Ihe recent publication of two reports on the sexual violence committed by the Dominican brothers Thomas and Marie-Dominique Philippe, as well as by Jean Vanier, founder of L’Archehighlights how a culture of silence and impunity may have contributed to the perpetuation of sexual violence in the Catholic Church for decades.
The condemnation of sexual violence has been a leitmotif of ecclesial discourse since the first centuries of the Church. At the beginning of the IVe century, the Council of Elvira condemned the sexual violence perpetrated by priests on young boys, a sign of a phenomenon already prevalent at the time. Sexual violence has above all been considered in the legislation of the Church within the framework of the sacrament of confession.
The Church has repeatedly condemned sexual advances by priests during the sacrament of confession. Because of its sacramental framework, these had a sacrilegious and, therefore, criminal character. This is how was invented, in the XVIe century, the “crime of solicitation”. From the bubble universi dominici gregis (1622) of Pope Gregory XV, there is frequent legislative activity around the crime of solicitation and the recurrent appearance of new legal procedures, indicative both of a growing concern for sexual violence, committed in the confessional, and difficulties in containing them.
Excommunication for Penitents
The affirmation of the crime of solicitation coincides with the development of a pastoral care of confession in the decades following the Council of Trent (1542). The latter had thus imposed annual confession on all the faithful. Without completely losing its comforting dimension, the sacrament of confession became more of an instrument of control over Catholic populations. The crime of solicitation thus represented an attack not only on morals, but also on faith. Penitents, most often women, had the obligation to denounce their solicitors under penalty of excommunication. Sanctions against soliciting priests were less severe.
The ecclesial conception of justice is, in fact, marked by the Gospel principle of mercy. What is sought is not only the sanction of the fault, but the conversion of the criminal. In this perspective, the victim is not recognized as such. In the crime of solicitation, the offense is first made to God and not to the person solicited. The penal justice of the Church, which asserts itself in relation to the sacrament of confession, was concerned in principle only with so-called “public” offenses, as opposed to those which remained “hidden”. It was public scandal that normally prompted legal action. The so-called “occult” facts, which are however sometimes known to insiders, could remain concealed.
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