Priesthood 003: Call no man a father

On 22 November 2024, a curious communiqué was published on the website of the Roman Curia. The communiqué is titled False Mysticism and Spiritual Abuse. In this document, the Prefect of the Dicasterium pro Doctrina Fidei informs the Pope of the background for some procedural moves in forming a working group that will clarify the ecclesiastical delict of spiritual abuse without a reference to the term false mysticism which is deemed so broad and ambiguous as to create an impediment to prosecuting cases.

No specific cases are mentioned in the communiqué, but there have been a number of them in the Roman Church in recent memory, and most appear to inevitably devolve into sexual abuse. One of the most notorious, perhaps, is the case of Marko Rupnik, a former Jesuit who, it is alleged, perpetrated psychological and spiritual abuse culminating in three-way sex with two nuns as a way to honor the Holy Trinity, Rupnik supposedly claimed. The allegations were made public by the two now-former nuns earlier this year (2024). Verily, “it is a shame even to speak of those things” (Eph 5:12), but it is a sad commentary on the state of the Roman clergy that in this case, one may sigh with a degree of relief - at least, the nuns were of legal age.

To be fair, there are more than 407 000 priests in the Roman Church. Between 2001 and 2010, the Catholic Church examined allegations against approximately 3000 priests - that is less than 1%. But a 2004 study claimed that approximately 4% of U.S. Catholic priests had been plausibly accused of sexually abusing more than 10 000 individuals - 85-95% of whom were boys, some as young as 3. And this problem is not novel. In the 11th century, Saint Peter Damian wrote that “the cancer of sodomitic impurity is thus creeping through the clerical order” of the Roman Church (Liber Gomorrhianus, circa AD 1051). In the 16th century, Martin Luther claimed that the Pope and the cardinals in Rome practiced sodomy with boys whom they kept around for that purpose. These accusations cannot be easily dismissed as Protestant slander when considered in the context of at least a millennium of similar reports.

Saint Peter Damian, OSB, Doctor of the Church, c. 1007-1073

Far be it from us to engage in a detailed examination of Roman ways, as such an exercise would be neither interesting nor productive, but the topic of psychological and spiritual abuse most certainly is not unique to the Latins. While the peculiar amorous affinity of the Romans and the Greeks for the “lovely bloom of boyhood” (Theognis of Megara, 6th century BC) has been well-attested to since pre-Christian times and should perhaps be viewed in a context larger than that of Roman Catholicism, the Orthodox Church has had its share of clerical spiritual abuse - albeit, often - although, not exclusively - of non-sexual nature.

Jupiter and Ganymede by Nicolaes van Helt Stockade, 1660-1669