Rick asks the fundamental questions.
What intrinsic deterrents did the abusers overcome to begin their sordid behaviors? What spiritual blindness did the bishop have to see this a clinical problem? These are the core questions. They are both spiritual. Enforcement both internal and external to the Church are certainly factors, but essentially they are not intrinsic. What happens to a man spiritually that would incline him to take advantage of minors to satisfy his own lusts? If we can answer this we have the most important (but not the only) solution to the problem of clerical sex abuse.
The abusers, as far as I can tell from the documents, range from narcissists to psychopaths. They have no feeling for the pain, sometimes literal, physical pain, they are inflicting on the victims. I don’t think that some of the abuser were even believers; they were atheists, who saw the priesthood as an easy life that gave them access to victims and which protected them from prosecution. Those who were not atheists often pickled their brains in alcohol (and more recently, drugs); alcohol does bad things to the judgment center of the brain.
How did these extreme narcissists and psychopaths and atheists get themselves ordained? There was a gross failure of discernment in the seminary, even when the bishops and seminary officials had plenty of warning signs (read the murder-suicide case of Ryan Erickson).
The bishops and the officials in the Vatican also suffered from narcissism and a lack of empathy. In any hierarchy, business or ecclesiastical, those people who are cold-hearted and are willing to step on other people on their way to the top rise to positions of authority. The narcissism becomes a culture, clericalism.
The phenomena are both spiritual and psychological. How to keep narcissists out of positions of authority? I wish there were an easy answer; but conditions in the church, chiefly clericalism, both attracted and enabled narcissists and psychopaths. The case of Maciel is probably one of the most disturbing in the history of the Church. Benedict rightly called the psychopathic Maciel “a false prophet” – but John Paul praised and enabled him.
My question would be, “How can any man, much less bishop, not react to these deeds as monstrous crimes and as sins?” The bishops have not had the normal male instinct for the protection of the young. we should not be so quick to clinicalize vice.
It seems that in recent tradition, many/most bishops developed their careers on a management track rather than developed organically from among the ranks of pastors. The path resembles > ordination, a nominal tour in a parish, perhaps advanced degree, an assignment as high school administrator or seminary staff or chancery official, then on to the bishopric.
Perhaps this management elite really has no relationship to the grass roots Church. Perhaps the goal is simply self preservation.
My question would be “How can men lacking so basic an instinct rise to the position of bishop?” The suggestion that narcissists and sociopaths tend towards the top of all hierarchical organizations, including the Church, is pretty frightening. But I’m familiar with arguments that claim corporations tend to become sociopathic in behavior (presumably because of sociopaths in leadership positions). And I even recall reading an essay about communism that argued before a revolution, the party’s rank and file was made up of idealists while the leadership quickly became dominated by sociopaths. After taking power, the sociopaths carried the day.
For those of us who believe Christ endowed the Church with a hierarchical structure, what measures can we believe acceptable to keep such men from carrying the day in the episcopacy?
The problem, in my opinion, was largely that many bishops seemed to see themselves as ecclesiastical functionaries, primarily. Priests and especially Bishops are called to a high degree of holiness. Perhaps these abusers should have never been priests or bishops. Remember however that Christ said the Church will stand against the gates of hell, but allowed allowed the wheat & tares to remain mingled until the harvest. Be assured, though, the harvest is coming!
I believe you’re right that it’s difficult to keep narcissists out of positions of authority. But the top-down authority structure in the RCC is particularly liable to this problem. I believe there is a solution that is consistent with Catholic theology. I wrote it up here, quite a few years ago.
http://www.crowhill.net/journeyman/Vol1No3/dulles.html
Easy, Father. Fire them when they commit a crime, then prosecute them.
Interesting article by Crowhill but I don’t really know what to make of it. How do you analyze a topic such as contraception, to which both popes and laity were united in their opposition at one point but then later seem to have gone in different directions regarding its legitimacy?
Thomas — thanks for reading my article. You ask a good question, but you could ask the same about usury, slavery, the divine right of kings and other issues.
Positions change. The question is whether the change is a development/clarification or apostacy.
The question is good one, and it is under-examined by the laity for a couple of reasons.
1) Among survivors, there is a degree of revulsion for the perpetrators that mitigates against any sort of examination of their motives and pathologies
2) Among the clergy there was and remains a certain parochialism that doesn’t want to admit the laity into a critical examination of aspects of their institution. Vocations, formation, and clerical and/or religious life are viewed as the purview of their adherants, not of “outsiders.”
Having myself known a cross-section of abusers, and having been a candidate for a religious order (thus having been exposed to even more abusers!), I have come to believe that we must overcome this parochialism. It is time for laity to look hard at the Church institutions and their membership. Those institutions do not seem to be in a very good position to heal themselves.
Crowhill, very interesting and well writen article. It made me want to go buy a few of Dulles’ books!
there is no internal spiritual cause of free will other than the will.
The problem is that narcissism and sociopathy/psychopathy are seen as *virtues* and not defects by RCC Inc. How else to keep people in line than by having clerics with no human feelings, no empathy, and no consciences? I’ve been reading up on both sicknesses because they are displayed by many of my in-laws (hubby got the good in-laws!). Our nephew is about to be ordained a priest this spring. My brother’s wife passed on Christmas Eve. Now my nephew believes that he is a special channel of help to my brother and has committed numerous boundary violations because of this belief. We used to think he was a good kid, but now we know he’s a narcissist and on his way to being a sociopath, so he’s making it really easy for us to shut and bar the door to him permanently. He said he had to take all kinds of psych tests in seminary to make sure he wasn’t gay. Yeah, that worked! About 2/3 of his fellow seminarians are clearly closet cases. Homosexuality is a red herring, but testing for narcissism and sociopathy is not in the interest of RCC Inc. because you need sick creeps to have an effective force of scam artists and abusers. My nephew is a clericalist, and while I don’t believe he’ll abuse any children, he’s clearly *now* a predator and a bully.
Thank you Father Michael.
I should note that Dulles seems to have gone through a more liberal phase followed by a more conservative phase, and that the book I reviewed / commented on was from his more liberal phase.
Sacred Cows and Sexual Abuse | Catholic Canada
[…] I have surveyed the press in the languages I know, and this seems to be the only article that mentions this conclusion of the report. I do not read Dutch, so I must rely upon this German report, but FAZ is generally accurate. (more…) Sacred Cows and Sexual Abuse Also, the roles of narcissism and psychopathy: The Basic Questions […]