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#ChurchToo

Bishops listen as Archbishop Wilton D. Gregory speaks during a Mass to repent clergy sexual abuse and to pray for molestation victims, Wednesday, June 14, 2017, in Indianapolis. (AP Photo/Darron Cummings)

Bishops listen as Archbishop Wilton D. Gregory speaks during a Mass to repent clergy sexual abuse and to pray for molestation victims, Wednesday, June 14, 2017, in Indianapolis. (AP Photo/Darron Cummings)

Julie H. Rubio

Julie H. Rubio is professor of social ethics at the Jesuit School of Theology of 糖心传媒. Views are her own.

To read the report of the Pennsylvania Grand Jury is to come face to face with the worst that human beings are capable of: willingness to harm the most vulnerable to satisfy one鈥檚 own desires; abuse of trust; glorification of power over others; devotion to institution that blinds sensitivity to suffering.

Many are calling the perpetrators鈥攁nd their many enablers鈥攎onsters. As a mother of three sons and a Catholic, I feel the same impulse.

But because I am a theologian who studies sex, gender, and social ethics, I cannot stop thinking about the reality that the actions of perpetrators and enablers were systematic, pervasive, and all too ordinary. Just as the #MeToo movement exposed sexual violence as a pervasive cultural phenomenon, so too, this #ChurchToo moment should inspire a similar willingness to examine not just how perpetrators are brought to justice, but the systemic, cultural problems that made abuse distressingly common.

According to clinical psychologist , neither pathology nor celibacy nor homosexuality can be blamed for clerical sexual abuse. While some abusers were confirmed pedophiles or ephebophiles, not a small number were 鈥済eneralists鈥 who chose victims based on opportunity.

Clergy who engaged in abuse shared a 鈥渓ack of exposure to psychoeducation about emotions and sexuality鈥 which left them 鈥渋ll-prepared 鈥 to function maturely in their vocational careers鈥 and a lack of oversight. Even though abuse is , denial about deficiencies in the formation of priests continues.

Though the vast majority of priests are not abusers, the accumulating evidence is beginning to suggest that (6-9 percent) may be more plausible than (4 percent). If one adds to that number the percentage of priests and bishops who knew about, covered up, enabled, or turned a blind eye to abuse, the numbers become significant and deeply troubling.

As the #MeToo movement broadened to include not just stories of 鈥渙bvious鈥 violation but the far more common stories of and the cultural assumptions that allow both to thrive, it has taken us deeper into the problem of sexual violence.

Catholics struggling with profound sense of betrayal need to know that their church stands ready to go deeper by interrogating the culture that made abuse and violation both monstrous and ordinary.

Are priests and bishops who enabled and sustained abuse ready to confess what they鈥檝e done, to admit, as Kathleen Sparrows Cummings , 鈥淲e are no longer worthy of your sacred trust?鈥 Are they willing to critically examine the formation of priests鈥攆or celibacy, for liturgy, for leadership, and for community? Are they willing to abandon problematic aspects of priestly life? Are they willing to confront the darkness in the ordinary?

It is tempting to believe that solving the problem of sexual abuse means kicking out the 鈥渕onsters.鈥 It is far more difficult to confront the deep distortions that made violence ordinary and allowed it to be tolerated for too long.

Sep 5, 2018
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