How Does Sexual Abuse
Become A Church Ministry?

No one in their right mind would say that sexual abuse was a defined and implemented church ministry. At least not in any general sense. But some individuals did have it as a ministry.

By default...not by intentional planning...such non-ministerial activities became part of catholic ministry for a number of reasons.

One reason is 'tradition'. You can go from this to the adolescent abuse page for an example of a sexualized ministry to youths.

But sex abuse can become not only a ministry to children...because adults are victims of ministerial abuse as well. you can go from this sexual abuse page to the spiritual direction page or you can go from here to the reparenting page to see how defining spiritual direction improperly as 'spiritual talent' or 'reparenting' causes serious boundary violations to occur.

As noted above...it is not by design. But by default...because of important deficiencies. In the following list...I'm using the catholic church as a model because its ministers are most familiar to me.

There are no less than six essential reasons...deficiencies really...why a moral crime such as sexual abuse becomes a ministry by default...

• Lack of a proper definition for the ministry


• Lack of demonstrated maturity in priestly candidates


• Lack of knowledge about transference phenomena


• Lack of training for different ministries


• Lack of adherence to a guiding ethical code


• Lack of supervision and accountability in ministry activities

All of these can be easily addressed and solved.

If you don't know the importance of definitions in ministry...as in everything else...then go to the defining words page and see the two things every definition must have...and the definition of ministry that is provided there. Then hit your browser's back button and come back. I'll wait right here for you.

So now you are aware that ministry is composed of religious actions...that lead both minister and people closer to God. And sexual abuse does not meet the defined requirements of ministry.

Because ministers do not define their ministries properly...and apply those definitions to existing and proposed ministries...they can remain happily 'unaware' that their sexual abuse activities are neither religious actions...nor are they closing the gap between themselves and God.

Add to the lack of definitions for ministry...a lack of maturity in the candidate for ordination...and you have a recipe for trouble even without the other deficiencies.

The Code of Canon Law for the catholic church...its policy manual if you will...requires that candidates for ordination be no less than 25 years old and of sufficient maturity.

Maturity in a candidate is fairly easy to assess in a good psychological evaluation. And it is not done by the gut feeling of the examiner that this man "would make a fine priest." Nobody knows that and only time will reveal whether that's true.

We all know that some people can be mature beyond their years...and some are immature given the amount of time they lived.

So a person's age doesn't guarantee he is at the expected level of maturity for his age. He may be a mature 25 year old...beyond what we would expect. Or he may be a 25 year old who is really 15 years old in terms of maturity. In that case he does not meet the necessary requirements for ordination.

It is up to the one evaluating the prospective candidate for religious life or ordination to show by evidence whether the candidate is at the expected maturity level for his age...or whether he is below it or above it.

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