More on Forgiveness and Clergy Abuse Situation: Kaya Oakes on Need for New Understandings

UNITED STATES
Bilgrimage (blog)

March 5, 2020

By William D. Lindsey

A month ago, Ruth Krall offered us a valuable statement about the “sin or crime” dilemma facing religious bodies as they deal with sexual abuse of vulnerable people by religious authority figures. Should a community frame sexual abuse of the vulnerable by pastors, priests, religious authority figures primarily in terms of forgiveness? Or should religious communities begin from the starting point of recognizing that sexual abuse of minors is a crime, as they deal with these issues?

Ruth’s essay was a meditation on what forgiveness means in a religious or theological context. It provoked a lively, fruitful discussion which signals to me how much this theological investigation is needed right now. As I noted in a posting building on Ruth’s essay, one of its important contributions was to highlight what Christian communities of faith might learn from Jewish discussions of sin and forgiveness.

Given our recent discussion of these issues, I’m interested to see in Kaya Oakes’ recent essay “On Forgiveness, Clergy Abuse, and the Need for New Understandings” the following testimony:

But in spite of the many cases of abuse coming to light around the world, the clerical impulse to plead for forgiveness, and what that does to victims, has rarely been discussed. In 2018, I pitched a story on the role of forgiveness in clergy abuse to a Catholic magazine for which I occasionally write. My hunch was that, like many of the women who were being asked to forgive abusive men as #MeToo revelations unfolded, many victims of clergy abuse might be hesitant to grant forgiveness to those who had violated them because of the corrosive nature of trauma.

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