‘This is the terrible reality of modern Catholicism’

EVANSTON --- The report commissioned by the Catholic archdiocese of Munich and released yesterday finding retired Pope Benedict knew of the sexual abuse of children and young people and did nothing to protect them or to punish their abusers is more evidence of a pervasive culture that enabled sexual abuse and abusers, said Northwestern religious studies scholar Robert Orsi, whose work focuses on the church’s sex abuse crisis and its causes.

Orsi, a professor of history and religious studies, is the first holder of the Grace Craddock Nagle Chair in Catholic Studies. His studies focus on American religious history and contemporary practice; American Catholicism from both historical and ethnographic perspectives, with a special focus on the sexual abuse within the church. He was part of a research project at the University of Notre Dame titled “Gender, Sex, and Power: Towards a History of Clergy Sex Abuse in the U.S. Catholic Church” as a faculty fellow in 2020–21. He can be reached via Erin Karter at (cell) 312-273-0277 or erin.karter@northwestern.edu.

Quote from Professor Orsi:

“Once again, we see that the highest authorities in the church, including retired Pope Benedict when he was the city’s archbishop, knew of the sexual abuse of children and young people and did nothing to protect them or to punish their abusers. In Germany, as throughout the Catholic world, sexual crimes of ordained men were taken by authorities as par for the Catholic course. Instances of clerical sexual violence were treated as minor administrative problems and made to disappear, with no concern for the suffering of the victims or their families. This is the terrible reality of modern Catholicism: a pervasive culture of cruel and criminal sexual irresponsibility, indulgence, and impunity among church authorities when it came to their fellow priests and bishops—in other words, when it came to themselves.”