy in the United States, after they were victimized by Father Lawrence Murphy at St. John's School for the Deaf in the suburbs of Milwaukee during the 60s and 70s. Gibney also takes a broader view of the subject by looking at other cases of clergy abuse (notably in Ireland) and the systematic cover-ups of these crimes by the Catholic Church's top officials, whose unofficial policy on the matter is to "deny, minimize, and blame", according to one journalist interviewed. "Mea Maxima Culpa's" Latin translation is "my most grievous fault".Although the five St. John's victims have been working for over three decades to call attention to the issue and seek justice for their suffering, their story gained traction after New York Times writer Laurie Goodstein wrote an article in 2010 about the Vatican's failure to defrock Murphy, despite the fact that they were presented with undeniable evidence of his crimes and received strong warnings from some American church officials. Murphy is believed to have molested over 200 boys at the boarding school from the 50s until 1974, when he was transferred to another parish. The Vatican was alerted of Murphy's behaviour in 1963 and did nothing. Actors Jamey Sheridan, Chris Cooper, Ethan Hawke, and John Slattery give voice to the victims, who use sign language with punctuated hand slaps to express the horrors they endured at the hand of Murphy and the shame that followed. Murphy's textbook predatory behaviour found him singling out what he perceived as the weaker students and further exploiting the fact that they faced an obvious barrier in communicating over the phone with their families. Three of the victims, including Terry Kohut, who sued the Catholic Church and named the current Pope in his lawsuit, were on hand for the world premiere TIFF screening I attended and gave their emotional reaction to it afterwards at the Q & A through a sign language interpreter. Just knowing that they were in the audience and reliving their pain while seeing the finished film for the first time added an extra significance and weight to the proceedings.The investigations resulting from the Kohut lawsuit ended up leading to the discovery of secret Vatican documents that detailed many instances of sexual abuse cover-ups that reach to the highest levels of the Catholic Church, with Popes John Paul II and Benedict XVI (then Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger) substantially implicated. In the years before being anointed Pope, Ratzinger oversaw a Vatican council that monitored sexual abuse cases in the Church, so his post-anointment claims of being unaware of most of what was occurring seem highly unlikely. How his and his predecessor's culpability and mishandling of these tragic cases hasn't been a much larger media story is difficult to understand.That aside, overall media coverage of child and youth sexual abuse in the Catholic Church has, sadly, become an all-too-familiar story that one almost becomes numb to. Gibney rises to the challenge of presenting a fresh take on a much-discussed important subject with this well-researched and powerful film. My only real negative about it are the re-enactments that Gibney employs, even if they are artfully composed and beautifully shot, using plenty of religious imagery. Re-enactments are a staple of Gibney's work (not to mention Errol Morris'), but the stories he tells are usually compelling enough and, in my opinion, the end results are slightly diminished with this gimmicky device that feels like an imagination crutch for the audience.