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22 pages, 377 KiB

Open AccessArticle

The International Responsibility of the Holy See for Human Rights Violations

by Nicolás Zambrana-Tévar

Religions 2022, 13(6), 520; https://doi.org/10.3390/rel13060520 - 6 Jun 2022

Cited by 3 | Viewed by 4417

In recent years, the Holy See has been accused of violating its human rights obligations because of acts of sex abuse by the Catholic clergy. Such accusations are based, in various ways, on the authority of the Holy See over the clergy. The Holy See is often referred to as a state and its obligations as state obligations. UN treaty bodies understand that the human rights obligations of the Holy See, as a treaty party, are of a legal––not moral––nature and apply extraterritorially, i.e., beyond the territory of the Vatican City State. The notion of state jurisdiction is, therefore, applied to the Holy See in the same way as to any other state. UN treaty bodies implicitly conclude that, for the purpose of human rights responsibility, the crimes of the clergy must be attributed to the Holy See and that anyone under the religious authority of the Holy See is under its state jurisdiction. However, a closer examination of the nature of the Holy See and its authority under international law, church doctrine, and church law paints a more complex and nuanced picture, where it is hard to describe the clergy as state organs or religious authority as state jurisdiction. Still, there are reasons to understand that certain acts and omissions of the Holy See in the context of the sex abuse crisis can be characterized as violations of its positive obligations of conduct. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Catholic Church–State Relations in Global Transition)

21 pages, 352 KiB

Open AccessFeature PaperArticle

Reproductive Abuse in the Context of Clergy Sexual Abuse in the Catholic Church

by Doris Reisinger

Religions 2022, 13(3), 198; https://doi.org/10.3390/rel13030198 - 24 Feb 2022

Cited by 6 | Viewed by 18262

Abstract

In a significant number of cases, clerical sex offenders impregnate their victims and force them into hiding, abortion, or adoption. This phenomenon is referred to in this paper as reproductive abuse. Clearly, most victims of reproductive abuse are adults, but even among minor victims of clerical child abuse, between 1 and 10 percent may have experienced reproductive abuse. On the basis of pertinent studies, this paper explores archival material on several dozen allegations of reproductive abuse in the context of clergy sexual abuse of minors in the US Catholic Church. Besides some tentative estimates of the general frequency of the phenomenon, this paper offers a distinction of three different types of reproductive abuse and an analysis of the interplay of clericalist and secular misogyny, which appears to be largely responsible for the silencing of victims as well as for the impunity of perpetrators and leads to the invisibility of this phenomenon, despite the high importance attributed to reproductive issues in the Catholic context. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Sexual and Spiritual Violence against Adult Men and Women in the Catholic Church)

28 pages, 486 KiB

Open AccessArticle

The Politics of Sex Abuse in Sacred Hierarchies: A Comparative Study of the Catholic Church and the Military in the United States

by Carolyn M. Warner

Religions 2019, 10(4), 281; https://doi.org/10.3390/rel10040281 - 20 Apr 2019

Cited by 8 | Viewed by 9844

Abstract

The paper explores similarities in patterns of abuse and in patterns of how the known abuse cases are handled by the Catholic church and the U.S. military and develops preliminary explanations of why. The paper considers how the two organizations deal with external efforts by civil authorities at oversight and prosecution, and the extent to which they invoke their sacred status authority to evade responsibility and civilian oversight. The paper finds that the handling of sex abuse in each organization has been affected partly by the institutions seeing themselves as sacred, as something apart from the secular state, beholden to alternative authorities. The paper highlights the fact that child sex abuse by religious officials and sexual assault of soldiers by fellow soldiers and officers constitute profound challenges for democracy in the US and elsewhere, as the institutions claim and may be accorded separate and privileged status, beyond the reach of democratic laws and procedures. It is a warning about the costs of public deference to other institutions. The study utilizes documentation of Catholic church clergy child sex abuse cases in the US, and documentation of sex abuse cases in the US military. Full article

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