Why abuse in the church is systemic
By Antje Dechert
This article was first published on the website KULTUR. It has been translated from German to English for our network.
The abuse scandals in the Catholic Church are not only due to the misconduct of individuals, but to existing power structures. Power in itself is not necessarily a bad thing.
A woman who was sexually abused as an adult in the Catholic Church told her story to the local bishop for processing in the multimedia project "Narrative as Resistance.” In a recently published book and audio published online, 23 affected persons tell how the church became a crime scene, by means of violence and coercion because power was exploited. "Now I have received mail from him. Not only that I would be disappointed with his answer, no. I feel betrayed and used." This reaction, she says, is the same as that of the friars to whom she initially turned at the time after her abuse experiences: first signal understanding, consternation, sounding out and then dropping.
Victims have to justify themselves again and again
The project is supervised by the theologian Barbara Haslbeck, who is involved in the ecumenical initiative ‘Seeking God: Faith after Experiences of Violence.’ “Many of those affected not only have to deal with the fact that they experienced abuse, but also with the institution in which they were so harmed,” the theologian said. "And then they still often experience that they are treated like a case, that their plausibility is checked and they have to justify themselves all over again, so to speak."
Eleventh commandment: thou shalt not produce scandal?
Victim shaming: it has been a recurring calculation of perpetrators of sexual violence against children, youth and adults within the Catholic Church. This has been scientifically proven by the abuse study commissioned by the Bishops' Conference. Perpetrators drew their power from the powerlessness of the victims. The clerics in decision-making positions who sent and transferred perpetrators to therapy also reckoned with the speechlessness of those affected, says Salzburg dogmatics professor Hans-Joachim Sander: "The cover-ups who swept these things under the rug naturally looked at everything to see who could be dangerous to the church here. And the ice-cold calculation was: we can go so far as to cover up the acts, because it won't fall on the Church's head."
Fatal power structures that persist
Jesuit Father Hans Zollner, vice rector of the Pontifical Gregorian University and director of the Center for Child Protection in Rome says "I sometimes have the impression that the 11th commandment for many in the church is 'Thou shalt not produce scandal.’ And they don't consider at all how the people involved are doing - even though they keep saying they are." Father Zollner, a theologian and psychologist, is a member of the "Round Table on Sexual Child Abuse" set up by the German government. He criticizes that leaders in the Catholic Church, that bishops, are still shirking from taking responsibility for personal misconduct in dealing with abuse cases: "Many are obviously afraid of damaging the reputation of the church, whereas the reputation of the church naturally suffers much more when abuse is covered up, as we are currently seeing on a daily basis."
Power in itself is not a bad thing
Power in itself, as French philosopher Michel Foucault analyzed, is not positive or negative per se. Power is productive, it produces norms and ways of acting, it structures what is conceivable and sayable. Power can run from top to bottom and from bottom to top or at eye level. “The fact that the religious power of the Catholic Church is so susceptible to abuse is related to its structure.” says Salzburg dogmatics professor Hans Joachim Sander. A company boss has economic, financial power, can fill positions and kick out employees, change the strategy. But he always has to answer to the stock exchange or the supervisory board. In the church, on the other hand, there are no comparable control instances. In addition, "the power of religion is something that is not only external, but also internal," says Sander. "The power of religion consists in the self-subjection of people to what religion demands."
One-sided relationship of domination in the church
This self-submission of believers is done voluntarily, under great trust and in view of a higher truth. The reason why the exercise of power in the Church can become violent, even vicious, is because it proceeds as a one-sided relationship of domination, vertically, from top to bottom. The Second Vatican Council did grant power to the laity in the Church. In practice, however, little has changed. The clergy officially determine what faith is. The faithful are the receivers.
Pope, bishops, priests on the one hand - on the other hand the people, the laity, who are led and guided. In addition, this relationship of domination is religiously charged, according to Hans Joachim Sander. "The church itself is not sinful. That is, it stands as the bulwark of truth, of good, of redemption, of God's salvation vis-à-vis the civitas terrena, that is, secular civilization, and there sin is evil." Original sin had always been all but clerics, according to the understanding of the pianic age. Clerics - the idea went - were much better able to deal with this sin structure because of their celibacy and their supposedly high level of discipline. "And the rude awakening is: this is simply not so."
A vicious circle of concealment
That this rude awakening came so late is also related to the fact that clergy who make decisions in the church are themselves subject to the hierarchy, and many feel beholden to the image of the "holy church." "That is, the potential wickedness of religious power is not admitted in the church," says Hans-Joachim Sander, "because the church is supposedly blameless." Thus, he says, a vicious circle is created, a vicious circle of concealment that places service to the institution and its reputation above protection of the victims.
It is the victims of abuse themselves who have broken this vicious circle. By telling their stories, they are resisting. They have thus freed themselves from their isolation and powerlessness and overcome the shame that made them speechless. According to Barbara Haslbeck, in doing so they are also resisting the trauma they experienced.
"There is a lack of democratic culture"
“Showing solidarity with the victims in order to take away their shame and instead call the shamelessness of the perpetrators and the impudence of the covering-up priests and bishops by name - that is the only way the church can find its way out of its self-inflicted untrustworthiness,” says theologian Hans Joachim Sander. "The discussion about its own deficits in public, that is what the church lacks. That is, it lacks democratic culture.”
[i] Cf. Address of Cardinal Grech to the Irish Catholic Bishops’ Conference, 4 March 2021.
[ii]Cf. International Theological Commission, Synodality in the Life and Mission of the Church, 6, https://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/congregations/cfaith/cti_documents/rc_cti_20180302
_sinodalita_en.html
[iii] Pope Francis, address on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of the Synod of Bishops, 17 October 2015, https://www.vatican.va/content/francesco/en/speeches/2015/october/documents/papa-francesco_20151017_50-anniversario-sinodo.html
[iv] International Theological Commission, Synodality in the Life and Mission of the Church, 5 https://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/congregations/cfaith/cti_documents/rc_cti_20180302_sinodalita_en.html
[v] Pope Francis – Austen Ivereigh, Let us Dream, The path to a better future, 84.
[vi] Cardinal Mario Grech, Address to the Irish bishops on Synodality, 3rd February 2021, https://www.catholicbishops.ie/2021/03/04/address-of-cardinal-mario-grech-to-the-bishops-of-ireland-on-synodality-2/
[vii] Pope Francis – Austen Ivereigh, Let us Dream, The path to a better future, 84.
[viii] Pope Francis, Lettera del Santo Padre Francesco al popolo di Dio che è in cammino in Germania, 29 June 2019.
[ix] Pope Francis, Fratelli Tutti 22.
[x] Can. 212§1
[xi] Can. 209§1
[xii] T. Reese, “Three ways to improve the Synod of Bishops”, National Catholic Reporter, 12 November 2015, https://www.ncronline.org/blogs/faith-and-justice/three-ways-improve-synod-bishops
[xiii] Pope Francis, interview in America Magazine, September 2013. https://www.americamagazine.org/pope-francis-interview.
[xiv] For example The Root and Branch Synod Bristol, UK, 5-12 September 2021.
