Review of Judgment

For generations the International Catholic Church with its root base in Rome, was perhaps the most powerful religious institution in the world. With well entrenched rich and powerful men of the cloth and its distant secular arms tightly embraced by governmental institutions. City, country and state police and even military authorities, helped it reach around the world to promote its lay policies, regulations or merely to defy custom, national or even international law. It's respected and sanctioned officials were UN-assailable. Well established in America for nearly one hundred and fifty years, the church, it's cannon, authority, religious members and its social influence were undeniable and unimpeachable. However, during the last half of the past century, the one area the church did not have complete control over was it's southern gate; a growing base of ambivalent and savagely hungry attorneys who surprisingly discovered the church for all it's power was not impervious to the law. Once it was learned the church could be successfully sued and had the deepest financial pockets of all, law suits exploded in every province around the world. This movie is a case in point. It concerns the fight of the Guitry family (Keith Carradine, Blythe Danner and Michael Faustino as Robbie Guitry) who discovers their son has been molested by the local priest,(David Strathairn, superb acting) decide a financial settlement of $1,000.000 is not enough. They want the priest defrocked and sent to jail. The movie reveals the common practices of the church and the unscrupulous tactics of ruthless lawyers like Jack Warden as Claude Fortier. There are several other movies on this subject, but few other have the courage to reveal as much. ****