RITE AND REASON: POPE BENEDICT’S recent comments
regarding paedophilia, alongside the recent Murphy report, leave one
breathless.
How can those who dedicate their lives to goodness hold such
views and protect those who act upon perverse impulses?
Could theology
have any role to play?
Suffering, knowledge and power were inseparable: the young
Augustine’s body (like that of many others) was being brutalised for
the sake of the new Christian empire.
The adult Augustine’s
Confessions, widely regarded as a Christian classic, are filled with
self-loathing and shame. He (and many others) developed sophisticated
theologies of atonement, suffering, grace and redemption.
The
brutalised body on the cross rather than the innocent child in the
manger, or Jesus, the radical incarnation of mercy and love, became the
dominant icon of Christianity. The sadistic and sacrificial manner of
Jesus’s death, rather than his gracious, benevolent and merciful life,
became the dominant narrative.
In the new Christian empire, Jesus had become effectively the “poison container” for humanity.
Love and violence became indistinguishable and the film
The
Passion of the Christ, with its thin dividing line between spirituality
and pornography, is vital testament to this lethal connection. Such
theologies have devastating effects on child-rearing practices.
Psychotherapists know that early childhood experiences predispose us for a lifetime of either happiness or hurt.
Those
working with post- traumatic stress disorder/illness know that bodily
violence has crippling effects over a lifetime – psychic or physical
illness and malignant shame.
Abused persons, often in desperate
searches for narratives of meaning, seek frameworks to understand their
suffering, preferably those that promise to effect their healing.
Shamed
individuals take badness upon themselves to preserve the goodness of
authority, thinking it is better “to be a sinner in a world ruled by God
than a saint in a world rule by the devil” (Ronald Fairbairn).
However, their identities as “sinners” take on lethal implications.
They may associate love with suffering and sacrifice. They may look for shortcuts to healing by adopting an idealised self.
Holy
Orders or religious vows can, in some cases, provide an instant
identity; holy garments can cover despised bodies; holy rituals can
channel bodily shame. The body is, supposedly, miraculously healed.
However,
bodies have languages of their own that refuse to be silenced. Inner
conflicts demand care in other, often dysfunctional ways. Abused persons
may become either exploders or imploders.
Exploders externalise
trauma through rage or exploitative sexual activity. They seek to use
children, their own or others, as “poison containers” (Lloyd deMause)
for their unresolved issues and physically or sexually abuse them as a
form of “relief”.
Where Aids is rampant, victims seek virgins or
innocent children, believing that their purity or innocence can
magically “cure” them. Having deposited their “poison”, they often then
kill their victims.
Imploders internalise trauma in the form of
masochism, illness and addiction. Seemingly altruistic individuals can
end up taking care from rather than giving care to those most in need.
Without
communities of accountability, serious intervention, self-development,
and healthy theologies, the pendulum can swing between the exploder and
the imploder and the cycle of victimisation remains in place.
Enlightened
therapists who understand the far-reaching effects of child abuse urge
that we return to our poison containers, our bodies, seeking self-love
and healing (Peter Levine).
Enlightened theologians examine
theologies not only for their internal logic or truth status but also
for the effects of truth: the healthiness or otherwise of theological
stories.
They urge that we develop theologies of redemptive love
rather than redemptive violence, especially in the light of the legacies
of child abuse and religiously inspired political violence.
Yet,
Vatican agencies today silence those who challenge poison container or
scapegoating theologies.
Furthermore, they threaten to defrock those
priests whose silencing is revealed to the media.
Many theologies
were formulated when humanity had few tools to understand how bodily
trauma and brutal child- rearing practices fed the vicious cycle of
shame and served the demands of empire – religious or political.
Toxic narratives lead to toxic outcomes.
The time for such ignorance has long since passed.
Mary
Condren Th.D teaches at the centre for gender and women’s studies in
Trinity College Dublin, and is director of the Institute for Feminism
and Religion.
SIC: IT/IE