I'm hiding nothing. You compensate less than 20 % of your 11,000 victims and I'm a smokescreen? What am I covering up? Your imaginings? How am I responsibile for "facts" that you've invented.

Everything P writes is a smokescreen. Hence all his verbage. All his words to hide the fact that you and he are defending a shit corporation who let children be raped. How do you sleep at night?

Can only speak for myself and respond ….Not at all, because he is worth reading. 

However I do appreciate that if somebody went to great trouble to create a smokescreen….. then they would not welcome anybody who was helping others to see through that smoke.

So the summary of this page and this website is:  Since Spotlight is not a verbatim account of the journalistic process that took place, the Church is not actually guilty and we should all wag our fingers at the filmmakers and the Globe.  I suppose the hundreds (thousands?) of victims in Boston were all lying about what happened, and all of those internal church documents that were released by the Church were fabrications that they create dto make themselves look bad.  Ridiculous.

This website seems to be missing some sort of summary page that tells us what the actual conclusion is that we are supposed to draw.  The film isn't 100% accurate, some people object to their portrayals, an occasional quote is exaggerated out of context, etc.  OK, so what's the conclusion then?  What's the message we are supposed to be agreeing with here?

We might go around the garden on what constitutes a “minor” change for dramatic purposes and what constitutes a substantive change. But persons so inclined might want to consider such assessments from the following hypothetical: that at some time in the future a media outlet decides it would be ‘newsworthy’ and a ‘public service’ to investigate how many ‘victims’ actually did file false legal claims in the Catholic Abuse Matter and as a result reaped significant fiscal rewards.

And surely, far more calculating organizations, public and private, have taken steps to ensure that the type of ‘reporting’ we have seen in the Catholic Abuse Matter is not directed at them. And from the point of view of cold and self-interested calculation, who can blame them?

It is relevant here to consider as well the possibility of what in government programs is known as ‘rent-seeking’: once a program is funded to deal with an identified or declared ‘issue’, then those who benefit from that funding immediately become a vested interest the objective of which is to keep that money coming. “Mutatis mutandis”, there are now a congeries of such vested interests that have benefited from the Catholic Abuse Matter and they will surely rather see monies continue to flow to them if only they can Keep their Ball Rolling.

And in regard to the ‘Globe’s ‘reporting’, it is precisely the quality of that ‘reporting’ that is at issue here. Since 2002 and up into the present this site has published a number of instances of similarly skewed and sensationalist ‘reporting’ by journalists and media outlets. Indeed, one reporter – if memory serves – whose material was particularly egregious in this regard prompted a major J-School to send out a dog-whistle to the profession that such ‘reporting’ would still be congenially received by the profession’s upper-echelon gatekeepers. That instance was covered on this site.

And the 1990s are now at least two (very eventful) decades in the past. Nor do we actually ‘know’ whether “many people” or just how many people were actually “still being abused” in the 1990s or for that matter in any decade prior.

Nor is it “minimizing” to point out the many egregious elements that intensify into a probability the possibility that claims and allegations were of dubious and surely undemonstrated veracity.

And given the world-class protocols since instituted by the Church, then it is hardly accurate to characterize the position of this site as merely being that “this is an old issue, there’s nothing to see here”. The key point of vital relevance here is that the Church has indeed instituted protocols that should be the envy of any other institution, large or small.

This actuality is uncongenial to those who would like to Keep The Ball Rolling in regard to the Catholic Abuse Matter. And it will be interesting to see if the ‘Spotlight’ movie is actually followed by an uptick in fresh allegations and lawsuits – from the present or from the way-back.

And if there is a “predetermined point” in play here, surely it is the battery of presumptions made in the service of that Stampede: that all claims and allegations are ‘reports’ and veraciously factual; that all or many priests and hierarchs are implicated in either perpetration and/or cover-up; that all consequences of even the least forms of such ‘abuse’ are profound and perhaps irreparable; that all life-problems of any allegant – even an adult – are demonstrably and directly attributable to any such instance of even the least (claimed) instance of ‘abuse’; that the Church was in this respect unique among all the institutions of society in any by-gone era; that the Church remains unique among present-day institutions as an “egregious” offender that has taken no effective steps to prevent even the least forms of ‘abuse’; and that the ‘science’ underlying contemporary “common sense” about ‘abuse’ is demonstrably and undeniably much advanced over the “common sense” of any prior era.

Indeed, on that basis I have to directly disagree and contradict ‘1993 Victim’s assertion here as to taking “a truly honest and fair look at the situation”. That is precisely what this site – as I understand it – has been trying to do all along. And ‘1993 Victim’ is welcome to continue his examination of “this site” (thus its archived articles and comments) to see both a) how this site has dealt with the Catholic Abuse Matter and b) how assorted persons otherwise-inclined have seen fit to distract and obstruct that assessment.

And to suggest that possibility – uncongenial as it may well be to a Stampede run on the Church – is hardly “reaching at best” for “all or even most cases”: the possibility or probability of lodging false accusations for pecuniary gain is hardly unknown in tort law, especially in light of those reasons (i) and (ii) I have just given in the preceding paragraph here and also in light of (iii) the protective status and aura of ‘victimhood’ so greatly amplified by selective media reporting and(iv) politically-manipulated ‘science’ at the highest levels.

Nor is it demonstrably “cruelly dishonest” to note those uncongenial elements and the possibilities or probabilities to which they give rise.

Nor is it therefore the case that “much of what we see on this page and this site” is merely “reaching”.

I commend ‘1993 Victim’ for characterizing his own claimed experiences as instances of “indecency” (rather than the far more catchy and viscerally gripping ‘rape’). Whether those instances  also demonstrated “cover up” is another question altogether, given the many complications of assessing the relevant hierarch’s actions, especially in the internet forum (although I do not rule out the possibility of “cover up” in this instance).

Was his “case” a criminal case (it would appear not, since there is mention of a “settlement”)? And if he does “know” of instances where there was a confidentiality agreement, then the question arises: at whose behest was a “confidentiality agreement” included as part of the settlement?

And – as I have noted before on this site: if indeed the defendant Diocese requested such an agreement, which would have had to have been approved by the cognizant court, it is hardly improbable that such a request was made to prevent further encouragement for persons who might imagine (hardly irrationally) that they could – under the conditions of Stampede – lodge an allegation for the prospect of substantial financial gain with neither i) little risk of serious examination  and assessment not little risk of ii) being prosecuted if such an allegation were ever to be demonstrated to be false.