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88Given the grievousness of their sins, one wonders why the church continues to shelter them. Might it not be more appropriate to excommunicate them, and refer them to the attention of the civil authorities?
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80It may look like a documentary but Gibney's film is a horror film in every sense. Essential, uncomfortable viewing.
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83Gibney's narrative drags to some extent when the focus widens to explore the Vatican's overall policy for covering up sex scandals, but he successfully demonstrates the systematic failure of a system designed work flawlessly on the basis of spirituality that never existed in the first place.
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60Fearless nonfiction filmmaker Alex Gibney ("Taxi to the Dark Side," "Client 9: The Rise and Fall of Eliot Spitzer") details a history of horrific abuse by Catholic clergy in this tough-to-watch documentary.
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70Beyond the Mafia-like code of silence, it comes down to this: The guys at the top reserved their compassion for priests like Father Murphy in the belief that the boys were young and would get over it. No one of true faith will get over Maxima Mea Culpa.
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63Some of the film's flourishes are ill-judged.
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85The movie revisits the themes (and some of the same characters) of Amy Berg's chilling 2006 chronicle "Deliver Us from Evil." But it reaches further, expanding from one American diocese to Ireland, Italy, the Vatican and the career of the current pope.
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80One of the most intriguing tangents in Mea Maxima Culpa involves the Rev. Gerald Fitzgerald, founder of the Servants of the Paraclete, a Catholic congregation established to help priests who were struggling with celibacy, alcoholism and other personal issues.
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Nov 11, 201263Alex Gibney's latest lacks a certain cinematic depth, but that doesn't take away from its admirable reporting.
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Nov 14, 201283Mea Maxima Culpa is not gentle about placing blame on a structure that elevates priests above the rest of mankind and prioritizes maintaining an appearance of pious perfection over addressing some grievous wrongs committed.
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70Damning documentary pairs an individual sex-abuse case with analysis of institutional dysfunction at the Vatican.
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80There is something to be said for a clear and unblinking recitation of facts, and thankfully Mr. Gibney does a lot of that.
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83By turns moving, absorbing and downright rage-inducing.
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40Mea Maxima Culpa only gets messier the more it tries to iris out to a larger indictment. The central tragedy ends up diluted to a fault.
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70A powerful, necessary contribution to a chilling body of reportage that, one senses by film's end, has just begun to take stock of the human costs of a monstrous conspiracy.
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Nov 13, 201280Silence might be the most perfect expression of scorn, as the saying goes, but like Edvard Munch's "The Scream," you don't have to hear it to get the horror.