2022/10/24

62. Cognitive Distortions

In the last issue, I introduced the memoir by Daniel Pittet, describing the sexual abuse he suffered from a priest during his childhood. He was sexually abused by the priest for the first time when he was nine years old, which lasted for four years. He decided to press charges 20 years later when he discovered he was not the only victim. Research on sexual offences involving child victims is particularly advanced in Europe and America. It has been shown that these sex offenders have distinctive sexual cognitive distortions. Sexual cognitive distortions refer to the specific attitudes and beliefs that promote sexual offending, including acceptance of sexually aggressive behaviour towards the victim, downplaying of its problematic nature and the severity of the damage, and the tendency to attribute responsibility for it to the victim's words and actions and their own psychological state. In the afterword to the memoir mentioned above, we will find a record of the interview with the priest, the perpetrator, conducted by the collaborator in writing this book the year before its publication. Reading what the priest tells here, it is surprising to see in him the above characteristics of a sex offender's sexual cognitive distortions. The fact that in most cases, including the case in this book, the Bishop and the perpetrator's fellow priests downplayed the seriousness of the abuse when they became aware of it and did not take decisive action tells us that these cognitive distortions were to some extent shared among the clergy in the area as a whole. In this light, the cause of the cognitive distortions should be attributed not only to the personal problems of the perpetrators but also their priestly formation process. This year, a person who attended the lifelong vow ceremony at a convent said that she was surprised and felt an ethical discomfort when a priest said in his congratulatory speech, "A priest represents Christ, and you are Christ's bride, so you are also my bride." I have read the "Directory on the Ministry and Life of Priests" issued by the Congregation for the Clergy in 1994 by chance, and I realised that these problems come from the fact that priests are formed amid the following expressions. "… the Church, his Body and his Bride, called by his Spouse to be a sign and instrument of redemption"; "Similar to the Bishop, they [the priests] participate in that spousal dimension in relation to the Church. The priest, who 'in the individual local communities of the faithful makes the Bishop present, so to speak, to whom they are united with a faithful and great spirit' must be faithful to the Bride and almost like living icons of Christ the Spouse render fruitful the multi-form donation of Christ to his Church"; "He [the priest] is disposed to give his life for it [the community] … in order to render it, in the image of the Church, Spouse of Christ, always more beautiful … This spousal dimension of the priest as pastor will help him guide his community …" Bringing the conjugal image into the relationship between Christ and the Church in this way and asking a priest to take on the two conflicting roles - that of a husband facing the Church at the same time as being incorporated into the Church, the wife - would potentially create confusion in his identity and cause sexual cognitive distortions. The only time Jesus compared himself to a "bridegroom" is in the dialogue about fasting (cf. Matthew 9:15). So, to make the idea of Jesus here likening his disciples to wedding guests alive, we need fresh wineskins for new wine (cf. Matthew 9:17).

Maria K. M.