Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10
The investigative newspaper journalist is almost an extinct animal, hunted down by television and left to rot by a public who would rather arguably leave some things alone, if they don’t know about it then the world is safe, it is not a scary and rotten place in which to bring up their children.
The world though is teetering upon the edge of an abyss and it takes the calm and collected measure of newspaper journalists to cut through the Hollywood glitz that television offers to really get to the point of the investigation. The camera at times only adds to the sensationalism, the written word will always carry much more weight and respect.
It is to that end that plaudits and thanks will always go to teams such the staff at the Boston Globe and for their tireless work in uncovering the truth behind the scandal that nearly broke the Catholic Church in their own city. Already a major film, Spotlight, starring Mark Ruffalo and Michael Keaton, Betrayal: The Crisis In The Catholic Church deals with the evidence against many Catholic priests in America who were tried and convicted of abuse against young boys over a fifty year period. Whilst the disease they carried in their souls was not confined to North America, the centre of the damage was right in the heart of one of the biggest Catholic cities in the U.S.A. and it was a rotten apple that just kept uncovering more worms.
Whereas the film was unnerving, uncomfortable and shocking, the book is able to go into greater detail about the scandal and it is one that is difficult to get through without feeling any type of resentment and rising anger towards the men whose vocation it was to install a sense of moral fibre into their parish but who in the end used their position to intimidate and threaten, to corrupt, their way into the lives of young boys.
Betrayal: The Crisis In The Catholic Church is a book, an account, of the investigation and one that is hard going, not because of the way that it is written and set out but instead because it deals with human lives being abused, being seen as nothing more than playthings for a part of society and it is sickening but one that must be read to understand why such people are found in society.
Betrayal: The Crisis In The Catholic Church is a well informed book, not that you would expect anything less from the journalists of the Boston Globe, and one that satisfies the need for justice in the world; a book of tremendous social importance.
Betrayal: The Crisis In The Catholic Church is available to order from Write Blend on South Road, Waterloo.
Ian D. Hall