This panel demonstrates how research on women religious challenges our predominant narratives of Catholic clergy sexual abuse. The first paper, on “The Sexual Economies of Clericalism,” centers questions of agency, subjectivity, and submission for survivors of abuse by Catholic nuns and theorizes the gendered construction of sexual knowledge. The second paper, “Abuse in the Latin American Church,” reframes these questions by arguing that women religious are a distinctively vulnerable population for abuses perpetrated by male clergy – a problem that is particularly pronounced in countries like Bolivia, where the Church’s high social status has continued to silence victimized nuns. The third paper, “Everyday Spiritual Abuse,” draws attention to broader patterns of gender-based violence in Australian Catholicism, theorizing how everyday forms of gendered harm, including misogyny and breadcrumbing, create the foundation for systemic Catholic sexual violence.
Catholic Women Religious (CWR), also known as nuns, are typically considered to be part of the organisational hierarchy of Catholic elites. However, evidence has emerged of CWR as both victims of gendered violence, as well as perpetrators of historical violence particularly against children in Catholic orphanages and parish schools. Hence, potentially they are both marginalised and centralised players in the abuse crisis. This paper will assess the evidence produced via research reports, public inquiries, court cases and social action initiatives and argue that CWR were both victims and perpetrators of sexual, spiritual, psychological and physical violence. Utilising a new and innovative conceptual and methodological framework - the sexual economies of clericalism - repositions the complex subjectivity and positionality of CWR in the Catholic diaspora and goes forward to understanding how CWR were a vulnerable and marginalised cohort with access to limited forms of institutional power.
Women religious (WR) constitute a vulnerable group within the Church, with a higher risk of experiencing various forms of abuse compared to other groups. Specifically, in comparison to consecrated and/or ordained men, the likelihood of suffering abuse is much greater for them. The abuse of priests over WR, the abuse between nuns, and the abuse of WR towards minors must be understood as framed within the structure of abuse of power that characterizes hierarchical and patriarchal institutions, such as the Catholic Church. What is new is that the victims have begun to denounce their abuses, breaking the silence and defying the culture of secrecy and cover-up that protected those who abused them. Why are they now breaking their silence? What do their narratives reveal? These are two questions that guide the analysis.
Recent research into the faith practices and religiosity of Catholic women has shown that gender-based violence (GBV) is a pervasive part of women’s everyday experiences in Catholic parishes and organisations. This paper will use the narratives of women collected during interviews conducted with Catholic women in Australia to argue that experiences of GBV have been normalized as an ordinary and quotidian part of Catholic women’s lives. It will explore how instances of harm and suffering happen via a systematic pattern of coercive and controlling action defined as “everyday spiritual abuse.” Moreover, it will show how the various technologies of harm associated with everyday spiritual abuse, including misogyny and breadcrumbing, have far-reaching consequences and are often entwined with grooming and sexual violence in Catholic settings.