Crimen pessimum, or: Naming ‘the foulest crime’. A conceptual history of sexual abuse and sacramental confession in the Catholic Church (1850-1922)

Basic data for this project

Description

In 1922 we have the first currently known official document of the Catholic Church specifically and entirely devoted to the subject of clergy sexual abuse, i.e. the instruction issued by the Holy Office, under the title Crimen sollicitationis, on the manner of proceeding in causes of solicitation of sex by a priest in the confessional or in spiritual direction. Crimen sollicitationis defines extremely significant concepts. It identifies solicitation itself in the context of confession as a crime, regardless of the gender and/or age of the penitent as well as of his/her consent to engage in the solicited sexual activity. Interestingly, there is no mention of ‘violence’, ‘harm’, or any other term comparable to the present-day category of ‘abuse’. In fact, the criminal nature of the actions in question is mainly related to the deliberate and somehow premeditated engagement in sexual activities, rather than to the treatment or damage forced upon the person who is solicitated. A distinct paragraph is devoted to what it referred to as crimen pessimum (“the foulest crime”), indicating any kind of sexual act between a cleric and a person of his own sex, including not in the context of confession. At the same time, child abuse – both in the case of hetero- and homosexual contacts – appears to exemplify the crimen pessimum, at least with regard to the penalties. This document displays fundamental principles and mechanisms that are still in place today in the Catholic Church’s way of dealing with sexual abuse and more broadly with gender and sexuality. However, the historical constellation that preceded and gave birth to it is substantially unknown. If Crimen sollicitationis is somehow a point of arrival, what is the conceptual path that led to it? How did the Holy See conceive, respond to, and regulate what is now defined as ‘sexual abuse’ during the nineteenth century (approximately since the pontificate of Pius IX)? What kind of theoretical-linguistic devices did it develop and use to describe cases of sexual abuse without connoting them as such? What are the exact meanings behind expressions such as crimen pessimum, il pessimo, ‘sodomy’, ‘fornication’, contra naturam? How did the fact that most of the abuses were committed in the context of confession or spiritual direction contribute to producing and shaping such conceptual devices?