Clerical Spirituality and the Culture of Narcissism

LA JOLLA (CA)
Celibacy, Sex & Catholic Church

Posted August 8, 2019; revised July 30, 2019

By A.W. Richard Sipe, Marianne Benkert, and Thomas P. Doyle

[Note from Tom Doyle: In 1993 Attorney Stephen Rubino came up with the phrase “religious duress” to describe the internal constraint involuntarily experienced by people, in this case Catholics, who have internalized religious indoctrination to the extent that it can seriously impede a person’s capacity to accurately perceive and evaluate abusive actions perpetrated by clergy. In short, the effects of religious indoctrination made it nearly impossible for sex abuse victims to disclose the abuse.

Richard and Marianne Sipe and Tom Doyle developed the idea through extensive research and published several articles about it, including most recently the article linked above. The concept was used in civil cases to overcome the statute of limitations. It met with little success in the U.S. courts. Judges misunderstood it and erroneously thought it somehow violated the First Amendment.

On June 7, 2019 the Supreme Court of Canada rendered a judgment that used the concept extensively. A key article by Doyle and Marianne Sipe is quoted several times as is another by Doyle.]

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