Mea Maxima Culpa: Silence In The House Of God Reviews
Top CriticThe case has been widely reported but this is still an important film, laying out who knew what, and when. It's chilling: the conspiracy of silence goes all the way to the Vatican.
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| Original Score: 4/5
It feels a bit like a monster movie. It is, too.
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| Original Score: 3.5/4
In the end, decades of such crimes going undetected and undeterred under the aegis of one employer - any employer - speaks for itself. And the extraordinary perseverance and courage of the men from St. John's speaks louder still.
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| Original Score: 2.5/4
Partly an inspiring saga of growing "deaf power" and human resilience, and partly a murky and fragmentary drama about an immense, closed-minded bureaucracy with paranoid and conspiratorial tendencies that finds itself unable to adjust to the modern world.
There 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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| Original Score: 4/5
Gibney's most powerful film since the Oscar-winning 2007 Taxi to the Dark Side.
Fearless nonfiction filmmaker Alex Gibney details a history of horrific abuse by Catholic clergy in this tough-to-watch documentary.
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| Original Score: 3/5
To someone who was raised and educated in the Catholic school system, as I was, a film like this inspires shock and outrage.
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| Original Score: 3.5/4
The film is one-sided, of course-church officials ignored interview requests, but their version has been around for a couple of millennia anyway.
Mea 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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| Original Score: 2/5
I don't speak Latin, but I'm pretty sure that "Mea Maxima Culpa" translates into, "Good grief, don't watch this movie without access to some Excedrin."
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| Original Score: B+
No one of true faith will get over Maxima Mea Culpa.
Damning doc pairs an individual sex-abuse case with analysis of institutional dysfunction at the Vatican.
A 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.
