Get Rid of the Old Yeast: Responding to Clergy Sexual Misconduct

Part 5: Justice, Chastity, and Friendship

While we must not minimize the importance of responding in justice to clergy misconduct, Christians are called to the higher standard of friendship.

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In his Nobel Prize speech, Alexander Solzhenitsyn comments on what he calls Dostoyevsky’s 

...enigmatic remark: “Beauty will save the world.” What is this? For a long time it seemed to me simply a phrase. How could this be possible? When in the bloodthirsty process of history did beauty ever save anyone, and from what? Granted, it ennobled, it elevated—but whom did it ever save?

He goes on to answer his own question by explaining that

There is, however, a particular feature in the very essence of beauty—a characteristic trait of art itself: The persuasiveness of a true work of art is completely irrefutable; it prevails even over a resisting heart.

The difference in beauty is that

A political speech, an aggressive piece of journalism, a program for the organization of society, a philosophical system, can all be constructed—with apparent smoothness and harmony—on an error or on a lie. What is hidden and what is distorted will not be discerned right away. But then a contrary speech, journalistic piece, or program, or a differently structured philosophy, comes forth to join the argument, and everything is again just as smooth and harmonious, and again everything fits. And so they inspire trust—and distrust.

Unlike beauty, politics, and journalism, to say nothing of public policy and programs (religious or secular), contain within themselves the seed of their own undoing. Their power to attract and move then is at best temporary.

The heart is attracted to beauty; it is in the nature of the beauty that it calls me to itself and so out of myself. Our response to clergy sexual misconduct is more often than not motivated by our concern to limit legal liablity or to protect reputations.

Even when it is rooted in Christian morality, it leaves people unsatisfied. Yes, justice was done but so what? Expelling the offender leaves the damage unhealed. I know from my own work on the matter, a morally or legally just response will often fail to restore confidence in the church to those who have been abused or scandalized.

And with each clergyman who is dismissed—with each act of justice—the church loses a bit more credibility. And why? Because as Solzhenitsyn, “In vain does one repeat what the heart does not find sweet.”'

The response to clergy misconduct, I would ask you to consider, is not exhausted by just—whether legal or moral—but requires that Christians recapture our commitment to chastity.

The Catechism of the Catholic Church has a lovely description of chastity that is deeper and broader than "sexual purity," much less premarital abstinence. They describe the "chaste person" as one who "maintains the integrity of the powers of life and love placed in him. This integrity ensures the unity of the person; it is opposed to any behavior that would impair it. It tolerates neither a double life nor duplicity in speech." 

The Catechism goes on to say that chastity is 

... an apprenticeship in self-mastery which is a training in human freedom. The alternative is clear: either man governs his passions and finds peace, or he lets himself be dominated by them and becomes unhappy.

Rooted in baptism, this self-mastery or self-possession enables the person to “resist temptations.” It is demanding discipline, however, because it requires “self-knowledge” and the practice of spiritual discipline above all

obedience to God's commandments, exercise of the moral virtues, and fidelity to prayer. Indeed it is through chastity that we are gathered together and led back to the unity from which we were fragmented into multiplicity.”

A “long and exacting work” we “can never consider [the virtue of chastity] acquired once and for all.” An “eminently personal task” it “presupposes respect for the rights of the person, in particular the right to receive information and an education that respects the moral and spiritual dimensions of human life.”

For our purposes here, chastity is far more than a mere matter of personal sin, sexual immorality, especially among the clergy, has implications for the evangelical life of the church.

The American sociologist of religion, Rodney Stark in his 2011 book, The Triumph of Christianity: How the Jesus Movement Became the World's Largest Religion, offers us an interesting insight about the importance of chastity in the life of the early church. He tells us that “although like everyone else early Christians prized female chastity, unlike anyone else they rejected the double standard that gave men sexual license.” This moral standard was attractive not only to women in all social classes. As a result, and remember Stark is a sociologist, not a theologian,

In response to the special appeal that the faith had for women, the early church drew substantially more female than male concerts, and this is a world where women were in short supply. Having an excess of women gave the church a remarkable advantage because it resulted in disproportionate Christian fertility and in a considerable number of secondary conversions [by pagan husbands].

Moreover, and again unlike the surrounding pagan culture, women found in the church “a life … greatly superior to the life they otherwise would have led.”

Though not “equal to men” women in the church “were considerably better off” and had more “freedom and influences” and “far greater equality with men than did their pagan and Jewish counterparts.” Though not clergy, “there is overwhelming evidence that from the earliest days, Christian women often held leadership roles in the church and enjoyed far greater security and equality in marriage.”

This change in the status of women—and so the relationship between men and women—is dependent on the Christian virtue of chastity. This is the key to the phenomenal growth of the early church.

In the early church, then, chastity was instrumental in transforming the world. How? Because chastity is beautiful and it is in the very nature of beauty to attract us. It was by offering something beautiful to the world, the church exposed the dull and dingy character of paganism. Through chastity, the church made clear that the tragedy of sin is not that it makes us wicked, as much as it makes us boring, stupid, and unhappy.

And sexual misconduct?

It is an offense against the beauty of the Cross. While we often talk about how Jesus suffers and dies for us on the Cross, we just as often lose sight of the fact that He does so not simply because He loves us—though He does—but because He is our Friend and, more importantly, He wants us to be His friend.

This brings us back to Catechism of the Catholic Church.

The virtue of chastity blossoms in friendship. It shows the disciple how to follow and imitate him who has chosen us as his friends, who has given himself totally to us and allows us to participate in his divine estate. Chastity is a promise of immortality. Chastity is expressed notably in friendship with one's neighbor. Whether it develops between persons of the same or opposite sex, friendship represents a great good for all. It leads to spiritual communion.

The sexually immoral clergyman by his unchaste behavior wounds Christian friendship. Worse, hs behavior suggests that his offers of friendship were lacking.

So what lesson do we learn from all this? “How,” as Francis Schaeffer asks, “then should we live?” At a minimum, we must avoid those things that undermine human friendship.

Beyond this, I don’t have a specific answer for you. This lack of a concrete answer is probably why we prefer to respond in justice; at least something, is done even if, eventually, what is done leaves us unsatisfied.

And friendship?

The importance of friendship in the Christian life helps us understand not only the strict requirements for ordination but also the stern response of both the Apostle Paul and the church fathers to a number of sins in the church including sexual immorality. Certain sins undermine trust and in so doing make trust impossible. Unchaste behavior, murder, apostasy, as well as theft, pride, and gossip—to name only a few—are offenses not just against God but the bonds of charity in the church.

Christ extends the offer of friendship to all and the Church, as His Body, must do likewise. While not wishing to minimize the importance of justice, it is an impersonal response. Friendship, on the other hand, is by its very nature, personal. I can’t tell you how to be friends with each other. It is far easier for me to say, as I have here, that the sexually immoral clergyman by his actions undermines Christian friendship.

How then shall we live?