Grâce á Dieu: Hiding behind the highest morality - Writing Wednesday
Hello everybody and welcome back to another blog post,
A couple of weeks ago whilst my sister and my dad were both out, me and my mum decided to watch this French film that was put on the BBC called Grâce á Dieu (By the Grace of God). The film was quite a raw and graphic retelling of a true story but nevertheless, I found it was quite interesting to watch as it taught me a lot about the morality of the church and how it can hide behind its own façade.
The film begins by focusing on a man called Alexandre and his family who live in Lyon. Everything seems to be pretty normal at first - Alexandre has two sons, a devoted wife, and is clearly a deeply religious man. But soon after Alexandre is introduced to the film, he reveals to us that he was in fact indecently taken advantage of as a boy by one of the priests he was in contact with whilst he was on a religious camping trip in Ireland. This priest ended up remaining a prominent member of his church at the time, despite the horrendous actions he had inflicted upon this young boy. At the beginning of the film, it seems to be just Alexandre who was affected by this by this sort of behaviour but as the film progresses, it is revealed to us, as Alexandre searches for answers, that more young boys had experienced the same horrific behaviour by the priest whilst they were also away on that camp. A man called François, who was heavily traumatised by what he had also endured as a boy, agreed to join forces with Alexandre and bring the priest and all those involved to justice. They established an organisation with the rest of the victims and got the media's attention for their cause. Unfortunately, however, like many other cases of its kind, their efforts were largely unsuccessful. The accused served menial sentences and whilst they were no longer part of the church after doing time, they were still allowed back out into society.
This film reminded me a lot of another film I watched with my mum and my sister called Philomena, another true story that starred Dame Judy Dench. In the film, Philomena has a baby as a young 14 year old girl in conservative Ireland and is forced to give up her baby for adoption by a group of nuns in her covent. After losing contact with her son, years later, Philomena asks a BBC journalist called Martin Sixsmith, to document her story and help track him down. In the end, we discover that the journey of finding her son is made particularly difficult because the nuns hid all the information and attempted to breach all contact Philomena had with her son, after he was adopted.
These two stories show that when someone places themselves on such a high pedestal of morality, it becomes particularly difficult for them to be brought to justice. I tend to have no problem with the church. I always think spirituality should thrive over the institution but nonetheless, religions have always been communal things and so a relgion needs some sort of establishment to survive. The issue is, that when you're dealing with institutions as powerful and as influential as the Roman Catholic Church or the Vatican, as highlighted by these two stories, you're trying to take down an entire empire. It is easy for paedophiles, child molesters, and people with bad intentions to enter such a setting because they are held in such high regard and are always protected by a some member of the church who is willing to help them get away with their crimes, that they often do get away with it. This message is particularly prominent in today's society on a wider context, where people are constantly warping language to meet their own ends. Nowadays, I see that language is defining our identity and people have to be careful with the type of language that they use around others so that they do not disrespect a person's way of viewing themselves. Identity is the new moral high ground. How can you argue with someone’s choice of pronouns for example, when it is supposed to be the morally right thing for you to do to respect who they want to be? The issue is that when such people are involved in destroying people's lives by claiming supposed misspoken language in education or the workplace, it becomes difficult for you to get justice. I think a lot of people would watch films such as Grâce á Dieu and Philomena and think that these are issues isolated to the church. But people are claiming the moral high ground a lot in postmodern society and it is having an impact on the freedoms we used to have.
Have you ever watched these films before? Let me know in the comments below and I'll be sure to reply to them. I ♡ hearing from you!
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