Can someone explain how this sex abuse of minors/psychological abuse seems to find its way into the best of the Church’s religious orders, communities, movements? J. D. and Ed, it would be awesome if you had someone who could shed insight into this. Are there terribly wounded and/or psychopaths in all walks of life and it is just about impossible to recognize them? Our family was involved in CL in the late 80s and we knew the Bacich family. The only thing that seemed unusual was that there was no dad around. When I was growing up in Phoenix in the 60s-70s my family and our fellow Catholic family friends were very friendly with the Jesuit, Fr. Donald McGuire who had a tremendous “fall” from edifying behavior. Later in our young adult years we were very friendly with another religious community in which the founder was accused of similar behavior. Perhaps someone can explain what this is all about besides the fact that we are all sinners in need of a savior. Thank you. God bless you and your important work.
> Can someone explain how this sex abuse of minors/psychological abuse seems to find its way into the best of the Church’s religious orders, communities, movements?
I would be interested in a professional explanation as well. I have amateur-birdwatcher observations only. Abusers (whether it is a parent or relative, or an authority figure in an organization) look from the outside like anyone else. But they have different ideas about other people's boundaries and personhood. Maybe they got the ideas while growing up or maybe they were deliberately indoctrinated into these ideas in adulthood. When an abuser grooms someone for abuse, part of the process is to gradually change the victim's ideas about the victim's own boundaries and personhood (trying to erode them) so that the victim will tolerate things that the abuser wants to do. A person who is abusive in private could be totally functional in most situations, and maybe they are really good at what they do in a professional setting (at minimum they are really good at "selling it"!), but there is a separate seemingly-watertight compartment in which their wrong-idea-based interactions are kept (it is not really watertight because the way we view the world leaks out into everything we do and the assumptions we make about other people, but I think this mostly happens in subtle ways that are possible to be chalked up to something else, some much less dramatic failure, and observers would really like to chalk them up to something else. There is a book The Gift of Fear which has suggested to me that I should not second-guess myself in some circumstances because intuition does not present its reasons, only an alarm bell that something does not add up, or is subtly twisted.) We confuse competence at one's job with integrity, and, having assessed the former, we think we have also assessed the latter, and it is ordinary for a human being to have an emotional attachment to one's own judgments and to not want to have been wrong, and in addition to all of this, if an abuser has been the victim of (maybe a different kind of) abuse, he/she has (for his/her own survival) had to learn to be more-than-usually pleasing to others, charismatic, and a good actor (and might also be cripplingly unable to accept responsibility for his/her own actions, and might also have a damaged sense of self-worth which we ordinarily seek to alleviate by praise/achievements like professional competence, rising in the ranks, power and fame etc. as a replacement for receiving unconditional love.) So this is how a person could create for himself/herself a position of power from which to act (and might be more driven to do so than average), and also have many people who would defend him/her because their own egos are at stake: I am a good judge of character, after all, and this person whom I have judged has done many objectively-good things and therefore I trust them because *my* worldview colors *my* assumptions about people (I do these good things for the following reasons, therefore they did it for the same reasons; and I would do these other good things and would never do these other bad things, therefore that is what they would do too.) I have spent a while thinking about the family of someone that I dated, and why I dated that person, and so on, as a retrospective; and I have read some things; still, I am not sure how much of this observation carries over into specifically sexual abuse rather than physical, emotional, psychological.
I think what you say is true, but how can a “devout Catholic” who “knows” what evil/sin is, maintain such a duplicit life? There has to be a very deep psychological wound in the perpetrator that has the person so “messed up” that he does not fully realize the atrocity he is doing. I often wonder if some of the evil doers like McCarrick knew what they were doing and entered the religious life to have easy access to “victims.” How can one explain the “devout Catholic” perpetrators? I can think of quite a few: legionaries, community of St. John, John Vanier, Donald McGuire, Chris Bacich; Is homosexuality the real underlying illness? (No or absent father figure, and/or having been sexually molested by a homosexual) I would love to know the workings/failings of the human psyche in these matters. Or did some of these “devout Catholics” get corrupted along the way in their rise to fame and power? How did this enormous crisis happen in our Church worldwide? Please Ed and J.D., encourage some “experts” to weigh in. God bless.
The phenomenon of abuse in religious movements is desperately distressing, especially when so many good people have invested so much of their lives, spiritual hopes and material assets in a particular style of religious devotion. Some of the reasons and bizarre personal motivations are hidden from human eyes. But obvious problems include:
1. The very long time Catholic emphasis on obedience in religious life. The voice of the superior was described as the voice of God. No wonder Jean Vanier invoked Jesus and Mary when he took his lady disciples in his arms. I also recommend the enthralling story of Jan Kowalski and the Mariavite movement in early 20th century Poland. You too can have celibacy and mystical marriages....while ferociously condemning the disobedient to Hell.
2. The confusion between personal charism and the infusion of the Holy Spirit. A person who seems on fire with a particular devotion really does seem to be a channel of the Holy Spirit. And thus his grossly immoral commands seem even more irresistible by the vulnerable under his sole command. One example would be the infamous Eric Gill. A visitor to his commune in England in the 1930s claimed to have seen a nimbus around his head. An extreme example outside the Church is the sixteenth century John of Leiden, the sort of guy who gives deranged religious loonies a bad name.
3. The confusion between worldly success and divine approval. The ultimate example has to be Father Marcial Maciel and his Legionaries of Christ. He was making truckloads of money and, sadly, such success is almost irresistible even to saintly clerics. Pope St John Paul II called him a sure model for youth.
4. The danger of confusing mental illness and religious inspiration. One modern example probably is the Silverstream phenomenon in Ireland where the monastic leader was speaking to Jesus in the tabernacle and developing a crush on one of the monks. It works outside religious circles as well. One cynical professor at my local university declared (about the Social Sciences) that if you go mad in a not too obvious way and can still emit recognisable sounds, you stand a good chance of being acclaimed as the bearer of wonderful and mysterious truths.
5. Excessive readiness on the part of bishops to approve new religious communities. Any new religious initiative is yet another sign of the upsurging of the Holy Spirit and the spirit of Vatican II. Especially when you are beyond desperate for vocations. But this last excuse did not apply when the Australian bishop approved the Brotherhood of St Gérard Majella back in the 1950s. What was he smoking?
Outside the Church, the founder of Scientology declared that one sure way to make money was to start a new religion. Inside the Church, I recently read that the Vatican is investigating twelve separate spiritual movements. The leaders may be suffering from the old pelvic urges, a lust for money, a craze for power, obscure mental illnesses or a mixture of these plus other problems. More stories like Father Rupnik are likely to surface.
I once asked this older gentlemen at a men’s group,
“I, uh, thought the mob was suppose to protect children.”
His response, “We’re Italian, if a priest tried to mess with us, we’d punch him in the face.”
Vigilante justice is a volatile thing and left to those who desperate or actually enjoy it, the best anyone can do is protect themselves and their family.
That was kind of a weird comment, I’m not gonna delete it tho.
I’ve noticed a few times when talking to more experienced, in-the-know, priests (the guy mentioned above was not a priest) they actually recognize and are cognizant of this type of pattern.
The founders of new orders are often expelled (Miles Christi, Community of St. John, L’arche ) for sexual scandal or just very strange power dynamics.
Imo, if the Pillar wants to continue reporting on this type of abuse...you’re just going to keep finding it all over the place.
Mr Bacich hasn't been the only CL leader with problems. It seems he hasn't been charged with any criminal violations yet. Yet. Maybe, if someone advances through a lay apostolate to leadership, it's especially important their training has ever more training & recognition of likely leader-follower temptations & pitfalls. New dynamics/self-image can change with advancement that may lead a person to over trust themselves.
Here's the curious case of CL, Fr. Inzoli, & Pope Francis.
In 2016, Italian priest Mauro Inzoli, formerly of Communion and Liberation, was convicted of sexual abuse against five boys.[31] Inzoli had been removed from the priesthood in 2012 by Pope Benedict XVI, but in 2014, he was reinstated by Pope Francis.[31] This reinstatement was reversed following the 2016 conviction, and Inzoli has been permanently out of ministry since 2017.[31]--wikipedia
Yes, "Don Mercedes" Inzoli, the priest with a taste for expensive cars. That part of his lifestyle has received less attention. Though others have noticed how depraved priests also manage to enjoy a very comfortable standard of living. Many years ago, John Ryan in his long article "The second greatest scandal" noted how many priests used theft from the collection plate to fund both their sexual partners and lavish lifestyles, paying for anything from antiques to luxury foreign holidays.
"But some members of the movement have told The Pillar that the alled issues"
Truly astonished by this.
I pray for the victims, that they might find comfort in our Lord.
Ohh, there is sooo much more to the Vatican-Farrell-Ghirlanda-CL story...
Anyway... I pray for the movement and for the Holy Father.
Can someone explain how this sex abuse of minors/psychological abuse seems to find its way into the best of the Church’s religious orders, communities, movements? J. D. and Ed, it would be awesome if you had someone who could shed insight into this. Are there terribly wounded and/or psychopaths in all walks of life and it is just about impossible to recognize them? Our family was involved in CL in the late 80s and we knew the Bacich family. The only thing that seemed unusual was that there was no dad around. When I was growing up in Phoenix in the 60s-70s my family and our fellow Catholic family friends were very friendly with the Jesuit, Fr. Donald McGuire who had a tremendous “fall” from edifying behavior. Later in our young adult years we were very friendly with another religious community in which the founder was accused of similar behavior. Perhaps someone can explain what this is all about besides the fact that we are all sinners in need of a savior. Thank you. God bless you and your important work.
> Can someone explain how this sex abuse of minors/psychological abuse seems to find its way into the best of the Church’s religious orders, communities, movements?
I would be interested in a professional explanation as well. I have amateur-birdwatcher observations only. Abusers (whether it is a parent or relative, or an authority figure in an organization) look from the outside like anyone else. But they have different ideas about other people's boundaries and personhood. Maybe they got the ideas while growing up or maybe they were deliberately indoctrinated into these ideas in adulthood. When an abuser grooms someone for abuse, part of the process is to gradually change the victim's ideas about the victim's own boundaries and personhood (trying to erode them) so that the victim will tolerate things that the abuser wants to do. A person who is abusive in private could be totally functional in most situations, and maybe they are really good at what they do in a professional setting (at minimum they are really good at "selling it"!), but there is a separate seemingly-watertight compartment in which their wrong-idea-based interactions are kept (it is not really watertight because the way we view the world leaks out into everything we do and the assumptions we make about other people, but I think this mostly happens in subtle ways that are possible to be chalked up to something else, some much less dramatic failure, and observers would really like to chalk them up to something else. There is a book The Gift of Fear which has suggested to me that I should not second-guess myself in some circumstances because intuition does not present its reasons, only an alarm bell that something does not add up, or is subtly twisted.) We confuse competence at one's job with integrity, and, having assessed the former, we think we have also assessed the latter, and it is ordinary for a human being to have an emotional attachment to one's own judgments and to not want to have been wrong, and in addition to all of this, if an abuser has been the victim of (maybe a different kind of) abuse, he/she has (for his/her own survival) had to learn to be more-than-usually pleasing to others, charismatic, and a good actor (and might also be cripplingly unable to accept responsibility for his/her own actions, and might also have a damaged sense of self-worth which we ordinarily seek to alleviate by praise/achievements like professional competence, rising in the ranks, power and fame etc. as a replacement for receiving unconditional love.) So this is how a person could create for himself/herself a position of power from which to act (and might be more driven to do so than average), and also have many people who would defend him/her because their own egos are at stake: I am a good judge of character, after all, and this person whom I have judged has done many objectively-good things and therefore I trust them because *my* worldview colors *my* assumptions about people (I do these good things for the following reasons, therefore they did it for the same reasons; and I would do these other good things and would never do these other bad things, therefore that is what they would do too.) I have spent a while thinking about the family of someone that I dated, and why I dated that person, and so on, as a retrospective; and I have read some things; still, I am not sure how much of this observation carries over into specifically sexual abuse rather than physical, emotional, psychological.
I think what you say is true, but how can a “devout Catholic” who “knows” what evil/sin is, maintain such a duplicit life? There has to be a very deep psychological wound in the perpetrator that has the person so “messed up” that he does not fully realize the atrocity he is doing. I often wonder if some of the evil doers like McCarrick knew what they were doing and entered the religious life to have easy access to “victims.” How can one explain the “devout Catholic” perpetrators? I can think of quite a few: legionaries, community of St. John, John Vanier, Donald McGuire, Chris Bacich; Is homosexuality the real underlying illness? (No or absent father figure, and/or having been sexually molested by a homosexual) I would love to know the workings/failings of the human psyche in these matters. Or did some of these “devout Catholics” get corrupted along the way in their rise to fame and power? How did this enormous crisis happen in our Church worldwide? Please Ed and J.D., encourage some “experts” to weigh in. God bless.
There was one whose diary came to light (I saw a story on CNA a while ago but have blotted details from my mind).
Mary,
The phenomenon of abuse in religious movements is desperately distressing, especially when so many good people have invested so much of their lives, spiritual hopes and material assets in a particular style of religious devotion. Some of the reasons and bizarre personal motivations are hidden from human eyes. But obvious problems include:
1. The very long time Catholic emphasis on obedience in religious life. The voice of the superior was described as the voice of God. No wonder Jean Vanier invoked Jesus and Mary when he took his lady disciples in his arms. I also recommend the enthralling story of Jan Kowalski and the Mariavite movement in early 20th century Poland. You too can have celibacy and mystical marriages....while ferociously condemning the disobedient to Hell.
2. The confusion between personal charism and the infusion of the Holy Spirit. A person who seems on fire with a particular devotion really does seem to be a channel of the Holy Spirit. And thus his grossly immoral commands seem even more irresistible by the vulnerable under his sole command. One example would be the infamous Eric Gill. A visitor to his commune in England in the 1930s claimed to have seen a nimbus around his head. An extreme example outside the Church is the sixteenth century John of Leiden, the sort of guy who gives deranged religious loonies a bad name.
3. The confusion between worldly success and divine approval. The ultimate example has to be Father Marcial Maciel and his Legionaries of Christ. He was making truckloads of money and, sadly, such success is almost irresistible even to saintly clerics. Pope St John Paul II called him a sure model for youth.
4. The danger of confusing mental illness and religious inspiration. One modern example probably is the Silverstream phenomenon in Ireland where the monastic leader was speaking to Jesus in the tabernacle and developing a crush on one of the monks. It works outside religious circles as well. One cynical professor at my local university declared (about the Social Sciences) that if you go mad in a not too obvious way and can still emit recognisable sounds, you stand a good chance of being acclaimed as the bearer of wonderful and mysterious truths.
5. Excessive readiness on the part of bishops to approve new religious communities. Any new religious initiative is yet another sign of the upsurging of the Holy Spirit and the spirit of Vatican II. Especially when you are beyond desperate for vocations. But this last excuse did not apply when the Australian bishop approved the Brotherhood of St Gérard Majella back in the 1950s. What was he smoking?
https://www.bishop-accountability.org/reports/2000_Coldrey_Integrity/integrity_23.htm#app4
Outside the Church, the founder of Scientology declared that one sure way to make money was to start a new religion. Inside the Church, I recently read that the Vatican is investigating twelve separate spiritual movements. The leaders may be suffering from the old pelvic urges, a lust for money, a craze for power, obscure mental illnesses or a mixture of these plus other problems. More stories like Father Rupnik are likely to surface.
I once asked this older gentlemen at a men’s group,
“I, uh, thought the mob was suppose to protect children.”
His response, “We’re Italian, if a priest tried to mess with us, we’d punch him in the face.”
Vigilante justice is a volatile thing and left to those who desperate or actually enjoy it, the best anyone can do is protect themselves and their family.
That was kind of a weird comment, I’m not gonna delete it tho.
I’ve noticed a few times when talking to more experienced, in-the-know, priests (the guy mentioned above was not a priest) they actually recognize and are cognizant of this type of pattern.
The founders of new orders are often expelled (Miles Christi, Community of St. John, L’arche ) for sexual scandal or just very strange power dynamics.
Imo, if the Pillar wants to continue reporting on this type of abuse...you’re just going to keep finding it all over the place.
Mr Bacich hasn't been the only CL leader with problems. It seems he hasn't been charged with any criminal violations yet. Yet. Maybe, if someone advances through a lay apostolate to leadership, it's especially important their training has ever more training & recognition of likely leader-follower temptations & pitfalls. New dynamics/self-image can change with advancement that may lead a person to over trust themselves.
Here's the curious case of CL, Fr. Inzoli, & Pope Francis.
In 2016, Italian priest Mauro Inzoli, formerly of Communion and Liberation, was convicted of sexual abuse against five boys.[31] Inzoli had been removed from the priesthood in 2012 by Pope Benedict XVI, but in 2014, he was reinstated by Pope Francis.[31] This reinstatement was reversed following the 2016 conviction, and Inzoli has been permanently out of ministry since 2017.[31]--wikipedia
Yes, "Don Mercedes" Inzoli, the priest with a taste for expensive cars. That part of his lifestyle has received less attention. Though others have noticed how depraved priests also manage to enjoy a very comfortable standard of living. Many years ago, John Ryan in his long article "The second greatest scandal" noted how many priests used theft from the collection plate to fund both their sexual partners and lavish lifestyles, paying for anything from antiques to luxury foreign holidays.
What I thought curious was his reinstatement