Spiritual Abuse
Posted on 10. Aug, 2017, in Church Teachings1 Comment
Fr Seán Fagan, a Marist theologian and author, was informed in 2010 that he was no longer allowed to write books or articles deemed contrary to church teaching. He was warned he would be “stripped of priestly faculties” if he talked to the media about the gagging order. He died in 2016 and many said the ban left him a broken man. Here is a piece from June 2005 before the ban took place, looking at the idea of Spiritual Abuse about which he wrote an article.
He explains the meaning of this kind of abuse, how it differs considerably from sexual abuse as it is not deliberate and the whole church becomes a victim. He talks about how some of the teachings of the Catholic Church has ‘screwed up’ the laity, for example the savage God of the old testament. He also talks about the meaning of cultural conditioning and the individual right of conscience.
Fr Seán Fagan appeared in an RTE Seven Days episode on Divorce on 27th May 1975. The dissolution of marriage was constitutionally banned in Ireland until reversed in the referendum of 1995. Asked about the plight of those whose marriages were broken, who wished to divorce and remarry, Fr Fagan said: “Now it’s so easy for the theorists and academics to say well hard cases make bad laws. It’s true. But at the same time, I think we all of us ought to acknowledge in shame and repentance that both church and state, we’ve been dragging our feet in this whole area. We have been talking about how complex it is, how difficult, all the possible implications of it and we’re doing very little in fact for the people who are living out their lives in unbearable situations.”