My wife and I saw the award-winning film, Spotlight. We both came away shocked
and disturbed. The actors did a superb job at evoking a strong emotional
response to the outrageous behavior of church and community leaders who
covered-up child sexual abuse in Boston. The damage to human lives is
horrendous.
For me, the timing of the film is ironic. Two days ago I
reviewed proofs on my new book A House Divided: Sexuality, Morality, and Christian Cultures. The book represents two years of work examining
sexuality in the church from the perspective of moral psychology. I aim to
promote open discussions of healthy Christian sexuality. But I also wrote about
sexual abuse because it would be irresponsible to ignore it. As Spotlight
illustrates, sex abuse happens in the church and a lot of people get seriously hurt.
Spotlight Lessons for Christians
There’s so much that could be said about sex-abuse
scandals in churches. Here’s a look at six lessons using a moral framework of
six dimensions derived from the work of Jonathan Haidt (The Righteous Mind ) and his colleagues.
1. Care vs. Harm
We expect churches to be in the business of caring about
people—not just souls but wholes—as H. Norman Wright says. In Spotlight
we find a common practice of caring more about one’s colleagues than about the
damage done to the victims and survivors. The message of the Christian gospels
directs attention to the social outcasts during the time of Jesus’ ministry.
Our moral impulse is to care for the young and vulnerable. Children do not
survive without parental care. Righteous anger naturally rises when we see harm
done to children. It’s a perversion of morality to turn the care-harm focus on
an organization rather than the people an organization ought to serve.
Estimated percentages of child sexual abuse in the U.S.
are
27% for girls and 16% of boys.
See “Nature
and Scope…”
|
2. Equality and Justice
The film shows the lack of justice accorded those who
suffered deeply from child sex-abuse. A friend of mine, psychologist Ev
Worthington, often speaks about the problem of the “justice gap.” We all have
an innate sense of injustice. We are motivated to close the gap—to seek
justice. Anger fueled vengeance seeks to right the wrongs in society. And
sometimes it’s personal as seen in the film. I felt angry. Anger is a good
thing when destructive people and their unjust systems are dismantled or reformed.
3. Oppression and the need
for freedom
Following the publication of the sex abuse scandal, the
Boston Globe was inundated with phone calls from area victims. The breaking of the sex-scandal was like
blowing up a dam. People in chains to memories of sexual violence came
forward. The silence of churches and organizations is oppressive. Silence can prevent victims from becoming
survivors. Christian attitudes toward ethnic minorities and women are two
other examples of religiously justified oppression. Faith ought to set people
free. Too often leaders of faith keep
people in chains.
Silence can prevent victims from becoming survivors.
|
4. Respect for Authority
A society cannot survive if the participants do not
respect legitimate authority. Religious and political leaders are human beings
who often act out of self-interest. Sadly, religious leaders often hide behind
a cloak of godly authority. It’s as if to attack clergy or the church is to
attack God.
It’s always been that way. Christians fret about the
deteriorating morals of society. Unfortunately, many religions have lost their
historic claim to moral authority. The scandal revealed in Spotlight is one massive
example of the importance of holding leaders accountable in any organization that wants
to have a moral voice.
5. Loyalty vs. Betrayal
In Spotlight we see efforts to
encourage people to be loyal to the home team. Loyalty to Boston and the
Catholic church is a virtue. Don’t destroy the works of good people because of
a few “bad apples.” It’s interesting that the film focuses on numbers as if a
quantifiable critical mass of bad priests is needed before one feels justified
to “betray” the church.
Loyalty is indeed a virtue. But where one’s loyalty lies
is important. Christians, and all moral people, are continually tested to determine whether their
loyalty lies with their church/religion, pastor, political party, nuclear family,
extended family, school, and so forth. At times, the ties that bind us to
others must be broken. Spotlight shows what can happen when
misplaced loyalty reinforces destructive church practices.
6. Purity vs. Degradation
The church has often portrayed sex as dirty and unclean.
Shining the Spotlight on the filthy frocks in the church reveals dirt instead of the moral purity expected of its leaders. Sexual purity remains a
focus of many Christian groups who periodically rail against premarital sex and
pornography.
The film, Spotlight, evokes disgust. Disgust
over sexuality provokes the desire to be clean. We find the behavior of the
priests and the church disgusting. Disgust moves us to protection. Disgust can
be a good thing. But we must protect those who have been hurt not an
organization that perpetuates harm.
As long as churches are led by people, problems of
uncontrolled sexual behavior will persist. The people who govern any
organization ought always to be disgusted about “cleaning up” their
organization. But churches must focus on those who have been hurt by the
actions of their leaders. People who have been sexually abused often report
feeling dirty. I once heard a woman say of the Christian leader who abused her,
“I felt like trash- a piece of paper that he wadded up and tossed in the
trash.”
Read more about Sex and Christian morality, in chapter 6
of A House Divided
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Resources
To learn more about the problem of child sexual abuse, see the Catholic Church report on the abuse of minors for the period 1950 to 2002. It is
available from the USCCB.
Link to a 2002 Spotlight
team report at the Boston
Globe.
Clergy Sexual abuse is not just a Catholic issue. Newsweek
story 7 April 2010.
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