Toward a Gospel Witness: Confronting Child Abuse

Toward a Gospel Witness: Confronting Child Abuse | Daniel Cere | Homiletic & Pastoral Review | May 2010
 
The Church’s response to this evolving crisis has been, at the very least, disturbing.

We live in a culture that celebrates progressive liberation from sexual taboos and constraints. The sexual transgressions of days gone by have been rapidly refashioned into the conventional sexualities of today; even more risqué sexualities like sadomasochism and polyamory are well on their way to becoming packaged and mainstreamed for popular consumption. But there are glaring exceptions to this trend, particularly when sexual relations involve abuse or exploitation. More to the point, contemporary culture now displays acutely heightened moral indignation toward one area of sexual transgression, the abuse and exploitation of children.

In Moral Panic: Changing Concepts of the Child Molester in Modern America, historian Philip Jenkins documents a veritable “revolution” in our moral response to child sexual abuse. There was a time when child molesters were brushed off with dismissive smirks and tawdry jokes. However, today, moral horror, not condescending humor, marks the public response to child abuse. Furthermore, in sharp contrast to more traditional patterns of concealment and strict confidentiality, recent social developments have created a climate more disposed to the disclosure of abuse. Jenkins seems to view this growing public indignation with a certain amount of intellectual cynicism, but our heightened moral sensitivity does resonate with what we now know of the deep harm experienced by victims of abuse.

In the midst of these moral realignments, the Catholic Church appears to be caught in a deadly cultural cross-fire. The Church is widely mocked for its attempts to resist the ongoing liberalization of sexuality. At the same time, the Church has become the focus for intense public outrage insofar as it is perceived to be the showcase for the one form of sexual transgression that contemporary culture, with all its free-wheeling sexual transgressiveness, decisively condemns as beyond the moral pale.

Some maintain the sense of “crisis” is largely manufactured, a product of a media frenzy that taps into deep strains of anti-Catholicism within modern culture. In “How Pedophilia Lost Its Cool,” Mary Eberstadt suggests that our hot indignation over pedophilia only began to truly flare up when this long-standing deviance became publicly associated with, and contaminated by, the bad name of “Catholicism.” In order to fuel their “hate-fest on the Catholic Church,” Eberstadt argues, liberal elites were forced to take up the cause of pedophilia bashing.

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Comments

[Robert Miller]

Cere's thesis is, well ... searing.

But I think we need something like a new Inquisition (come to think of it, we already do)to provide the world with a real Catholic account of what this has been all about.

Let's not forget that Jesus' little ones are not only children, nor that sexual abuse is not the only kind of abuse that one had better had a millstone tied around his neck instead of.

Many "little ones" have had their innocence and faith despoiled in Catholic institutions during the last 50 years. I remember being required to read "The Council, Reform and Reunion" by one H. Kung in my 8th-grade parochial school classroom in the fall of 1962 ...

The rest of the filth of the last 48 years hasn't come as much of a surprise.

[joe]

What a fantastic and fantastically thorough appraisal.

Speaking of Kung, there is an interesting piece on David Tracy in Commonweal right now. The few passing stories on then-Cardinal Ratzinger will make you love him more.

[Brian J. Schuettler]

" I remember being required to read "The Council, Reform and Reunion" by one H. Kung in my 8th-grade parochial school classroom in the fall of 1962 "

I belive that is considered "cruel and unusual punishment" even for a precocious eighth grader.

[Robert Miller]

Thanks, Brian. I needed that so much after all these years.