Spotlight

A spotlight ferrets out the actual, stripped of embellishment, and rivets the attention of on-lookers. Passions mount and change must occur.

How appropriate for the Boston Globe, decades ago, to have named its investigative team of journalists, Spotlight, its mandate to unearth scum-stories that demanded change, thereby garnering twenty-three Pulitzer Prizes. The decades-old clergy abuse scandal in the Catholic Archdiocese of Boston drew the talents of five such journalists, their subsequent story published on January 6, 2002. It instantly blew the global cover on the molestation and rape of children that permanently crumbled their psyches. The hierarchy’s cover-up of these crimes compounded its heinousness.

It was only a matter of time before McCarthy and Josh Singer scripted this story, also titled Spotlight (2015). Directed by Tom McCarthy, it narrates the exhausting search for the incriminating documents needed to substantiate the said abuse. Tedious months of editing finally produced this tight, fast-paced movie. This year, The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences has nominated it for the Best Picture category. Perhaps it will receive a richly deserved Oscar next Sunday.

Its truth still festers, an abomination that cries to heaven.

On another level, let us be obedient to Spirit-Spotlight, ferreting out the monstrous within and without, naming it, and discarding it. Such exercise frees our spirits to thrive.