Catholic Church Sex Scandal a Collective Repressed Memory, by Michael Humphrey, True/Slant, April 1, 2010

Catholic Church Sex Scandal: a Collective Repressed Memory?

By Michael Humphrey
True/Slant
April 1, 2010

http://trueslant.com/michaelhumphrey/2010/04/01/catholic-church-sex-scandal-a-collective-repressed-memory/

Benedict himself was experiencing a Holy Week of "humility and penitence," Vatican spokesman the Rev. Federico Lombardi told The Associated Press.

Asked how Benedict was responding to the scandal swirling around the Vatican, Lombardi replied: "The pope is a person of faith. He sees this as a test for him and the church."

The most troubling aspect of the latest round of scandals surrounding the Catholic Church sex abuse cover-up is not that the current pope has been implicated. That is disturbing for sure, but even more shocking is the amount of time it has taken for his involvement to come to light.

Their mea culpas and pledges to be more open and cooperative with police echoed American bishops' initial responses when the U.S. priest-abuse scandal emerged in 2002. They come amid mounting public outrage over a new wave of abuse claims across Europe and what victims say has been a pattern of cover-up by bishops and the Vatican itself.

Surely that was the time when all of the Church — but especially the Vatican — should have lifted the veil and uncovered all of the heinous irresponsibility that made the systematic sexual oppression of children possible. Instead, another eight years passed before these latest scandals emerged.

Illness. The Catholic Church suffers from a socialized mental malady called repressed collective memory, a term used most often to describe Holocaust survivors' silence after the war ended. But wait. The Holocaust survivors were victims repressing memories of evil done to them and their community. Can perpetrators have repressed memories? Not in this case.

For the leadership, the better term is suppressed collective memories. Repression implies an unconscious act, while suppression is the willful act to force memories out of the conscious mind. Repressed collective memory is what happened to the church as a whole.

The idea of repressed memories is controversial in personal psychology. The effects of a recovered memory can be devastating to the one who remembers, the family and sometimes even the community. The collective repressed memory is no different, at least in this case. While it is easy to blame the offending bishops and priests, because they deserve the overwhelming amount of blame, the truth is the larger church was part of the cover-up. That is not to say the children themselves were to blame. They are, in fact, the heroes of this story — they found the courage to speak out. The rest of the Church body played a role in this cover-up, however unwittingly.

I can sadly give you an example from my own experience. About eight years ago, just when the scandals were breaking wide open, I was helping set up a diocese-wide event held in a parish church to honor the life of the assassinated Salvadoran Archbishop Oscar Romero. The priest presiding in that church was tangentially involved, but primarily he was there to rule the roost. There was a young man, in his late teens, who was helping the priest by doing small chores. At one point the priest scolded the young man for an absentminded mistake, but the scolding was far too harsh. Then the priest pulled the young man to the back of the church and had an intense whispering session with him. It seemed inappropriate, but priests are allowed to act like this all of the time. A few years later the news broke that the priest had been abusing this young man and it had gone on for years. I was part of that repression by not listening to my instincts. I suspect many others have similar stories.

Ultimately sex has so little to do with these scandals, though that is what gives them their fuel. The most important element in this psychosis is power. What Church leadership takes and we the body allows. There is no question that the Church will survive this 'test,' as Pope Benedict put it. It has survived the repercussions of some of the most unjust acts in Western history, always in the name of power, always suppressed in the collective memory for a time.

In fact the Pope is wrong, because this is not a test at all. It is simply a diagnosis. Today, Maundy Thursday, is the time when Catholics remember that Jesus washed his disciples feet just hours before his arrest. It was a lesson that Peter, who would become the first Pope in tradition, did not understand. And clearly still doesn't.