Trauma and Transformation Conference Addresses Sexual Abuse in the Church, by Alan Hustak, B.C. Catholic, October 25, 2011

Trauma and Transformation Conference Addresses Sexual Abuse in the Church

By Alan Hustak
B.C. Catholic
October 25, 2011

http://bcc.rcav.org/canadian/1119-trauma-and-transformation-conference-addresses-sexual-abuse-in-the-church

Archbishop Anthony Mancini. Photo by L. CAMERON / Catholic Times Montreal.

MONTREAL (CCN)--Inadequate formation of priests, the Church’s fear of human sexuality, isolation, and the mistaken acceptance by parishioners of priests as a stand-in for God were all contributing factors to the sexual abuse of minors in the Church, according to Archbishop Anthony Mancini of Halifax, a former auxiliary bishop of Montreal.

No sooner had Archbishop Mancini taken up his post in the Maritimes in 2007, he found himself confronted by the criminal misconduct of a fellow prelate, Bishop Raymond Lahey, who is now in jail after pleading guilty to possessing child pornography on his laptop computer.

"I inherited all of it, when I went to Halifax," Mancini said, "the good, the bad and the ugly."

Mancini, one of 20 experts to address the McGill conference, told delegates that the inadequacy of the Church to understand sexuality meant that many of its priests and bishops were ill-prepared to deal with their own sexuality and to manage it.

What priests find difficult and struggle with most, he said, is not sexuality but isolation, "the failure to experience the grace and gift of being an integral part of a community of faith."

"Isolation is deadly, whether it is generated by clericalism or by lack of a Christian community," he said. "A priest is not meant to be a priest alone and he can’t be a priest alone."

Archbishop Mancini said priests who find themselves alone and depressed may "seek out some kind of unacceptable compensation and relief, such as alcohol, gambling and the growing contemporary phenomenon of pornography."

"Pornography is watched in isolation, has the effect of becoming addictive, and creates a false sense of reality,” he said. “It imprisons an individual in a world of sexual fantasies and illusions, compounding further the danger and the depth of isolation."

Treat the cause

Archbishop Mancini said that the protocols and rules that have been put in place in the wake of the crisis treat the symptom and not the problem. He called for improved integrated seminary training.

In the past, he said, while seminaries where a place to grow in, they were not a place to grow up in. Priests must be better informed about sexuality, "not deformed." Seminary programs, he said did not deal with sexuality, and as a result, more than a few priests remained emotionally immature and perhaps arrested in their psychosexual development.

"Celibacy is not about not having sex!" Archbishop Mancini added. "Spiritual masters and recent popes have always presented celibacy as a gift of self, a call to self-transcendence. In order for celibacy to be such a gift, there must be a ‘self’ to give away … It requires emotional maturity and, largely, the capacity to get over oneself!"

However, it is not possible if it is lived as an imposition, "if there is an imbalance, a disorder, an underdeveloped sense of self, which has not been integrated into a mature understanding of one’s identity, including sexual identity," he said. "The subject of sexuality requires more work, insight and better understanding so that priestly ministry … can be harmonized with Catholic understanding."