Whispers in the Loggia has an excellent post with the text of a letter that Archbishop Mark Coleridge of Canberra and Goulburn in Aussie land did on the topic of the abuse scandal.
I recommend all read it. As he says his thoughts on this matter are a work in progress. See "The Culture of Discretion"
What is of interest here is the Irish connection he makes. Like in the United States the Irish ruled. Even in areas of the Country where there was no significant Irish presence the Irish Catholic way ruled. Mainly because they controlled the teaching at seminaries, held positions of power in the academy, and well dioceses that had large amounts of Irish were the most powerful.
Morning Minion keys in on a interesting part at Vox Nova and quotes where he talks about the Irish rigorist attitude to the body and sexuality and the heresy of Jansenism came into play.
See Quote of the Day for that very interesting quote.
In some ways I want to believe this because then we can ID the problem and fix it. However I found it the weakest of his argument.
First the data is incomplete. I think we are going to have to see how this plays world wide where the Irish were not so much a factor.
However after being around pedophiles in the past I have a hard time thinking they got this condition because of not a healthy attitude about sex and Jansenism mixed with Calvinism. This is a very very dark place. If it were that simple then should we not be seeing sex offenders cured at a much higher higher rate.
Now PERHAPS the Archbishop is making a connection to just ephebophilia which refers to the sexual attraction to post-pubescent adolescents and not paedophilia. Though he is not clear if that is his intent as to part Morning quotes.
Also how does this explain similar rates of Clergy abuse in certain Protestant communities that would have not have been affected by this?
Still a good piece and one of the better ones I have seen by a Catholic Bishop.
Please see my comment underneath MM's post*. There is no historical evidence whatsover for any Jansenistic influence on Irish Catholicism. It's more probable you'll find residues of Jansenism in French (and consequently Québécois) Catholicism than in Ireland.
ReplyDeleteThere's nothing particularly Irish nor Catholic about sex abuse. Catholic clergy account for less than 4% of all sex abuse in Irish society, and Ireland's incidence of sex abuse is actually slightly below that of the UK.
*A lot of what we regard as ‘Jansenism’ was simply Puritan-derived Victorian values – which were not uniquely Catholic nor uniquely Irish (…and neither of the two in origin). John Stuart Mill also discerned “two influences which have chiefly shaped the British character since the days of the Stuarts; commercial money-getting business, and religious Puritanism”.
“Jansenism”. The Oxford Companion to Irish History. 2007.
“Jansenism was viewed with great suspicion by Rome, and 17th‐century Irish synods toed the Roman line. Indeed, while its moral rigorism made it attractive to elements of the Counter‐Reformation church, Jansenism’s theological and political radicalism alienated both local hierarchies and Catholic monarchs. This was especially the case in France and most Irish clerical students there associated with milieux hostile to the movement. Indeed their anti‐Jansenist opinions were singled out for criticism by the pro‐Jansenist journal Nouvelles ecclésiastiques, Irish clerics, in general, being more attracted to Jesuit‐style humanism. The success of the anti‐Jansenist bull Unigenitus (1713) marginalized the movement but it survived as a popular millenarian‐cum‐miracle cult. Neither as a theology nor as a political attitude did Jansenism recommend itself to the Irish Catholic community, either at home or abroad. The frequent claim that Irish Catholicism was Jansenist‐influenced springs from the tendency to confuse Jansenism with mere moral rigorism.”
Dr Thomas O’Connor. Ph.D.
Senior Lecturer – Department of History, National University of Ireland, Maynooth faculty
https://history.nuim.ie/staff/oconnorthomas
author of:
_Irish Jansenists 1600-1670: politics and religion in Flanders, France, Ireland and Rome (Dublin, 2008)
_Strangers to Citizens: the Irish in Europe 1600-1800 (Dublin, 2008)
_An Irish Jansenist in seventeenth-century France: John Callaghan 1605-54 (Dublin, 2005)
_An Irish Theologian in Enlightenment Europe: Luke Joseph Hooke 1714-96 (Dublin, 1995)
Healy, John. Maynooth College : its centenary history (1895). Dublin : Browne & Nolan, 1895.
“During the eighteenth century many of the most eminent Churchmen in France were, to some extent, tinctured with these Jansenistic views, even when repudiating the Jansenistic errors regarding the operation of grace and free will. But although so many of our Irish ecclesiastics were educated in France during the eighteenth century, none of those who came to Ireland ever showed the slightest trace of this Jansenistic influence, either in their writings or their sermons. Nor has any respectable authority asserted, so far as we know, that the French Professors of Maynooth were in any way tinged with the spirit of Jansenism.”
Most Rev. John Healy, D.D., LL.D., M.R.I.A