Gunda Werner Specifically Catholic: at the Intersection of Power, Maleness, Holiness, and Sexualised Violence

Journal of the European Society of Women in Theological Research 27 (2019) 147-174. doi: 10.2143/ESWTR.27.0.3286560 ©2019 by Journal of the European Society of Women in Theological Research. All rights reserved.

Gunda Werner

Specifically Catholic: At the intersection of power, maleness, holiness, and sexualised violence. A Theological and historical comment on power

Abstract This article explores the power relations involved in the Roman Catholic sacrament of reconciliation, or confession. The author frames the post-Tridentine development of confession as part of the modern trend towards control of the human subject through methods of education which have resulted in interiorised self-regulation according to a set pattern. The author uses the analysis of power and discipline introduced by Michel Foucault and intersectional analysis in order to show how this dynamic came to dom- inate Catholic understandings of confession in the post-Tridentine Church. The author argues that private confession focuses the individual subject on self-regulation, especially with regard to sexuality, in a way that allows for both more subjective autonomy as well as greater institutionalised control. In conclusion, it is shown how this method of control is applied to women through predetermined roles for womanhood, and how these roles are inextricably linked to biological sex. This, coupled with the sustained insistence of a sense of sin, has greatly contributed to the abuse of power and sexualised violence that have been experienced in the modern Church.

Zusammenfassung Dieser Artikel untersucht die Machtrelationen, wie sie in der römisch-katholischen Kir- che im Sakrament der Beichte ausdrücken. Die Autorin versteht dabei die nachtridenti- nische Periode und Entwicklung der Beichte als Teil der Moderne, in der die Kontrolle des Subjekts über Erziehung funktioniert. Dies hat eine Internalisierung der selbstregu- lativen Ansprüche zur Folge. Hierhin kann ein Paradigma entdeckt werden, welches mit den Analyse von Michael Foucault auf der einen, mit der intersektionalen Analyse auf der anderen Seite untersucht werden kann. Mit beiden Analysen werden die Dynamik erhellt werden, die die posttridentinische Kirche durch das Sakrament der Beichte bekommen hat. Denn die Ohrenbeichte als einzige mögliche Form der sakramentalen Beichte fokussiert ja gerade das Individuum auf die Selbstregulierung, besonders im Blick auf die Sexualität. Diese Entwicklung ist sehr ambivalent, den sie ermöglich sowohl mehr Autonomie des Subjekts als auch eine größere institutionelle Kontrolle. Zugespitzt auf die Situation von Frauen wird deutlich, dass diese Methode der Kontrolle

147 Gunda Werner Specifically Catholic: At the intersection of power, maleness, holiness, and sexualised violence. A Theological and historical comment on power die Situation der Frauen noch einmal verschärft weil sie Frauen auf festgesetzte und festgelegte Rollen und Frauenbilder festlegt. Diese Rollen sind unmittelbar verbunden mit dem biologischen Geschlecht. Dies aber, verbunden mit der beibleibenden Betonung und Verharren auf der Sünde, hat den Boden bereitet für den Missbrauch von Macht und der sexualisierten Gewalt in der römisch-katholischen Kirche.

Resumen Este artículo explora las relaciones de poder involucradas en el sacramento católico de la reconciliación o confesión. La autora enmarca el desarrollo postridentino de la confesión como parte de una tendencia moderna hacia el control del sujeto humano a través de métodos de educación que han resultado en una autorregulación interio- rizada de acuerdo a un modelo preestablecido. La autora usa el análisis del poder y la disciplina de Michel Foucault y un análisis interseccional con el objetivo de mos- trar cómo esta dinámica ha llegado a dominar la comprensión católica dominante de la confesión en la Iglesia postridentina. La autora discute que la confesión privada centra al sujeto individual en la autorregulación, especialmente en lo que respecta a la sexualidad, de una manera que permite tanto una autonomía más subjetiva como un mayor control institucionalizado. La autora concluye mostrando cómo este método de control se aplica a mujeres a través de roles predeterminados de feminidad, y cómo estos roles están inextricablemente conectados con el sexo biológico. Esto, junto con una continua insistencia en el sentido del pecado, ha contribuido enorme- mente al abuso de poder y de la violencia sexualizada que se ha experimentado en la Iglesia moderna.

Education and Subjection – the history of educational control1 In an important article published in 2010, the German Protestant theologian Friedrich Wilhelm Graf presents a razor-sharp analysis wherein he outlines the progressive educational endeavours and their origins in modern Protestantism. Feeling the need for “a different society” and therefore a “new and differently educated person,” progressive educators “conjured up the power of religion.”2

1 Parts of this article have been published in 2019: Gunda Werner, “Bildung und Kontrolle. Historische Ruckfuhrung des Narrativ eines ‚gesunden‘ Sundenbewusstseins in exemplarischen lehramtlichen Verlautbarungen nach dem Zweiten Vatikanischen Konzil”, in: Magnus Striet and Rita Werden (eds.), Unheilige Theologie. Theologie und sexueller Missbrauch (Herder: Freiburg/Basel/Vienna 2019), Katholizismus im Umbruch 9, 140-174. 2 Friedrich W. Graf, “Klöster antimoderner Ganzheitlichkeit”, in: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zei- tung no. 65 (18 March 2010), 8.

148 Gunda Werner Specifically Catholic: At the intersection of power, maleness, holiness, and sexualised violence. A Theological and historical comment on power

Ever since the 18th century, religion has apparently been “the most important remedy for those suffering from the malaise of modernism,” and it has emerged as the most powerful force in the debate over how to create a com- munitarian society rather than one which isolates its members from one another. Moreover, how can the individual – or subject – become a unique personality under the conditions imposed by our modern society? The key term in cultural Protestantism, Graf continues, is ‘nurture’ – that “highly demanding process which does not convey knowledge and skills, but perfects the spirit, soul and body, blending them into a harmonious whole.”3 Since, Graf argues, this process is so comprehensive and a personality needs to be shaped in so many aspects beyond measure, special places are required – self- contained systems where, through separation from the everyday world, an ideal counter-world is created for such education and nurture. These places of education, Graf continues, are the

monasteries and convents of modern/anti-modern ‘holism’, designed with the holy desire to nurture a person, so that they become different and better. They rely on an all-embracing communal approach on a small scale, and they tend to remove differences between privacy and community in their everyday rites, sports culture, gardening, amateur theatre, common showers and even friendship rituals.4

The teacher – and this is crucial – is given a certain power over his or her charge that can be described as charismatic. As Graf puts it, “anyone who believes they are entitled to reach out to another person’s innermost being with higher intent and for the sake of the ‘whole person’, will have problems pro- tecting themselves against the fact that some teachers might then also avail themselves of the physical bodies of their young ‘friends’.”5 In the Roman Catholic Church, these processes of education and control largely proceed from the theologoumenon of sin and the institutionalised practice of forgiveness, that is, confession, and thus, in particular, through its office holders, the priests. The Protestant Theologian, Corinna Dahlgrün, underlines the intercultural and interreligious presence of confession and similar rites, which can be found all over the world and in most cultures. Dahlgrün argues that the practice of ‘confession’ derives more from an anthropological need

3 Ibid. 4 Ibid. 5 Ibid.

149 Gunda Werner Specifically Catholic: At the intersection of power, maleness, holiness, and sexualised violence. A Theological and historical comment on power than from divine law, as the Catholic Church wants the faithful to believe.6 Furthermore, historical reconstructions of transformations in the theology of sin show a massive break from 19th-century theological traditions and church life. This fact needs to be emphasised especially as it manifests a divergence between the features of Catholic environments, on the one hand, and the features of an increasingly diversified society, on the other. Within Catholicism, this growing friction between the inner world of the Church and the outside world of society, is increasingly interpreted as a fundamental contrast between the two. The almost total loss of the social dimension in the Catholic understanding of sin and forgiveness goes hand in hand with comprehensive control over people’s personal lives and with restrictions on their sexual activities. My theological approach is informed by intersectional analysis which has the capacity to reveal the working of power in a multiaxial and highly complex field.7 The theological development of the theologumenon of sin and its impact on subjectivity is highly ambivalent. Mapping the terrain of theological development means re-establishing a predominantly male perspective. The absence of reflection on gender, intersectionality, and feminism, to name just a few, is part of mainstream Catholic systematic theology. As a matter of fact, there are relatively few works by female theologians from a feminist perspective, at least in German-speaking theology. Therefore, I shall try to provide a critical historical and theological analysis which is materially ‘gender-blind’, as it is derived from the theological state of the art which is, again, not gender sensitive. However, my own understanding of theology and the critical hermeneutics,

6 See Corinna Dahlgrün, “Die Beichte. Chancen für die gelebte Spiritualität”, in: Stefan Böntert (ed.), Objektive Feier und subjektiver Glaube? Beiträge zum Verhältnis von Liturgie und Spir- itualität (Pustet: Regensburg 2011), Studien zur Pastoralliturgie 32, 187-205, here 189. 7 In doing so, I am applying the intersectional perspective according to a rather ‘European method’, which uses this analysis in a more theoretical and less juridical way. See Lucy Che- bout, “Back to the roots! Intersectionality und die Arbeiten von Kimberlé Crenshaw,” in: Portal Intersektionalität (2012). (http://portal-intersektionalitaet.de/theoriebildung/ueberblick- stexte/chebout, 19 February 2019); Kimberlé Crenshaw, “Mapping the Margins: Intersection- ality, Identity Politics, and Violence Against Women of Color,” in: Stanford Law Review 43 (July/1991), 1241-1299; Kimberlé Crenshaw, “Demarginalizing the Intersection of Race and Sex: A Black Feminist Critique of Antidiscrimination Law Feminist Theory, and Antiracist Politics,” in: The University of Chicago Legal Forum 139 (1989), 139-167; Brittney Cooper, “Intersectionality,” in: Lisa Disch and Mary Hawkesworth (eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Feminist Theory (Oxford Handbooks online: August 2015), 1-23, here 9.(http://www.oxford- handbooks.com/view/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199328581.001.0001/oxfordhb-9780199328581- e-20, 26 March 2019)

150 Gunda Werner Specifically Catholic: At the intersection of power, maleness, holiness, and sexualised violence. A Theological and historical comment on power which serve as the starting point of my research, are highly gender sensitive. I proceed by applying the following structure: (1) the historical reconstruction will be based partly on the consequences for the individual’s religious self- understanding – consequences which accompanied the change in the concept of sin – and partly on institutional responses. Next, (2) I use Michel Foucault’s characterisation of disciplinary power in order to reflect upon the mechanisms of education and control. This will provide the hermeneutical approach to comment upon the specific hermeneutics used in selected magisterial statements on the Roman Catholic narrative of a ‘healthy’ notion of sin. Finally, (3) I con- clude my observations by looking at the lessons that can be learned from the concept of sin for a theological debate about sexual abuse.

The emergence of the modern subject in theological perspective The reconstruction of distinctive features in the theology of sin shows that education and control of the individual is not a genuinely modern-day issue, but has its origins in the concept of sin itself.8 Historian Atria Larson sum- marises the development of the confession of sins from the 9th to the 11th century as follows: “Christians […] could have understood that the process of penitential punishment or discipline was intended to save their souls and make satisfaction to God, and they would have viewed the priests and bishops as mediators within their communities and in the church, but ultimately between them and God.”9 However, the reason why this becomes more pronounced in the late 13th century and well into the modern age is that the ecclesial institution of penance motivates the individual (subject) towards a change in awareness.10 It is therefore worth emphasising Peter Abelard’s conclusion that a sinful act is tied to its underlying motivation and requires a person’s deliberate

8 See Julia Knop, Sünde, Freiheit, Endlichkeit. Christliche Sündentheologie im theologischen Diskurs der Gegenwarte (Pustet: Regensburg 2007), Ratio Fidei 31. Knop develops a very different hamartiology in discussing different theological approaches to the theologumenon of sin and suggesting a transcendental understanding derived from Karl Rahner. 9 Atria A. Larson, “Punishment and Reconciliation in this World and the Next: The Relationship between the Penitential Discipline of the Church and Reconciliation with God in the Twelfth Century,” in: Judith Hahn and Gunda Werner (eds.), Pax cum Deo – Pax cum Ecclesia: Penitence, Forgiveness, and Reconciliation between Mercy and Justice (s.l.: forthcoming in 2019), 103-121, here 107. 10 A highly multifaceted overview is presented by Michael N. Ebertz, Die Zivilisierung Gottes – Der Wandel von Jenseitsvorstellungen in Theologie und Verkündigung (Schwabenverlag: Ostfildern 2004), Glaubenskommunikation Reihe Zeitzeichen 14. On this subject in particular, see pp. 142-144.

151 Gunda Werner Specifically Catholic: At the intersection of power, maleness, holiness, and sexualised violence. A Theological and historical comment on power consent. “It is this consent that we describe as sin in the true sense, i.e. the guilt of the soul, which is why it deserves condemnation and is liable before God.”11 It was an epochal intellectual transformation to move away from the sinful action with the focus on external retribution and to concentrate instead on an inner consent to sin where the essential element must be inner repentance.12 Although this transformation was delayed in the Church through the condemnation of Abelard’s views at the Council of Sens around 1140,13 it was nevertheless seemingly unstoppable in the history of ideas.14 It was, however, only due to the change of the sacramental format, and therefore also the concept of absolution, that the relationship between controlling and educating the individual could be brought to perfection.15 As the relevant point now became the inner motivation behind one’s actions, the dominant question how was such a motivation to be discerned, understood, and, above all, classified. But if reconciliation with God is deeply dependent on the contrite heart, then the judgement and absolution provided by the priest ultimately depends not on the priest but on God.16 Eventually, at the Fourth Lateran Council in which the controversial decision was made to install auricular confession as the only permitted form of the sacrament, this matched precisely the dual intention of nurturing an inner recognition, on the one hand, and of monitoring and controlling a person’s inner emotions (including their stirrings of faith), on the other.17 This meant the end of public repentance and, with it, an essential strand of tradition, although this loss was itself accepted on the grounds of tradition. At the same time, however, it resulted in institutionalising a scenario which finally internalised the Church’s approach to sin and placed it within the

11 Petrus Abaelardus, Scito te ipsum-Erkenne dich selbst, translated by Rainer M. Ilgner (Brepo- lis: Turnhout 2011), Fontes Christiani 44, 155. 12 See Larson, “Punishment and Reconciliation,” 109. 13 Denzinger–Hünermann, Enchiridion symbolorum (Herder: Freiburg im Breisgau 371991), 721- 739. Hereafter abbreviated as DH. 14 See Alois Hahn, “Zur Soziologie der Beichte und andere Formen institutionalisierter Bekennt- nisse: Selbstthematisierung und Zivilisationsprozess”, in: Kölner Zeitschrift für Soziologie und Sozialpsychologie 34 (1982): 407-434, here 408-409. 15 See also, in detail, Gunda Werner, Die Freiheit der Vergebung – Eine freiheitstheoretische Reflexion auf die Prärogative Gottes im sakramentalen Bußgeschehen (Pustet: Regensburg 2016), ratio fidei 59. 16 See Larson, “Punishment and Reconciliation,” 109. 17 See Paolo Prodi and Wolfgang Reinhard, Das Konzil von Trient und die Moderne” (Duncker & Humblot: Berlin 2001), Schriften des Italienisch-Deutschen Historischen Instituts in Trient 16.

152 Gunda Werner Specifically Catholic: At the intersection of power, maleness, holiness, and sexualised violence. A Theological and historical comment on power

private sphere, including, increasingly, the element of satisfaction as part of the instrument of penance. The institutionalisation of control and individualisation of conscience came to a provisional magisterial conclusion at the Council of Trent.18 From this point onwards, the only deviations within these processes were in how they manifested themselves.19 After the Council of Trent, the responsibility of the individual for his or her innermost being and thus also actions was continually expanded.20 This period then paved the way for subsequent developments precisely because the post-Tridentine situation had resulted in certain changes through the concomitant process of confessionalisation accompanied by a hardening of theological positions.21 These changes eventually brought forth some “central processes which became constitutive in gaining control over the actions of modern man”.22 These processes comprised several components. Firstly, Adriano Prosperi depicts the issue resulting from the more stringent enforcement of celibacy by

18 See Dorothea Sattler, Gelebte Buße. Das menschliche Bußwerk (satisfactio) im ökumenischen Gespräch (Grunewald: Mainz 1992), 73-88. 19 A further reinforcing element is mentioned by Ebertz: the introduction of the confessional as an element which combined both secrecy and the public space, and which became a venue where discretion permitted detailed questioning based on specific guidelines. This was also the time in which communities were created that were dedicated to cultivating a religious life coupled with Eucharistic piety and a commitment to confession. Regularly receiving communion meant not only more frequent confession, but also a regular examination of one’s conscience. “All these and other conscience-modelling measures – measures to increase self- constraint through the internalisation of external impositions resulting from new forms of mutual dependence in the 16th and 17th century – added up to the creation of the ‘modern self’.” See, Ebertz, Die Zivilisierung Gottes, 144. Ebertz also includes the introduction of collective first communion and the practice of checking entire school classes for regular confession (p. 144). “It meant that even children were, at least to some extent, confronted more or less continuously with a learning process that taught them to check and control their own affective state more autonomously and to practice distinguishing between their actions and the underlying impulses.” (p. 144). 20 Adriano Prosperi, “Die Beichte und das Gericht des Gewissen,”, in: Paolo Prodi and Wolfgang Reinhard (eds.), Das Konzil von Trient und die Moderne (Duncker & Humblot: Berlin 2001), Schriften des Italienisch-Deutschen Historischen Instituts in Trient 16, 175-197. In this context the authors look at the far-reaching decisions that were made in response to the Council of Trent, seeking to prevent and punish any sexual abuse perpetrated by priests towards female penitents (pp. 195-197). 21 See Johanna Rahner, Creatura Evangelii. Zum Verhältnis von Rechtfertigung und Kirche (Herder: Freiburg 2005), 218-225. 22 Ebertz, Die Zivilisierung Gottes, 145.

153 Gunda Werner Specifically Catholic: At the intersection of power, maleness, holiness, and sexualised violence. A Theological and historical comment on power the post-Tridentine Church,while at the same time, penitents were expected to deliver comprehensive confessions that went into the smallest sexual details. “To fulfil the sacred function of a judge over sin”, says Prosperi, “it was important that the priest himself should not be involved in the sins of the flesh.”23 This situation was discussed as a problem, particularly concerning the sexual abuse of women – an issue that was mentioned quite early in history by Erasmus of Rotterdam. It was therefore decided to expand the jurisdiction of the Inquisition by including the crime of sollicitatio ad turpia.24 However, because this only qualified as heresy within the sacrament itself and nullified the sacrament of penance, the Church had to create a way for the Inquisition to intervene. It was therefore decided to involve the Inquisition judicially at the time before and after the actual confession.25 This example illustrates two significant changes resulting from Trent which reveals an issue that the Roman Catholic Church was to face over the next few centuries. Firstly, the focal point of confession is a person’s individual actions. The sacrament cannot exist without a person’s individual contrition, confession, and satisfaction. How- ever, from now on, this could only occur through a so-called ‘auricular confession’, where the individual is required to exercise some highly personalised control of his or her inner emotions, filtered through their own understanding, in a process that also involves the priest. At the same time, however, the close association of confession and the Inquisition meant not only that confession continued to use legal language. It also marked a deeper theological issue whereby, according to Prosperi, “the self-contained Church created a police system in its effort to present itself as a perfect body and to ensure that the sacrament of penance did not lose its social standing.”26 In other words, the first post-Tridentine transformation illustrates the concept of an immaculate

23 Prosperi, Die Beichte, 196. 24 Ibid., 197. 25 This was prompted by the need to set up a control system for confession, structured by two questions: the question of heresy, which then determined the subsequent procedure of whether the matter should be dealt with through confession or whether it should be passed on to the Inquisition; and the question of a person’s sexual conduct, which was now no longer merely a moral issue. Ibid., 196. 26 Ibid. This historical development involved a subtle dogmatic point, that is, the endeavour to underpin the principle of forgiveness through sacrament and to combine it with a Church vision of a perfect society, yet without delivering any genuinely ecclesiological reasoning and without integrating the sacrament into the general context of a Spirit-led historically grown community of tradition.

154 Gunda Werner Specifically Catholic: At the intersection of power, maleness, holiness, and sexualised violence. A Theological and historical comment on power and holy church with equally immaculate and religiously flawless office holders. Although, as Johanna Rahner remarks, despite the fact that the Council of Trent itself did not focus on ecclesiological questions as such, the impact of the council in this area was tremendous. The most significant consequence was the increased emphasis on the hierarchical order of the Church, which continues to discriminate against women in the present. No longer had the Eucharist symbolised the centre of the Church, but Rome. The Church came to be understood as twofold: as the ecclesia triumphans and the ecclesia militans.27 Secondly, Michael Ebertz emphasises the fundamental transformation of the concept of sin and its consequences which was brought about by radical changes concerning the principles guiding human understanding as well as the assumptions underlying scientific thought and the perception of the world and nature. The emerging (natural) sciences in particular led to a collision with the common theological motivation for punishment.28 This cognitive discrepancy was resolved in 17th and 18th-century intellectual circles through the reinterpre- tation of key dogmatic areas. From this point onward, it was no longer conceiv- able how any direct punishment from God through thunder and lightning, earth- quakes and fire could be compatible with scientific thought. Biblical sources portraying this type of punishment were therefore increasingly interpreted independently and in line with existing knowledge. Yet it also meant that the entire theology of sin and its eschatological connotations had to be re-thought from scratch, causing a theological change which not only affected the concept of personal sin and its punishment, but also the underlying image of God. “Rational worship of God was based above all on a perception of nature and rational analogies taken from people’s everyday world. School books based on progressive educational theory taught Catholic children to see God as a wise creator and preserver of a functioning nature.”29 This led to a significant internal differentiation in everyday Catholic life which, according to Michael Ebertz and Andreas Holzem, showed itself above all in the emergence of the modern bourgeoisie. This group turned away from ordinary believers, whom they now

27 See Rahner, Creatura Evangelii, 186-191. 28 Detailed description in Ebertz, Die Zivilisierung Gottes, 149-152. Scepticism towards an out- moded belief in immortality led to a resurgence of Origen’s doctrine of apokatastasis, particularly among scholars with a Protestant background whose focus had been on an eschatological judgement with a dual outcome. Ebertz believes that this went hand in hand with the gradually developing educational role that was ascribed to punishments (152-153). 29 Andreas Holzem, Christentum in Deutschland 1550-1850 – Konfessionalisierung-Aufklärung- Pluralisierung, 2 volumes (Ferdinand Schöningh: Paderborn/Munich/Vienna/Zürich 2015), 764.

155 Gunda Werner Specifically Catholic: At the intersection of power, maleness, holiness, and sexualised violence. A Theological and historical comment on power saw as rather common, and declared that central elements of church tradition were less mandatory or even completely optional.30 This created a new constel- lation within Catholicism that was no longer based primarily on social class but which formed a dividing line of cognitive dissonances between the educated laity and clergy, on the one hand, and the uneducated and ‘backward’ laity and clergy, on the other.31 This loss of a fundamental day-to-day basis of plausibility in matters of faith even among the Catholic laity was accompanied by a lively culture of theological reflection.32 Moreover, as this culture has to be seen in combination with the simultaneous pedagogisation and moralisation of the individual, one might get the impression that it was merely a shift in patterns through which the world was interpreted. The 18th century (if not earlier) developed into a century of education,33 and it was dominated by the ideal anthropological concept that humanity can per- fectly manifest both the power of the soul and the power of reason.34 This development came to be an indispensable part of the way an enlightened person experiences himself of herself, while at the same time not sidestepping either the Catholic environment or the tenets of faith of a religious person as such. The changes in educational structures were accompanied by the typecast- ing of Jesus as the perfect and ideal teacher.35 It is frequently said that Chris- tian tenets of faith had lost their plausibility, but here, in particular, the cause of this loss cannot be found in the usual metaphor of decay that has been applied to the Christian faith through philosophical reflection since the Middle Ages. Rather, it likely has its origins far more in the Church’s exhortation to not only take responsibility for one’s inner sentiments and emotions, but also to explore and explain them, and increasingly to narrate them as one’s own life story.36 So the sustained questioning of traditions handed down through the ages did not start with the Enlightenment and its implied critique of religion. Rather, this process had started long before then, and once culture has been “defrocked” or secularised, it embarked upon a process of detachment from any “normative guardianship and control by the Christian church as an

30 Ebertz, Die Zivilisierung Gottes, 155. 31 Ibid., 156. This line of conflict is also where one can find the controversy between Jansenites and Jesuits. 32 Ibid., 159-160. 33 See Rahner, Creatura Evangelii, 266. 34 See Holzem, Christentum in Deutschland, 761-762. 35 Ibid., 762. 36 Ibid.; Hahn, “Zur Soziologie der Beichte,” 419-423.

156 Gunda Werner Specifically Catholic: At the intersection of power, maleness, holiness, and sexualised violence. A Theological and historical comment on power institutional dispenser of grace.”37 Yet, it also meant that the background against which life was interpreted continued to remain within religious boundaries, no matter how porous those boundaries may have been. The question therefore remains whether the shift in relative levels of knowledge, reasoning, and thus also power between clergy and the laity – which is very much emphasised by Michael Ebertz – has really led to a fundamental upheaval in religious practice and in the definition of the subject in a crucial area of a person’s Christian life, including personal lifestyle and its relevance to salvation.38 The second line of change after Trent can be found in the influence of education and educational nurturing in all social institutions, whereby the individual believer became detached from the Church as the omnipresent normative institution in matters of salvation and came to be seen as someone with their own individual responsibility. Yet thirdly, Andreas Holzem is far more critical in his emphasis on the remaining pastoral power of the clergy who, he says, merely began to apply new labels in their preaching to find patterns of reasoning which they then used for the purpose of proclaiming “rational doctrine, bourgeois morality and holistic enlightenment.”39 This conservatism, with its popularised form of Enlightenment, however, was somehow in contrast with the self-perception of educational enthusiasts. Despite all tendencies towards autonomy since the 17th century, I believe that this tendency must not be underestimated.40 After all, the vehement dispute on contrition,41 for instance, could only escalate so much because there remained a residue of unease towards a clergy who had been reviled for lax morals in a domain in which the consequences were very tangible, especially in the sacrament of penance. If the forgiveness of sins merely required a minimum of contrition, then this threw doubt on the entire

37 Ebertz, Die Zivilisierung Gottes, 171. 38 José Casanova, “New Religious Movements as a Global Phenomenon Between Secularization and Religious Revival and Fundamentalism”, in: Johannes Müller and Karl Gabriel (eds.), Evangelicals – Pentecostals – Charismatics, New Religious Movements as a Challenge to the Catholic Church (Claretian Communications Foundation: Quezon City 2015), 45-69. On p. 65, the authors draw attention to a twofold exodus of men from the Catholic Church in the 19th century: intellectuals at the beginning of the century, and artists in the mid-/late 19th century. 39 Holzem, Christentum in Deutschland, 765. 40 See Rahner, Creatura Evangelii, 266-273. 41 See Werner, Die Freiheit der Vergebung, 254-258; Gunda Werner, “Reuestreit”, in: Enzyklopädie der Neuzeit, online edition, relaunched in September 2017 (http://reference- works.brillonline.com/browse/enzyklopaedie-der-neuzeit, 4 September 2017).

157 Gunda Werner Specifically Catholic: At the intersection of power, maleness, holiness, and sexualised violence. A Theological and historical comment on power sacramental system and on the seriousness of sin.42 Yet this development was highly paradoxical. After all, it is precisely through the individualisation of confession and thus the shift towards subjectivity in the concept of sin that human beings can see themselves as acting responsibly on their own, with their actions forming part of a life story which can then be called identity. At the same time, from a dogmatic perspective, this individualisation means that the forgiveness of sins as a sacramental process de facto loses its ecclesiological and social dimensions.43 The individualisation of sacramental practice with simultaneous relaxation of access to this sacrament (which, after baptism, specifies a person’s membership in the Church), was accompanied by a significant increase in participation in the Church’s acts of grace around the mid- 19th century, which is noteworthy. The increasing focus on individual morality – which had very little to do with an enlightened self-awareness, but instead aimed to ensure obedient subordination – also resulted in re-embedding the individualised sense of sin within the Church as the institutional dispenser of grace.44 We cannot emphasise enough the major breach that was caused by the strengthening of post-1800 Catholic conservatism.45 In fact, the underlying conditions continued to prevail until the mid-19th century and thus into the phase of enlightened theology and the Catholic piety which it came to characterise.46 The consequences of this development, which, in ecclesial practice, is illustrated by the relationship between confession and Sunday Eucharist, were not just a concept of sin based on deeds; they were also part of a power structure based on a divinely legitimised, highly clerical theology. These consequences must not be underestimated. The continually present undercurrent of this development was the ambivalent metaphor of a court of law, with the priest symbolising the judge.47 It contrasts with the metaphor of sickness,

42 See Werner, Die Freiheit der Vergebung, 254-258; Werner, “Reuestreit.” The argument was never solved, but postponed: See DH 2070, 5.5.1667. 43 See Werner, Die Freiheit der Vergebung, 332-334. 44 See James Dallen, The Reconciling Community: The Rite of Penance (Liturgical Press: New York 1986), Studies in the Reformed Rites of the Catholic Church, 3; Werner, Die Freiheit der Vergebung, 195-199. 45 See Rahner, Creatura Evangelii, 273. 46 See Ulrich Lehner, The Catholic Enlightenment – the Forgotten History of a Global Movement (Oxford University Press: New York 2016), 217. 47 See Rosel Oehmen-Viregge, “‘… equally a Judge and a Physician’ – Questioning can. 978 §1 CIC from a Canonical and Pastoral Point of View,” in: Judith Hahn and Gunda Werner (eds.), Pax cum Deo – Pax cum Ecclesia: Penitence, Forgiveness, and Reconciliation between Mercy and Justice (s.l. forthcoming 2019), 39-58.

158 Gunda Werner Specifically Catholic: At the intersection of power, maleness, holiness, and sexualised violence. A Theological and historical comment on power where the priest is elevated to the position of a doctor. The encoding of confession thus alternates between the picture of a court and a doctor’s office. In either case, there is a relationship of total dependence of the confessing individual on the power of the priest granting absolution. The third development, therefore, logically emphasises the abiding pastoral power of the Church and its control over the individual believer through its power structures.48 In summary, it can be said that the theological development of the concept of sin and its treatment through confession and spiritual guidance initially led to a certain moral autonomy for the subject. It was accompanied by a knowledge-guided transformation, whereby God’s threat of punishment was replaced by an understanding of sin and punishment informed by scientific and philosophical reflection. From a social perspective, the structure of auricular confession dogmatised again by Trent remained almost entirely without consequences, and confession no longer had any external form in the Church except for the practice of satisfaction, which was also private in its structure and usually involved prayer or money.49 The shift towards the sinful subjects’ life story via introspection into their own feelings and emotions not only led to the new literary genre of the diary or novel, but also revived the early Christian profession of a ‘father of souls’ as a physician and judge.50 This interplay between motivation and structures was reflected in the signs of the Church’s power relations vis-à-vis the life of an individual that remained unchanged even during the Enlightenment. They gained a measure of totality to the extent that the overall body of enlightened thought was marginalised and pushed into a niche, both de facto and theologically, until it eventually became impossible.51 The seamless appropriation of all areas of life by the growing ultramontanism in the form of a self-contained Catholic counter-world had its consequences particularly clearly at intersections between education and personal development. This was especially true in the areas of schooling and public education, as well as in the

48 See Sabine Demel, “Durch das Bekennen der Sünde die göttliche Gerechtigkeit und Barmher- zigkeit erfahren. Das Bußsakrament in den kirchlichen Gesetzbüchern von 1982 und 1990”, in: Sabine Demel and Michael Pfleger (eds.), Sakrament der Barmherzigkeit. Welche Chance hat die Beichte? (Herder: Freiburg 2017), 64-105, here 82. Demel is much more in favour of this understanding. 49 See Sattler, Gelebte Buße, 177-182. 50 See Rosel, “…equally a Judge and a Physician,” 41. Also Rahner, Creatura Evangelii, 201, who emphasises that the potestas is most important. 51 See Holzem, Christentum in Deutschland, 776-777; Lehner, The Catholic Enlightenment, 216-217.

159 Gunda Werner Specifically Catholic: At the intersection of power, maleness, holiness, and sexualised violence. A Theological and historical comment on power collective preparation of children for first communion which, in the 17th century, had already pushed the practice of confession earlier in a person’s life.52 This situation created precisely those structures which Friedrich Wilhelm Graf described so succinctly as a breeding ground for abusive behaviour and even sexualised violence. The areas that should be attended to include the withdrawal from open social discourse, the introduction of a paternalistic relationship between the penitent and the confessor/spiritual guide – a relationship which pervades the whole of life, making it difficult for individuals to achieve autonomy in their own life and judgement, the replacement of truth with a demand for obedience which not only hinders a person’s own reasoning and reflection, but also describes such reasoning and reflection as potential sources of heresy.53 Since the mid-19th century, life has been ruled by the practice of weekly confession and the unlimited exercise of power by the Holy Church over the faithful who are perceived as sinners. This development can hardly be overestimated in its impact, resulting in people’s life-long dependence and awareness of their own sinfulness.54 In view of the achievements of the modern age and modernism, including the positive connotations of self-control, understanding, and awareness of one’s own self and freedom, this kind of external control must be described as almost cynical. Furthermore, such absolute submission to a system of truth turns a “lockjaw spasm of anti-modernism” into a guiding principle in Catholicism (as noted by Otto Hermann Pesch).55

Religion, freedom, sex, and sin: Power in the Catholic Church The complex motivations in the history of theology, combined with the theological issue of sin, clearly indicate that the understanding of sin and guilt is

52 See Ebertz, Die Zivilisierung Gottes, 144-145. 53 This has been the development of the magisterial expansion of the tenets of faith since Pius IX’s apostolic letter Tuas Libenter of 1863, subsequently declared as a binding dogma on 24 April 1870 in Dei Filius (DH 3011) and then repeated in Lumen Gentium 25 at the Second Vatican Council (1962-1965), although the underlying parameters of revelation were funda- mentally transformed into an understanding of revelation under communication theory which, however, was all the more opposed to any unconditional obedience of faith. 54 See Rupert M. Scheule, Beichte und Selbstreflexion – Eine Sozialgeschichte katholischer Bußp- raxis im 20. Jahrhundert (Campus Forschung: Frankfurt am Main 2002), 843; Ursula Silber, Zwiespalt und Zugzwang – Frauen in Auseinandersetzung mit der Beichte, Studien zur The- ologie und Praxis der Seelsorge (Echter Verlag: Würzburg 1996), 20. 55 See Rahner, Creatura Evangelii, 198, 203, 273-274.

160 Gunda Werner Specifically Catholic: At the intersection of power, maleness, holiness, and sexualised violence. A Theological and historical comment on power directly related to the interaction between education and control over the subject. However, the following could have happened as well: the understanding obtained by the subjects about themselves and their capacity for self-control and autobiographical narration – which they gained through the development of the Church and Enlightenment – might have resulted in increased autonomy and independence of lifestyles, so that the pedagogisation of the subject might eventually have led to individual identities taking responsibility for their own lives. In fact, these processes occurred simultaneously, and the emancipation processes were just as much part of reality as people’s submission under a lifelong structure of obedience by faith – described as “lockjaw” – a structure that found its expression in the concept of sin in particular. To understand the impact of an institution’s disciplinary power, its perverseness and subjugating effects on the soul, spirit, and body which persists despite increasing individual autonomy, it is worthwhile following Michel Foucault’s multifaceted analysis of power and power relations. This analysis, which Foucault conducted in considerable detail, is worthwhile reading in order to see if it can also provide insight into a theological power structure. The following section will merely focus on those features of discipline that can be applied to this question in a more detailed treatment. In his comprehensive study, Discipline and Punish,56 Michel Foucault looks at both a prison and the military as institutions of power which seek to funda- mentally transform their members. Foucault repeatedly mentions the potential generalisation of disciplinary mechanisms which started in the 18th century, if not earlier. He identified the decisive motivation as the “meticulous control of the operations of the body, which assured the constant subjection of its forces,” which, in turn, was also a motive in the development of confession.57 Foucault describes the methodical endeavour to make the subject docile and useful as ‘discipline(s)’, which became the usual form of domination in the course of the 17th and 18th centuries. Discipline uses a small number of highly effective methods which focus on four features with regard to “docile bodies”: (1) distribu- tion of individuals within a given space, (2) control over their actions, (3) organ- isation of developments, and (4) composition of forces.58 By applying these methods, discipline creates an individuality which is also devoid of authentic

56 Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison, translated by Alan Sheridan (Vintage Books: New York 1995, revised 2nd edition). 57 Ibid, 137. 58 Ibid, 135.

161 Gunda Werner Specifically Catholic: At the intersection of power, maleness, holiness, and sexualised violence. A Theological and historical comment on power individuality, since it is locked into a system of identical individuality. “The means of correct training” rely on a variety of mechanisms which achieve their success through the use of simple instruments: (1) hierarchical observation, (2) normalising judgement, and (3) the introduction of examinations.59 Disci- pline becomes dressage with the aim of training “vigorous bodies” and therefore concealing the hazards of this goal.60 The famous Panopticon is the consequence of such disciplinary power and has the aim of ensuring full-scale surveillance. This is why Panopticism is the disciplinary methodology that covers all other methods. In his analysis, Foucault offers in-depth insights into the functioning of power. It is precisely by focusing on the functional aspect of power that Fou- cault can identify the discursive and at the same time anonymous structure. Power is not personal – what is important is not the source of hierarchical power, rather its effect.61 As such, power is pervasive, absolute and allows no one, not even the powerful, to be ‘outside’ of power. Foucault’s analysis should make us sit up and take note of several of points: firstly, there is the importance attached to individual equality for each person. By dissolving the group, disciplinary power makes solidarity and joint action impossible, pro- moting silence and isolation even though everyone looks the same. Secondly, power does not need major instruments in order to be effective. The fictitious relationship brought about by the omnipresence of control is in itself sufficient to create a system whereby individuals are empowered to monitor and identify themselves. Thirdly, disciplinary power is expressed within the general for- mula of the panoptic arrangement through a process of expansion that goes far beyond the area to be controlled. These three features are important for the specific situation of the Roman Catholic Church in the mid-20th century and in the transition to late modernity, because they demonstrate features which characterise Roman Catholic con- texts. In other words, the subject discovers its freedom in the face of his or her emotionally guided actions, which are always fallible.62 This makes an analysis of sin/guilt and its treatment a matter of talking about this process, which

59 Ibid, 170. 60 Ibid, 172. 61 See Petra Gehring, “Das invertierte Auge. Panoptikum und Panoptismus”, in: Marc Rölli and Robert Nigro (eds.), Vierzig Jahre „Überwachen und Strafen“. Zur Aktualität der Foucault’schen Machtanalyse (Transkript: Berlin 2017), 21-41, here 29. 62 See Knop, Sünde, Freiheit, Endlichkeit, 345-347.

162 Gunda Werner Specifically Catholic: At the intersection of power, maleness, holiness, and sexualised violence. A Theological and historical comment on power is itself distinctly modern. According to Johanna Rahner, the Catholic perspective on modern development from the Counter Reformation up until Vatican I is a critical one, to the point of rejecting the results of modernity.63 Dog- matically, however, these are two sides of the same coin which illustrate a deeper point. Considering that the theologically fundamental issue of the relationship between humanity and God has doctrinal consequences with regard to sin, it is equally fundamental that this theological issue should be approached from a hermeneutical perspective. This is the issue which determines our understanding of the modern age and, looking forward, of modernity. The period of time reconstructed here helps us see this mutual relationship. The magisterial decision on individual confession promotes an individualised understanding of sin and the Church’s deliberate involvement, even though this was not the magisterial intention (on the contrary: see the condemnation of Abelard). The three elements of penance and their only liturgical form reinforce the process of educating and controlling the individual with the purpose of achieving greater self-control of one’s emotions. Increasing access to emerging scientific findings and the acceptance of such findings have meant that the intellectual understanding of the traditional threat of punishments for sins has increasingly turned into the individual’s autonomous dealing with sins. The missing ecclesiological dimension of confession could only be given some plausibility through access to the sacraments, that permited the tight disciplining and monitoring of each individual Catholic at a time in which the link between receiving communion and confession had the status of a weekly obligation.64 As I see it, Foucault’s description of disciplinary power contains the hermeneutical key for us to analytically detect this dynamic of uninter- rupted moral control as a fundamental pattern underlying the potential perpe- tration of sexual violence and its concealment. Yet, this situation is also profoundly contradictory. In the industrialised West, and therefore also in Germany, the practice of confession as the place for the forgiveness of sins has been below the threshold of perception, even among confessing Catholics. Yet statements by the Church still give a central position to a specific understanding of sin, and the frequency of confession is regarded

63 See Rahner, Creatura Evangelii, 263-274. 64 See Demel, “Durch das Bekennen der Sünde,” 66-68. See also Dallen, The Reconciling Com- munity, 180-183; see Leo XIII (DH 3360-3364), Mirae Caritatis of 28 May 1902; Pius X (DH 3375-3383), Sacra Tridentina Synodus of 20 December 1905; (DH 3530-3536), Quam Singulari of 8 August 1910.

163 Gunda Werner Specifically Catholic: At the intersection of power, maleness, holiness, and sexualised violence. A Theological and historical comment on power as a moral indicator of a society.65 Until quite recently, this has been illustrated by the discernible magisterial efforts to portray a specific interpretation of a sense of sin as a key narrative for the present day. These efforts, which have formed part of certain recurring tendencies since 1979, pervade theological discourse like a basso continuo and have their background in the disputes of the 19th century. Firstly, the description of contemporary social conditions and their changes in late modernity are based on the metaphor of decay that arose during the Middle Ages and which subsequently reached its climax in the specific features of modernisation.66 These very features are apparently also the main cause for the loss of a “sense of sin, which we see occurring nowadays in many parts of the world, [and] has its roots in the loss of a sense of God”.67 This, for instance, is the starting point of the apostolic exhortation Misericordia Dei (1984), which assumes the loss of a sense of sin and identifies its causes in secularism and the findings of human science as well as in ethics, the mass media, and the Church’s own exaggeration of a sense of sin.68 However, Sabine Demel points out that people have not lost their ‘sense’ of sin and guilt in the last few decades, but rather that the experience of confession has been disas- trous.69 Ursula Silber provides deep insights on this point through many interviews with mothers recounting their negative experiences with confession during the time in which their children were supposed to take part in their first reconciliation.70 While the Church believes that a sense of sin is diminishing, the sacrament of penance has reached a crisis point, and the causes are being sought both inside the Church and outside of it, particularly in modernism. Secondly, the sacrament of penance has become a yardstick for the moral integrity of conditions in a local church, and this integrity can be quantified by the

65 See Werner, Die Freiheit der Vergebung, 269-286. 66 John Paul II, Reconciliation and Penitence (1984). (http://w2.vatican.va/content/john-paul-ii/ en/apost_exhortations/documents/hf_jp-ii_exh_02121984_reconciliatio-et-paenitentia.html, 1 September 2017) 67 International Theological Commission, Penance and Reconciliation (1982), Introduction, (http://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/congregations/cfaith/cti_documents/rc_cti_1982_riconcil- iazione-penitenza_en.html, 26 February 2019). 68 Ibid.; See also John Paul II, Reconciliation and Penitence; John Paul II, Redemptor Hominis, encyclical letter of 4 March 1979. 69 See Demel, “Durch das Bekennen der Sünde,” 96. 70 See Silber, Zwiespalt und Zugzwang. Silber is working with Interviews and can prove that the relationship of mothers towards their own first confession is the foundation for the catechetical approach of their children. But even if their own experience has been terrible, mothers still feel obliged to take part in first communion catechesis for their children.

164 Gunda Werner Specifically Catholic: At the intersection of power, maleness, holiness, and sexualised violence. A Theological and historical comment on power frequency of receiving this sacrament. However, this yardstick goes back to a unique historical situation which arose in the mid-19th century and reached its limit around 40 years ago.71 Nevertheless, the debate is not conducted as a historical one or as a critical discussion of the social dimension of confession, which continues to be absent. Rather, the consequence is that a “renewal of the anthropological presuppositions of penance must therefore begin with the renewal of the understanding of man as a morally and religiously responsible person.”72 This is what gives the Church its prophetic role, i.e. “condemning the evils of man in their infected source, showing the root of divisions and bringing hope of overcoming tensions and conflict”.73 Once the causes for the loss of a sense of sin have been identified above all in contemporary modern culture, it becomes possible again to “restore a healthy sense of sin” within that culture, “through a clear reminder of the unchangeable principles of reason and faith which the moral teaching of the Church has always upheld”.74 Thirdly, it is therefore necessary to restore a “healthy sense of sin” in the Church to facilitate inner reconciliation in the face of divisions caused through different understandings of ethics and dogmatics, and to carry reconciliation into the outside world by overcoming sin. Logically, the Church’s internal mission therefore puts the emphasis on a renewed practice of catechesis and the sacrament of penance.75 Yet, although the social dimension is integrated into the reformulation of a sense of sin, it is also clearly pointed out that the measure of such a sense is definitely not a dialectical relationship between a sense of freedom and a sense of God. This would be a genuinely modern interpretation of the issue. Rather, the basis which is assumed is one of une- quivocal ethics and dogmatics as the starting point for a sense of sin. These ethics and dogmatics, however, would now need to be examined for their theological implications and justifications.

71 See Demel, “Durch das Bekennen der Sünde,” 95. 72 International Theological Commission, Penance and Reconciliation, A, I. 73 John Paul II, Reconciliation and Penance, (1984), no. 4, (http://w2.vatican.va/content/john- paul-ii/en/apost_exhortations/documents/hf_jp-ii_exh_02121984_reconciliatio-et-paenitentia. html, 26 February 2019). 74 John Paul II, Reconciliation and Penance, no. 18, italics in the original. 75 Also, subsequently, John Paul II, Misericordia Dei, (2002). (http://w2.vatican.va/content/john- paul-ii/en/motu_proprio/documents/hf_jp-ii_motu-proprio_20020502_misericordia-dei.html, 1 September 2017).

165 Gunda Werner Specifically Catholic: At the intersection of power, maleness, holiness, and sexualised violence. A Theological and historical comment on power

More contemporary statements seem to stand out from the style that has dominated until quite recently. Pope Francis, for instance, talks about confession in connection with mission in his apostolic exhortation Evangelii Gaudi- um.76 In view of the existential task of the Church to proclaim the Gospel, changes to historically developed practices are not only possible and thinkable, but may even be necessary to ensure that religion can be experienced as a place of freedom. Francis places the Church in a twofold relationship with humanity which, on the one hand, must be held accountable for what humanity does in history,77 while on the other hand being on a continuous journey, which the Church must “accompany with mercy and patience”.78 Priests should therefore be reminded “that the confessional must not be a torture chamber but rather an encounter with the Lord’s mercy which spurs us on to do our best”.79 Francis thus emphasises that it is not the outward (correct) deed that should be the yardstick, but only a person’s inner attitude. This eliminates the issue of a sin-focused catechesis, as it emphasises justice and peace while at the same time taking seriously the limitations of humanity as conditio humana, and therefore as the form through which the gospel is proclaimed.80 It is, however, open to debate whether this is really a theological shift in motivation and in reasoning.

Talking about the missing Axis of power, or: how sin and ontological understanding of women ought to construct female powerlessness So far, the specific interpretation of sin from the female perspective has not yet been touched upon in this reconstruction. The construction of sin as both

76 Francis, apostolic exhortation Evangelii Gaudium (2013), no. 194. (http://w2.vatican.va/content/francesco/en/apost_exhortations/documents/papa-francesco_esortazione-ap_20131124_ evangelii-gaudium.html, 1 September 2017). 77 See ibid, no. 38, (44), with reference to the Catechism of the Catholic Church 1993, no. 1735. 78 Ibid, no. 38, (44). 79 Ibid, Evangelii Gaudium, no. 38, (44). 80 “We see then that the task of evangelisation operates within the limits of language and of circumstances. It constantly seeks to communicate more effectively the truth of the Gospel in a specific context, without renouncing the truth, the goodness and the light which it can bring whenever perfection is not possible. A missionary heart is aware of these limits and makes itself ‘weak with the weak ... everything for everyone’ (1 Cor 9:22). It never closes itself off, never retreats into its own security, never opts for rigidity and defensiveness. It realises that it has to grow in its own understanding of the Gospel and in discerning the parts of the Spirit, and so it always does what good it can, even if in the process, its shoes get soiled by the mud of the street.” Francis, Evangelii Gaudium, no. 39 (45)

166 Gunda Werner Specifically Catholic: At the intersection of power, maleness, holiness, and sexualised violence. A Theological and historical comment on power

essentialist and embodied as female has been under harsh criticism from feminist theologians since the 1970s.81 Even so, the idea that sin is supposed to be spread by women and their sinful bodies has a strong history.82 The ‘traditional’ perspective of Eve as a type for all women and as the source of original sin is the origin of centuries of repression and misinterpretation of women, female bodies, and sexuality as such. In their critiques of this trope, feminist theologians have developed different conceptions of sin. One of these, similar to that of liberation theology, is the idea of structural sin.83 Sin as sexism or the lost relationship to God is included in other feminist perspectives.84 Fur- thermore, the category ‘female’ or ‘women’ has been under severe criticism and reconsideration through the emergence of Gender Studies, which emphasise that there is no essentialist certainty of what ‘woman’ is supposed to be or encompass. However, the official teaching of the Catholic Church continues to hold on to a different understanding. Two main doctrinal documents have been normative for the Church, both of which come from John Paul II,85 namely the apostolic decrees Familiaris Consortio (1981) and Mulieris dignitatem (1988).86 The Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith [CDF] referenced these two decrees in 2004, in its “Letter to the Bishops on the Collaboration

81 Anja Middelbeck-Varwick, “Die konstruierte Weiblichkeit der Sunde? Zur Relevanz einer gen- dertheologischen Revision der Harmatiologie”, in: Anja Middelbeck-Varwick (ed.), “So lauert die Sunde vor der Tur” (Gen 4,7). Nachdenken uber das Phänomen der Fehlbarkeit (Peter Lang: Frankfurt am Main 2011), 165-195. Middelbeck-Varwick reconstructs the historical implications as well as biblical misunderstandings and their feminist-theological correctives. 82 See Lucia Scherzberg, “Sunde VI. Feministisch-theologische Diskussion,” in Lexikon für The- ologie und Kirche (Herder: Freiburg 20083) 9, 1131. 83 Ibid. 84 See Carter Heyward, Und sie rührte sein Kleid an. Eine feministische Theologie der Beziehung (FrauenMediaTurm: Cologne 1986); Lucia Scherzberg, Sunde und Gnade in der Feminis- tischen Theologie (Matthias-Grünewald: Mainz: 1990), 51-57. 85 Here I follow Bernhard Sven Anuth, “Gottes Plan für Frau und Mann. Beobachtungen zur lehramtlichen Geschlechteranthropologie”, in: Gender Studieren. Lernprozess für Theologie und Kirche (Matthias-Grünewald: Ostfildern 2017), 171-188. Also very instructive: Sara Garbagnoli, „Against the Heresy of Immanence: Vatican’s ‚Gender‘ as a New Rhetorical Device Against the Denaturalization oft he Sexual Order, in: Religion & Gender (vol 6, 2/2016), 187-204. 86 John Paul II, Mulieris dignitatem, (1988) (http://w2.vatican.va/content/john-paul-ii/en/apost_ letters/1988/documents/hf_jp-ii_apl_19880815_mulieris-dignitatem.html, 25 March 2019). Hereafter cited in text as MD.

167 Gunda Werner Specifically Catholic: At the intersection of power, maleness, holiness, and sexualised violence. A Theological and historical comment on power of Men and Women in the Church and in the World.”87 This letter is especially concerned with the differentiation between ‘sex’ and ‘gender’, which is presented as a gateway to people being able to freely choose one’s sex and gender. To counter this, the CDF reconstructs the classical argument: first by recalling the revelation of God’s will in the creation of man and woman as the “unity of the two” (MD 6). This point can be found throughout the Old Testa- ment and it is further specified in the New Testament. Man and woman are created by God with complementary gifts and vocations. God’s plan for both sexes is the same regarding the salvation, but different regarding the way to reach salvation. I will argue, however, that the view that the God-given ahistorical truth that man and woman are each imbued with specific natures is actually a historically and socially constructed claim. This by itself is not remarkable. What is remarkable is that the historical and social development of ideas about gender is taken into account in historical situations where, from the perspective of doctrinal teaching, people might otherwise be led away from the official teaching. Historical development and social construction are acceptable as proof, but only when they support the ‘ahistorical’ truth. The ahistorical truth is generally formulated as follows: The human person is created according to the imago dei, and this is both the deepest truth and the foundational idea of being human. This is most important and fundamental truth to be accepted (MD 6). Both men and women are gifted with the same dignity but they are not the same. The difference between the two is not only in the biological dimension, it also has distinct psychological and spiritual dimensions. The magisterium argues that: (1) men and women are equal regarding their personhood; (2) men and women are different in the way they are called to live out their humanity; and (3) men and women exist in relationship wherein they are dependent on one another. The core argument can be distilled as follows: because men and women are different, from creation to the eschaton, they will have different essential characteristics for salvation. There is therefore a ‘male’ salvation and a ‘female’ salvation, but only one total ‘humanity’. The mystery of women is to be understood as follows: women possess a ‘female genius’ and modern feminism threaten the expression of this natural

87 Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, “Letter to the Bishops on the Collaboration of Men and Women in the Church and in the World,” (2004), (http://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/ congregations/cfaith/documents/rc_con_cfaith_doc_20040731_collaboration_en.html, 26 Feb- ruary 2019).

168 Gunda Werner Specifically Catholic: At the intersection of power, maleness, holiness, and sexualised violence. A Theological and historical comment on power gift. “In the name of liberation from male ‘domination’, women must not appropriate to themselves male characteristics contrary to their own feminine ‘originality’. There is a well-founded fear that if they take this path, women will not ‘reach fulfilment’, but instead will deform and lose what constitutes their essential richness” (MD 10). However, there are only two dimensions of women’s vocation that constitute “the fulfilment of the female personality”, and they are motherhood or virginity (MD 17). Motherhood, which is ‘real’ only within the context of marriage, is not only a biological process, but also represents and “corresponds to the psycho-physical structure of women” (MD 18). Next to motherhood, there is the second source for true womanhood: virginity. “The naturally spousal predisposition of the feminine personality finds a response in virginity understood in this way. Women, called from the very ‘beginning’ to be loved and to love, in a vocation to virginity find Christ first of all as the Redeemer who ‘loved until the end’ through his total gift of self; and they respond to this gift with a ‘sincere gift’ of their whole lives” (MD 20). Mary serves as the role model for all women to understand how to live both motherhood and virginity, which do not have to be bound to natural motherhood and celibacy, but can also be understood spiritually. By combin- ing both in the picture of the bride,

a woman represents a particular value by the fact that she is a human person, and, at the same time, this particular person, by the fact of her femininity. This concerns each and every woman, independently of the cultural context in which she lives, and independently of her spiritual, psychological and physical characteristics, as for example, age, education, health, work, and whether she is married or single (MD 29).

This particular value is the ability for interpersonal relationship which constitutes the prophetic vocation of women all over the world: “This ‘prophetic’ character of women in their femininity finds its highest expression in the Vir- gin Mother of God” (MD 29). Womanhood is to be understood as Marian, and this image is both universal and historical. It can be grounded through inter- pretations of scripture as well as in the teachings of the Church. In short, The ‘mystery of women’ is threefold: virgin, bride, and mother. The capacity for the first two is biologically linked to the capacity to give birth.88

88 CDF, “Letter to the Bishops on the Collaboration,” no. 13.

169 Gunda Werner Specifically Catholic: At the intersection of power, maleness, holiness, and sexualised violence. A Theological and historical comment on power

Because women represent the Marian dimension of the Church on her way to salvation, men represent the Petrine dimension, including the biological possibil- ity to be ordained due to the biological male sex. The two are bound together in a greater “unity of the two.” This is a God-given, trans historical truth, and therefore cannot be changed by human reasoning or contemporary culture. One thinker who has been heavily criticised, although without being directly named in the Letter to the Bishops, is Judith Butler, due to her ground-break- ing work on Gender Theory. Butler is held responsible for destroying the nature of men and women in the binary (and exclusively heterosexual) sense. She represents ‘Gender Ideology’ against which even the Archdiocese of New York offers a primer for how to resist and fight it using political and social pressure.89 Butler herself has commented on the Letter to the Bishops, stating that the simple answer would be to deny the ‘truth’ proclaimed by Ratzinger and to destroy the constructed order, while acknowledging that “to speak this way is simply to reiterate the cultural divide that makes no analysis possible.”90 Rather, she suggests taking into account every other possible interpretation of the Genesis creation narrative and its historical and social background. She also posits that the CDF’s understanding of ‘nature’ does not include all possible forms of sexual orientation, but rather it takes heterosexuality as something transcendent because of the ‘sacralisation’ of sexuality. Butler wants to make the point that the crucial question is understanding of the relation between biology and social practice. Is social practice “prescribed or pro- scribed by any ostensible biological function”?91 The doctrinal teaching of the Roman Catholic Church is deeply dependent on a certain understanding of ‘nature’ and ‘history’. These two categories and their interpretation are judged by their perceived conformity to one specific reading of the two creation nar- ratives in Genesis: a reading which emphasises the binary of nature, meaning biological sex and the essentialist male/female gender dualism corresponding

89 Archdiocese of New York, “Gender Ideology,” (https://archny.org/gender-ideology, 22 Febru- ary 2019). The “How You Can Help” section in this document is divided into topics: Under- stand the concepts; Discuss the flaws of gender ideology with others, especially young people; Live the alternative to gender ideology; Contact state and federal representatives. The article on ‘gender ideology’ ends with the exhortations that “cultivating the virtue of chastity is the first step in embracing God-given sexuality identity” (emphasis added). It closes with a prayer for chastity. 90 Judith Butler, “Sexual politics, torture, and secular time,” in: The British Journal of Sociol- ogy 9 (1) 2008, 1-23, here footnote 8. 91 Ibid.

170 Gunda Werner Specifically Catholic: At the intersection of power, maleness, holiness, and sexualised violence. A Theological and historical comment on power to biological sex. The two sexes constitute the human person in relation to the imago dei and each sex is therefore equal in dignity but not in essence. The essence of being male or female is like an umbrella term for a specific understanding of male and female. The disruption of human nature by the original sin is felt up until today in the unjust treatment of women and the confusion about the truth of God’s divine plan for men-and-women’s existence in the complementary “unity of the two”. This reconstruction reveals the difficult and ambivalent situation for female Catholics within the structural hierarchy and its exercise of power.

Specifically Catholic: power, sin and sexualised violence When we look at the last forty years in the industrialised West, it is obvious that the social plausibility of most of the Church’s idea of sin has fallen below the threshold of perception, even among Catholics. The repeated efforts of magisterial writings to draw attention to the meaning and scope of sin and the only permissible sacramental form of penance within the Church both support the finding that public knowledge of these issues is quickly disappearing. At the same time, a well-developed sense of injustice and guilt still exists in Western societies. Otherwise, the credibility crisis of the Roman Catholic Church, caused by sexual abuse scandals, would hardly have any foundation. This indignation, however, also hints at the presence of motivations requiring a dogmatic comment. From the perspective of dogmatics, a theological discussion makes it relevant for us to look at three findings which can be derived from a reconstructed history of dogma and from Foucault’s analysis.92 These findings also match the observations made by Friedrich Wilhelm Graf, so that we are be able to identify certain patterns beyond denominational boundaries. Firstly, there is the interpretation of the present under the metaphor of decay. In the past, this interpretation has pervaded the theological reasoning of magisterial statements like a basso continuo. This decay – assuming that this is actually possible – is responsible for a great deal: the loss of a sense of sin, faith, morals, the declining

92 See Michael Schüssler, “Institutionelle Umkehr? Theologische Anfragen angesichts sexual- isierter Gewalt in der Kirche”, in: Caritasverband der Diözese Rottenburg-Stuttgart (ed.), Institutioneller Umgang mit Schuld (Impulse issue 18, March 2017), 12-17; Michael Schüssler, “Von der Pastoralmacht zum Mut zur Wahrheit (Parrhesia)”, in: Caritasverband der Diözese Rottenburg-Stuttgart (ed.), Institutioneller Umgang mit Schuld (Impulse issue 18, March 2017), 18-20.

171 Gunda Werner Specifically Catholic: At the intersection of power, maleness, holiness, and sexualised violence. A Theological and historical comment on power number of confessions, etc.93 Such an interpretation, however, means losing a diverse theological tradition with its treatment of social transformation since the Middle Ages. Moreover, it rather tends to create an unhealthy tendency to define the Church as a counter-society. Religion comes to the rescue wherever society has lost itself as a result of the modern age and modernism. Secondly, the antidote for this decay is a correct or “healthy” sense of sin, formed through the uniform interpretation and realisation of the Church’s moral teachings and doctrine of the faith. Educating the individual subject is given priority, although the subject is thought of as someone who is morally upright within a certain understanding and whom, to gain this understanding, must undergo the Church’s subject development programme that is embedded in the sacraments. In this respect, it would be good to investigate, albeit less from a dogmatic perspective, what kind of consequences the ethics of sexual acts produces when sexual acts are only recognised as fully valid if they take place between male and female, within marriage, and with the participants’ openness for procreation. Thirdly, from a praxical perspective, a sense of sin becomes evident through frequent confession. Confessional frequency becomes a regular yardstick for the state of moral integrity in a local church. However, this refers to individual confession which is still practised as the only regular form, even after Vatican II, and which continues to promote the private character of confession. By accepting the loss of the public dimension of sin and repentance, its non-public character is aimed for even in places where public treatment would disclose the consequences of sin. The mutual relationship between individual confession and the holiness of the Church is just as obvious as the problem of individual confession within an enclosed space of power and control. If these three understandings are now also used for a theological reflection on sexual abuse, I believe it needs to be done for all three subjects and roles that are involved. As for the victims, following Foucault, we can understand why it is impossible for them to defend themselves. Foucault meticulously shows the impact of power and how it has a controlling effect, particularly by cultivating a fictitious relationship between the subject and the authority and

93 International Theological Commission, Penance and Reconciliation, Introduction. This, for instance, is also the starting point of the apostolic exhortation Misericordia Dei (1984), which assumes the loss of a sense of sin and identifies its causes in secularism, in the findings of the humanities, and also in ethics, the mass and the Church’s exaggeration of a sense of sin. But as this sense of sin is dwindling, the sacrament of penance has reached a crisis, the causes of which are sought within the Church, though also outside it, particularly in modernism.

172 Gunda Werner Specifically Catholic: At the intersection of power, maleness, holiness, and sexualised violence. A Theological and historical comment on power through de-individualisation. The perpetrators of abuse must be questioned about their manifestation and development of a sense of guilt/injustice and sin which, however, must be subject to other forms of reasoning than those applied in ethical teachings. The same requirement can be concluded from findings on the development of human sexuality in medicine and human science. In addi- tion, we need to consider the all-pervading aspect of power which Foucault ascribes to those wielding it. Power has to be justified, particularly if it is personality-oriented. The Roman Catholic Church as a system and as encom- passing both perpetrators and victims must face all three tasks mentioned here. The metaphor of decay always makes it possible to seek the causes of criminal conduct within society, that is, outside one’s own sphere. At the same time, the dichotomy between the world and the Church is maintained as something that can lead to self-contained counter-worlds, wherein the holier the system and its representatives are expected to be, the more violent the dynamics of power-based control may become. Some profound theological rethinking would have to be applied to the persistent theological construct of a Church that is seen as holy even though it is capable of having sinners in its midst, yet in itself is not sinful. The private character of confession promotes the practice of maintaining outward appearances even where offences or crimes have a collective impact. Foucault resolutely describes the effects of power in his analysis of pastoral power:

The Christian pastoral ministry [...] has developed an idea that is unique and prob- ably totally alien to the culture of antiquity – the idea that each individual must be governed throughout their life and in every detail of their actions, irrespective of their age and position, that they must allow themselves to be steered towards salvation and indeed by someone with whom they are linked under a comprehensive and at the same time meticulous relationship of obedience.94

As I see it, Foucault’s description of disciplinary power contains the hermeneutical key which enables us to analyse and discover this dynamic of uninter- rupted moral control as a fundamental pattern underlying the potential perpe- tration and concealment of sexual violence.

Gunda Werner was born in 1971 in Bonn, Germany. She studied Roman Catholic Theology and Philosophy in Münster, Germany. She completed her doctorate in 2005 with a thesis entitled: “Does Faith make hype? The question of salvation and

94 Michel Foucault, Was ist Kritik? (Berlin: Merve 1992), 9.

173 Gunda Werner Specifically Catholic: At the intersection of power, maleness, holiness, and sexualised violence. A Theological and historical comment on power

personal happiness.” She has worked as a nurse for Catholic Dioceses, in training for an international NGO for human rights, and as an Event Manager. As part of a field research on reconciliation, she went on a bicycle trip from Germany to China, followed by cycling through Japan. She has worked as an Assistant Professor in Bochum where she wrote her “Habilitationsschrift” on reconciliation. Werner has been Guest Professor for Catholic Theology in Bonn and Bochum, Germany, and Junior Professor in Tübingen, Germany. She was a visiting research fellow at the Jospehinum in Columbus, Ohio, atBoston College, Boston, and at Fordham Uni- versity, New York, USA. She is Visiting Erasmus Professor at the Department of Gender and Development Studies at the University of the West Indies in Trinidad. She is intensively working with theologians and philosophers from Iran on interreligious dialogue. Her research interests are in Gender Studies, Justice and Equal Rights, as well as History of Theology. Werner is currently working on a mono- graph on Judith Butler and her impact on theories of power.

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