Thank you for these statistics and this podcast and for honoring First Nations by remembrance. Reparations is the work of healers and the church is meant to be a healer not a perpetrator. Coercive control has many sources, some of it well intentioned and is learned behavior based on assumptions that this is what spiritual mentoring is. Another type is built on the assumption of spiritual inferiority of the target. I was in one such group in which the leader had deep and profound bitterness against women and that bitterness defiled the lives of many. Later I attended an online conference with a police detective that shared after he ran into a personality disordered perpetrator, the experience revealed his own faulty belief based on his theology that women were truly inferior to men That is a set up for abuse
He didn't want police women in police work for example and would walk into a room and know that he was superior to them. His confession of this attitude and his subsequent reparation by including women, getting the theology clear and having them not just be at the table about violence against women but lead the discussion was evidence of his repentance. As for 1st Nations, there were well intentioned oppressors, and there were genocidal and racist perpetrators, the harm was the same. Sexual assault is not about lust, control, it is about spirit breaking, bitterness, hatred, and in some cases demonic influence operating through the perpetrator. Insensitivity is not the same as bitter hatred of a gender or race, so often women of color get the worst mistreatment.
Reading the book, "Boarding School Seasons" by Brenda Child is a good study of the processes of cultural annihilation usually in a missions context. " the first hand accounts, the letters between children and parents of those kidnapped and put into abusive boarding schools in the name of evangelization, carried out the mission of that era: "kill the Indian save the man" to quote Captain Pratt (one of the proud Indian killers) Annihilation is a different agenda altogether. Richard Twiss PhD Dancing Our Prayers has written beautifully of healing and reparations. Randy Woodley PhD is also involved in the restoration processes too using agronomy, the land protection and saving of heirloom seeds.
And you're absolutely right, there is very intentional and malicious abuse of spiritual authority. I do think it's the minority, but it most certainly exists, and it causes very real and tremendous harm.
Isn’t this “anything goes” Protestantism? This spiritual abuse thing sounds to me as the general tendency to laxitude of our days, where everything that sounds judgmental is unacceptable to our pampered egos. E.g., a priest says that something is evil and sinful in a homily. People just get furious, they can’t accept that, they feel “traumatized”. How often do we hear that? So color me skeptical about this “spiritual abuse” thing. I think we’re drifting to the Protestant therapeutic tendency of “sola fide”.
I don't understand the concept of spiritual abuse. There might be different pastoral styles but, as JPII underlined, a great sin of our age is the loss of the sense of sin, and one the elements of such loss is the transition from "sin", that requires reconciliation with God, to "sense of guilt", which is a psychological ailment, to be removed through therapy. It seems that 70% of US Catholics consider going to confession as superflous, since they believe that forgiveness is in their personal relation with God.
This is a very Protestant attitude, a seeping of Protestant justification doctrine into Catholicism. Many Catholics have replaced confession with psychology. Since "sense of guilt" is a pathology to be removed through therapy, anything that makes people feeling guility is seen as harmful and as an abuse, causing them an ailment, rather than an invitation to look at one's sins and seek reconciliation.
Spiritual abuse is someone using their spiritual authority to coerce others. A fundamental belief of Catholicism is that God is not coercive, that he radically respects human freedom. So I'm still struggling to connect the dots between spiritual abuse and anything goes Protestantism?
It depends upon the definition. Let's say that a priest says to the congregation: "I notice a laxity in Sunday attendance in the congregation. I remember those of you who think that this is a trifling matter, that it is a mortal sin, which, without repentance and absolution trough confession, leads to eternal damnation." Is this spiritual abuse?
Thank you for these statistics and this podcast and for honoring First Nations by remembrance. Reparations is the work of healers and the church is meant to be a healer not a perpetrator. Coercive control has many sources, some of it well intentioned and is learned behavior based on assumptions that this is what spiritual mentoring is. Another type is built on the assumption of spiritual inferiority of the target. I was in one such group in which the leader had deep and profound bitterness against women and that bitterness defiled the lives of many. Later I attended an online conference with a police detective that shared after he ran into a personality disordered perpetrator, the experience revealed his own faulty belief based on his theology that women were truly inferior to men That is a set up for abuse
He didn't want police women in police work for example and would walk into a room and know that he was superior to them. His confession of this attitude and his subsequent reparation by including women, getting the theology clear and having them not just be at the table about violence against women but lead the discussion was evidence of his repentance. As for 1st Nations, there were well intentioned oppressors, and there were genocidal and racist perpetrators, the harm was the same. Sexual assault is not about lust, control, it is about spirit breaking, bitterness, hatred, and in some cases demonic influence operating through the perpetrator. Insensitivity is not the same as bitter hatred of a gender or race, so often women of color get the worst mistreatment.
Reading the book, "Boarding School Seasons" by Brenda Child is a good study of the processes of cultural annihilation usually in a missions context. " the first hand accounts, the letters between children and parents of those kidnapped and put into abusive boarding schools in the name of evangelization, carried out the mission of that era: "kill the Indian save the man" to quote Captain Pratt (one of the proud Indian killers) Annihilation is a different agenda altogether. Richard Twiss PhD Dancing Our Prayers has written beautifully of healing and reparations. Randy Woodley PhD is also involved in the restoration processes too using agronomy, the land protection and saving of heirloom seeds.
Thank you for sharing this.
And you're absolutely right, there is very intentional and malicious abuse of spiritual authority. I do think it's the minority, but it most certainly exists, and it causes very real and tremendous harm.
Isn’t this “anything goes” Protestantism? This spiritual abuse thing sounds to me as the general tendency to laxitude of our days, where everything that sounds judgmental is unacceptable to our pampered egos. E.g., a priest says that something is evil and sinful in a homily. People just get furious, they can’t accept that, they feel “traumatized”. How often do we hear that? So color me skeptical about this “spiritual abuse” thing. I think we’re drifting to the Protestant therapeutic tendency of “sola fide”.
Could you say more how this brings to mind anything goes Protestantism for you? I’m not seeing the connection
I don't understand the concept of spiritual abuse. There might be different pastoral styles but, as JPII underlined, a great sin of our age is the loss of the sense of sin, and one the elements of such loss is the transition from "sin", that requires reconciliation with God, to "sense of guilt", which is a psychological ailment, to be removed through therapy. It seems that 70% of US Catholics consider going to confession as superflous, since they believe that forgiveness is in their personal relation with God.
This is a very Protestant attitude, a seeping of Protestant justification doctrine into Catholicism. Many Catholics have replaced confession with psychology. Since "sense of guilt" is a pathology to be removed through therapy, anything that makes people feeling guility is seen as harmful and as an abuse, causing them an ailment, rather than an invitation to look at one's sins and seek reconciliation.
Spiritual abuse is someone using their spiritual authority to coerce others. A fundamental belief of Catholicism is that God is not coercive, that he radically respects human freedom. So I'm still struggling to connect the dots between spiritual abuse and anything goes Protestantism?
It depends upon the definition. Let's say that a priest says to the congregation: "I notice a laxity in Sunday attendance in the congregation. I remember those of you who think that this is a trifling matter, that it is a mortal sin, which, without repentance and absolution trough confession, leads to eternal damnation." Is this spiritual abuse?