Rite and Reason: The problem of clerical child sex abuse is systemic and extensive in the Catholic Church, writes Mary Condren
Following the second World War, social theorists argued that a crucial question is not why people revolt but why the vast majority, whether oppressed or abused, seem stunned into silence. The question is especially appropriate where clerical abuse is concerned.
Yes, many victims are children, unable to speak until much later in life. But many adults protected priests and not children, even when full knowledge was available. Furthermore, clerical abuse extends beyond children, despite recent claims that once the abused was over 16 two consenting adults were at issue.
Things are not that simple or that innocent, especially when abuse occurs within a religious setting.
Some psychoanalytic perspectives from the major theorists might help us here. Sigmund Freud considered that religion was a form of illusion, probably based on sexual repression. Melanie Klein thought that religious curiosity substituted for repressed sexual curiosity.
Carl Jung, however, while acknowledging sexual repression, ultimately considered that all human desires would find complete fulfilment only in the quest for spirit. Sexuality was a metaphor, a symbol for a desire that pointed beyond itself towards our ultimate end.
In mature persons, the combination of sexuality, religion, and spirituality (celibate, heterosexual, or homosexual) can be ennobling and liberating. However, where spirituality or religion simply serve to mask sexual repression or unresolved sexual problems, the combination quickly becomes debased and corrupt.
Furthermore, spirituality provides a legitimising cover and a ready-made set of symbols that can be quickly appropriated toward nefarious ends.
The recent film The Passion of the Christ illustrated the thin dividing line between spirituality and theological pornography. In religious abuse that dividing line is crossed. The abused person's body and psyche are violated.
But, even worse, their very spirit has been dragged into that debasement and becomes complicit. The possibilities of healing are radically foreclosed. That is why abuse under religious auspices evokes such horror and condemnation.
Psychoanalysis has also illuminated the mechanisms of projection. Often, given our own inability to tolerate painful feelings or experiences, we project on to others both the unwanted parts of ourselves (the mote in their eye) and also our deepest desires and longings.
We long for perfect mothers and fathers when our own parents (in reality or fantasy) fall short of our expectations.
All the healing professions acknowledge the powerful role of such projections. Psychoanalysts actually evoke them. They lay them bare to undermine their destructive potential in clients' lives. They know they are playing with fire, and for those reasons, the healing professions ruthlessly police themselves.
Even after years of training, psychotherapists undergo supervision and continuing training to detoxify any potential confusion of boundaries and counter transferences. Such measures serve to contain fantasies within professional limits.
Priests also benefit from such projections. Far from deconstructing such projections, however, some religious practices, ritual and clothing, and some dubious theological positions (women can't be priests) derive from and feed psychic fantasies.
Priests become Good Mother/Father composites, while actual mothers (by definition sexually active) are denigrated and all women are relegated to second-class status. Priests can become sitting ducks for the projected desires of their communities. Congregations often demand that their ministers carry such projections on their behalf.
When they fail (for whatever reason) denial, cover-up, and even viciousness against any whistle-blowers ensues.
Projections are flattering and, while trained in particular theologies and philosophy, young priests are often sent into professional situations psychologically illiterate and deeply unconscious about these matters. Some take such projections personally, initiating a vicious circle.
As Zora Neale Hurston, once wrote of a local officiary: "They bowed down to him because he was all of these things, and then again he was all of these things because the town bowed down."
Combined with sexual immaturity, a lack of other intimate authentic relations, and a family of origin who feed such projections rather than bring them down to earth, some priests start living in a nether world.
Theologies, formed, shaped and reinforced in a protected misogynist environment, have few tools of discernment adequate to deconstructing the vicious circle. The consequences are many.
Authority that derives its power from projections (rather than authentic witness to Gospel values) is inherently unstable. Those whose ministry relies on such projections risk exposure when abuse occurs. Professional policing, therefore, is often directed toward protecting the projections rather than the victims.
However, spiritual/sexual abuse is not confined to paedophiles. It is far more extensive than that. Whole theological systems can legitimise unhealthy fantasies, and whole cultures are mobilised towards war when such fantasies feed political agendas. Abuse takes on momentous proportions.
Therefore, while the current crisis clearly calls for immediate measures against particular individuals, the problem is systemic and extensive.
In the longer term, we must critique those theological beliefs and practices that sustain abuse at both micro and macro levels.
Theologian and feminist theorist, Dr Mary Condren teaches at the Centre for Gender and Women's Studies, TCD