Author : Thomas P. Doyle
Publisher : Bonus Books, Inc.
Page : 400 pages
File Size : 47,55 MB
Release : 2006
Category : Religion
ISBN : 1566252652
Sexual abuse of minors and vulnerable adults by Catholic clergy is not a new phenomenon. Sex, Priests, and Secret Codes reveals in shocking detail a deep-seated problem that spans the Church's history.
Author : Jason Berry
Publisher : University of Illinois Press
Page : 446 pages
File Size : 39,6 MB
Release : 2000
Category : Child sexual abuse
ISBN : 9780252068126
While seminaries, by many accounts, admit an increasing number of homosexuals, women are strictly barred from ministerial roles. The church's time-honored tradition of "avoiding scandal" also backfires. For by the shielding of fallen clerics, Berry shows, the suffering of the abused is often compounded.
Author : A.W. Richard Sipe
Publisher : Routledge
Page : 340 pages
File Size : 44,96 MB
Release : 2013-05-24
Category : Psychology
ISBN : 1134851413
A Secret World is a valuable contribution to the field of Family Therapy. Looks at the history and origins of celibacy, discusses its role in the priesthood, and considers the psychological aspects of celibacy.
Author : Mary Gail Frawley-O'Dea
Publisher : Vanderbilt University Press
Page : 340 pages
File Size : 21,55 MB
Release : 2007
Category : Family & Relationships
ISBN : 9780826515476
Since 2002, the Roman Catholic Church has been in crisis over the sexual abuse of minors by priests and the cover-up of those crimes by bishops. Over 11,000 alleged victims have reported their experiences to the Church, and more than 4,700 priests since 1950 have been credibly accused of sexually victimizing minors. The Church has paid over one billion dollars to adults who claim to have been sexually abused by priests and there is no end in sight to these lawsuits. Celibacy, homosexuality in the priesthood, the infiltration into the priesthood of secular moral relativism, too much liberalism in the Church since Vatican II, damaging rollback of Vatican II reforms by conservative prelates--all have been suggested as causes for the crisis. This book, however, begins with the premise that, because the pattern of abuse and cover-up was so similar across the world, there is something fundamentally awry with Church traditions and power structures in relationship to sexuality and sexual abuse. Specifically, in chapters on suffering and sadomasochism, bodies and gender, desire and sexuality, celibacy and homosexuality, the author concludes that aspects of the Catholic theology of sexuality set the stage for the abuse of minors and its cover-up. Frawley-O'Dea also analyzes the American bishops' lack of pastoral care and tendency towards clerical narcissism--the belief that the needs of the hierarchy represent the needs of the wider Church--as central factors in the scandal. She balances this criticism with a discussion of the backgrounds of the bishops presiding over the crisis and the challenges they faced in their relationships with the Pope and Vatican officials. Drawing on twenty years of clinical experience, she imagines the dynamics of sexual abuse both from the victim's point of view and from the priest's, and she probes why the Church hierarchy, fellow priests, and lay people were silent for so long. Finally, Frawley-O'Dea examines factors internal to the Church and outside of it that drew this scandal into the public square and kept it there.
Author : Robert Blair Kaiser
Publisher : Createspace Independent Publishing Platform
Page : 0 pages
File Size : 50,51 MB
Release : 2015-06-11
Category : Child sexual abuse
ISBN : 9781514327616
Robert Kaiser's "Whistle" is a profile in courage of Tom Doyle's brave efforts to respond pastorally to the Catholic scandal of the century. It is also a profile in the abuse of power, of a Church that put safeguarding its own reputation and money ahead of protecting its most vulnerable members from predator priests.
Author : A.W. Richard Sipe
Publisher : Routledge
Page : 368 pages
File Size : 45,77 MB
Release : 2004-03
Category : Psychology
ISBN : 1134001029
In the midst of the worst crisis the Catholic Church has seen in almost 500 years, this book challenges Catholic authorities to renew, rethink, or reform the long-standing institution of celibacy.
Author : Dyan Elliott
Publisher : University of Pennsylvania Press
Page : 392 pages
File Size : 39,64 MB
Release : 2020-11-27
Category : History
ISBN : 0812252527
In the fourth century, clerics began to distinguish themselves from members of the laity by virtue of their augmented claims to holiness. Because clerical celibacy was key to this distinction, religious authorities of all stripes—patristic authors, popes, theologians, canonists, monastic founders, and commentators—became progressively sensitive to sexual scandals that involved the clergy and developed sophisticated tactics for concealing or dispelling embarrassing lapses. According to Dyan Elliott, the fear of scandal dictated certain lines of action and inaction, the consequences of which are painfully apparent today. In The Corrupter of Boys, she demonstrates how, in conjunction with the requirement of clerical celibacy, scandal-averse policies at every conceivable level of the ecclesiastical hierarchy have enabled the widespread sexual abuse of boys and male adolescents within the Church. Elliott examines more than a millennium's worth of doctrine and practice to uncover the origins of a culture of secrecy and concealment of sin. She charts the continuities and changes, from late antiquity into the high Middle Ages, in the use of boys as sexual objects before focusing on four specific milieus in which boys and adolescents would have been especially at risk in the high and later Middle Ages: the monastery, the choir, the schools, and the episcopal court. The Corrupter of Boys is a work of stunning breadth and discomforting resonance, as Elliott concludes that the same clerical prerogatives and privileges that were formulated in late antiquity and the medieval era—and the same strategies to cover up the abuses they enable—remain very much in place.
Author : Michael D'Antonio
Publisher : Macmillan
Page : 414 pages
File Size : 22,27 MB
Release : 2013-04-09
Category : Religion
ISBN : 1250034396
A Publishers Weekly Best Nonfiction Book of 2013 A Kirkus Reviews Best Book of 2013 An Edgar Award for Best Fact Crime Nominee An explosive, sweeping account of the scandal that has sent the Catholic Church into a tailspin -- and the brave few who fought for justice In the mid-1980s a dynamic young monsignor assigned to the Vatican's embassy in Washington set out to investigate the problem of sexually abusive priests. He found a scandal in the making, confirmed by secret files revealing complaints that had been hidden from police and covered up by the Church hierarchy. He also understood that the United States judicial system was eager to punish offenders and those who aided them. He presented all of this to the American bishops, warning that the Church could be devastated by negative publicity and bankrupted by its legal liability. They ignored him. Meanwhile, a young lawyer listened to a new client describe an abusive sexual history with a priest that began when he was ten years old. His parents' complaints were downplayed by Church officials who offered them money to go away. The lawyer saw a claim that any defendant would want to settle. Then he began to suspect he was onto something bigger, involving thousands of priests who had abused countless children while the Church had done almost nothing about it. The lawsuit he filed would touch off a legal war of historic and global proportions. Part history, part journalism, and part true-crime thriller, Michael D'Antonio's Mortal Sins brings to mind landmark books such as All the President's Men, And the Band Played On, and The Informant, as it reveals a long and ferocious battle for the soul of the largest and oldest organization in the world.
Author : Tom Rastrelli
Publisher : University of Iowa Press
Page : 337 pages
File Size : 47,41 MB
Release : 2020-04-15
Category : Religion
ISBN : 1609387090
Tom Rastrelli is a survivor of clergy-perpetrated sexual abuse who then became a priest in the early days of the Catholic Church’s ongoing scandals. Confessions of a Gay Priest divulges the clandestine inner workings of the seminary, providing an intimate and unapologetic look into the psychosexual and spiritual dynamics of celibacy and lays bare the “formation” system that perpetuates the cycle of abuse and cover-up that continues today. Under the guidance of a charismatic college campus minister, Rastrelli sought to reconcile his homosexuality and childhood sexual abuse. When he felt called to the priesthood, Rastrelli began the process of “priestly discernment.” Priests welcomed him into a confusing clerical culture where public displays of piety, celibacy, and homophobia masked a closeted underworld in which elder priests preyed upon young recruits. From there he ventured deeper into the seminary system seeking healing, hoping to help others, and striving not to live a double life. Trained to treat sexuality like an addiction, he and his brother seminarians lived in a world of cliques, competition, self-loathing, alcohol, hidden crushes, and closeted sex. Ultimately, the “formation” intended to make Rastrelli a compliant priest helped to liberate him.
Author : A. W. Richard Sipe
Publisher : Psychology Press
Page : 250 pages
File Size : 19,61 MB
Release : 1995
Category : Celibacy
ISBN : 9780876307694
Richard Sipe examines the continuing sexual crisis facing the Catholic Church today. Has the storm of publicity and controversy caused the church to acknowledge any of the accusations? Will the church accept statistical evidence or alter the way it trains its clergy? How has it come to grips with reforming or retraining abusers? Has it acknowledged the spread of AIDS among its ranks? Why does the church oppress women and react with hostility and fear towards them? Sex, Priests, and Power: Anatomy of a Crisis addresses these and other questions.
