THE TERROR OF THE SEXUAL ABUSE BY THE ROMAN CATHOLIC CLERGY AND THE PHILIPPINE CONTEXT

Authors

  • Aloysius Lopez Cartagenas Seminario Mayor de San Carlos

Keywords:

SEXUAL ABUSE, PHILIPPINE

Abstract

Much has been reported about the sexual abuse crisis in the Roman
Catholic Church. Between the period of 1989 and 2011, notes Tom
Doyle, a total of 27 reports have been published worldwide.1 Some
have their provenance from government commissions2 while others
from Church sources or Church-sponsored review boards.3 While
none of these reports “said anything about the effect of culture of the
sixties and seventies as a factor of causality,” says Doyle, the latest of
these, the John Jay Report in the United States, has stirred a hornet’s
nest. It concluded that “the increased deviance of society during that
time,” as symbolized by the Woodstock Era of sexual liberation, is toblame. All the reports that factored the effect of culture, except the
John Jay Report, conclude that “it was not the culture from outside
the church” that is to blame “but the culture within.” This view
resonates well with the rare admission by Pope Benedict XVI. Instead
of blame-shifting, he categorically admitted that the church suffers
from “problems of its own making” and they are problems “born
from the sins within the church” which we see today “in a truly
terrifying way.

Author Biography

Aloysius Lopez Cartagenas, Seminario Mayor de San Carlos

Aloysius Lopez Cartagenas, a member of the Faculty of Theology of the Seminario
Mayor de San Carlos, Cebu City, Philippines, had his specialization in Moral
Theology at KU, Leuven. He has published a number of scholarly articles. Besides
being a visiting professor at different theological institutions, he has been Vice-Chair
of the “Feed the Children-Philippines,” a non-governmental organisation for the total
well-being of poor children, and a member of the board of trustees of the Cebu
Citizens-Press Council. Email: louiecartagenas@yahoo.com

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Published

2011-06-30

How to Cite

Cartagenas, A. L. (2011). THE TERROR OF THE SEXUAL ABUSE BY THE ROMAN CATHOLIC CLERGY AND THE PHILIPPINE CONTEXT. Asian Horizons, 5(02), 348–371. Retrieved from https://dvkjournals.in/index.php/ah/article/view/2426