Unspeakable sins
Kaveny, Cathleen
OF SEVERAL MINDS CATHLEEM KAVENY UNSPEAKABLE SINS Why we need to talk about them Huring his tenure as cardinal archbishop of Boston, Bernard Law vigorously defended the position of the Catholic...
...Nonetheless, truth-and-reconciliation commissions have tried to create social conditions under which repentance and forgiveness may take root and grow in human hearts...
...And many lay Catholics may well see it as essential to counter the invisibility of abused children to the ruling elites of the church, particularly the American hierarchy...
...But their conduct suggests that they did not consider clergy sexual abuse similarly "unspeakable...
...Second, the language of unspeakable-ness suggests that perpetrators are akin to monsters, thereby outside the realm of human concern...
...But we have all seen how the church's teaching on abortion has become more credible as it has expanded its concern for the women involved, striving to alleviate the pressures leading them to seek abortions, and to offer forgiveness and support to those who have had them...
...It is polarizing...
...Third, it is all too easy to think of the "unspeakable" as the "unforgivable...
...All the while, it turns out, the cardinal was turning a blind eye to another act that most people consider "unspeakable"-the sexual abuse of children or adolescents by Catholic priests within his archdiocese...
...You may see the good they have done, or sense the almost unbearable pressures that brought them to make the wrong choice, or know how they were broken and abused in ways that led them to break and abuse others...
...In certain cases, you may even doubt the continuing validity of the label itself...
...We believe there is no sin that God cannot forgive, if it is repented by its doer...
...For Christians, this is a very dangerous move...
...Christ came to save us from sin and death-full stop...
...The only unforgivable sin mentioned in Scripture, the sin against the Holy Spirit, is generally interpreted to refer to the unwillingness of a wrongdoer to accept the divine offer of forgiveness...
...We need to learn more from them about what they need now, both from the institutional church and from their fellow Catholics in the pews...
...The trouble with the polarization caused by the language of "unspeakableness" is that it suggests there is no way for the community rightly to be for both the victims and the perpetrators, to the ultimate detriment of all concerned...
...Most Catholics now know we need to speak and to hear the hard truths about what abortions do to unborn life and about what leads women to seek abortions...
...First, the language of "unspeakable-ness" makes a radical demand, forcing those who hear it to focus all their attention and concern on the victims...
...How can we identify and stop people at risk of such behavior before they start...
...To try to overcome the polarization, we need speech, not silence-the very speech that is not encouraged by the language of "unspeakableness," which is more comfortable with denying the existence of a problem than with addressing it forthrightly...
...The language of "unspeakableness" has practical problems and theological ones...
...Catholic treatment facilities need to become expert in the boundaries between sickness and sin, which may be far more porous than we would like to think...
...In the case of clergy sexual abuse, we also need to be rightly for both the victim and the perpetrator, by speaking and hearing hard truths...
...What about God's justice...
...they empathized primarily with the perpetrators...
...We also know too much about atrocities that are rooted not in a coordinated plan of extermination, but in the depths of individual perversion: I am haunted by an article I recently read about the rape of a nine-month-old baby girl...
...No one can forgive on behalf of the victims...
...Many pro-life activists may view it as necessary to combat the invisibility of unborn life to the ruling elites of the United States, particularly the courts...
...Even if they view such acts as morally problematic, they would resist labeling them "unspeakable...
...There has been much scholarly writing recently on "truth and reconciliation commissions," and the program of restorative justice they attempt to promote in societies scarred by gross injustices, such as apartheid or political kidnapping, intimidation, and torture (see Teresa Phelps, Shattered Voices: Language, Violence, and the Work of Truth Commissions, University of Pennsylvania Press...
...But hard as it sounds, we also need to learn from the perpetrators...
...In some contexts, its use is perceived as an essential rhetorical tool...
...How much do we know about what makes someone a sexual abuser...
...But it is not so easy to do if you do know the perpetrators...
...We can only stand mute at the foot of the cross...
...It is easy to do this if you don't know the perpetrators personally-you can demonize them, you can reduce their whole lives to a terribly wrong choice or series of choices...
...For example, many people with gay friends or relatives have come to question the stigma and shame associated with consensual homosexual acts between adults, long considered "unspeakable" in societies influenced by Christianity...
...it suggests that being/or the victim means being against the perpetrator, and conversely implies that human compassion for the perpetrator means downplaying the harm suffered by the victim...
...In this political and ecclesiastical context, when our bishops continue to "make the papers" both for their stand on prochoice politicians and for their involvement in sexual-abuse cases, it may be worth considering the consequences that the invocation of this label may have for our common moral reflection...
...In so doing, they might help solve the broader problem of sexual abuse of minors, which extends far beyond the borders of the Catholic Church...
...No one can usurp the right of victims to forgive-or not to forgive-their tormentors, even if their tormentors repent...
...OF SEVERAL MINDS CATHLEEM KAVENY UNSPEAKABLE SINS Why we need to talk about them Huring his tenure as cardinal archbishop of Boston, Bernard Law vigorously defended the position of the Catholic Church on abortion, which is sometimes described as an "unspeakable" act in authoritative church teaching...
...No glib answer will suffice, no theological nicety will solve the problem...
...Victims' groups have done a good job informing us about the ways in which sexual abuse can harm children and adolescents...
...Human forgiveness works on a different plane than divine forgiveness...
...Perhaps the church, which sees itself as an "expert in humanity," not just in matters narrowly religious, may find these commissions' way of proceeding illuminating as we all continue to deal with the fallout of the "unspeakable" sins of our time...
...Cathleen Kaveny teaches law and theology at the University of Notre Dame...
...Once we start drawing a line between "garden variety" forgivable sins and "unspeakable" unforgivable sins, tacitly or informally, we cast doubt on the depths of God's mercy and the sufficiency of God's grace...
...The relationship between divine justice and mercy is strained by the witness of the past century, which has encompassed evil on an almost unimaginable scale and depth: the Holocaust, the Armenian genocide, the killing fields in Cambodia, Rwanda...
...And so some members of the Catholic hierarchy were comfortable calling abortion an "unspeakable act"-they empathized primarily with the victims...
...The label "unspeakable" hits us at a primal level, implying that the act in question is not only beyond all justification, but also that it cannot be discussed without sending shudders up the spine of anyone with an ounce of moral sensitivity...
Vol. 131 • November 2004 • No. 19
