Guilt and Its Purification

Abstract

Amidst the horror of ongoing revelations about the Roman Catholic Church's complicity in sexual predation, a theological reflection on Christian teachings about guilt and reconciliation is enlightening. Flawed notions of Christian forgiveness have brought us to this point where priests are absolved of crimes by their colleagues and reassigned to different posts in blind faith in their resolve to begin anew. The mystery of redemption is at the heart of the Christian message, which makes this systemic failure sadly predictable and particularly painful. What is wrong with the Christian theory and practice of sin and forgiveness that it fails to resist devastating complicity? Shifting focus from redemption to guilt invites reflection on the problematic metaphors that facilitate quick release and premature closure. The language of guilt invokes the imagery of stains and impurities that must be purified (by the sacrificial blood of Christ) or of burdens and weights that can be lifted and carried away (by a substitutionary scapegoat). In either case, guilt disappears as if by magic. This essay questions this imagery and draws on ecologically informed, sustainable practices of purification in order to propose a sequence of ritual steps to transform personal and collective guilt in the wake of the sexual abuse crisis.

We rarely stop to define guilt, because it is immediately linked to forgiveness. Guilt and forgiveness, sin and redemption are paired concepts that are mentioned in the same breath. But what is guilt? Is it an individual feeling or an objective condition? The term is often used interchangeably, although the emotion and the state of being guilty are, unfortunately, very different experiences. In fact, it is one of the cruel ironies that victims feel guilty, while perpetrators remain indifferent to and oblivious about the harm they caused. It is the victims who are wracked by guilt feelings, sometimes severely so. Depression, anxiety, trouble sleeping, and nightmares are common experiences among survivors. The symptom of survivor guilt would eventually be incorporated into the emerging concept of “trauma” and its official clinical diagnosis as PTSD, post-traumatic stress syndrome.1 Among its four symptoms, listed by National Institute of Health, are “distorted feelings like guilt or blame” and “negative thoughts about oneself or the world.”2 Much of the psychoanalytic discourse on guilt is victim-centered since research is driven by patients who consult psychoanalysts and psychotherapists.3 And it is the victims of traumatic violence who are plagued by intense emotions of guilt, rage, shame, and powerlessness. Perpetrators rarely consult therapists, counselors, or confessors. As long as perpetrators do not present with symptoms or are required by law to sign up for therapy [as pedophiles and sex offenders must do according to German law],4 there are few empirical studies on the symptomology of a “perpetrator syndrome.” The diagnosis of “post-traumatic stress syndrome”  describes  the experience of victims rather than perpetrators.

Martin Buber insisted on the difference between “real” or “ontic” guilt and guilt feelings in a lecture at a Conference on Medical Psychotherapy in 1948, which was subsequently published as “Guilt and Guilt Feelings.”5 A therapist, Buber warned, should not ignore the “external life of his patient and especially the actions and attitudes therein, and again especially the patient's active share in the manifold relation between him and the human world.”6 There is a difference, Buber argued, between the emotional (neurotic) response and the actual violation of the order of being (Seinsordnung). Guilt and guilt feelings are inversely related: Perpetrators lack feelings of guilt, while victims are wracked by self-blame, shame, and guilt feelings.

The symptoms of guilt manifest as lack of empathy, an absence of sensitivity, an obstruction of moral response to the suffering of others.7 To harm another requires a barrier that shields against responsiveness to suffering. Every act of violence involves a hardening of the heart, to use the Biblical concept, on the part of the perpetrator. We will leave aside the theological question of ultimate responsibility and whether it is “The LORD [who] hardened Pharaoh's heart” (Ex 10:20; 10:27, 11:10; 14:8; Jos 11:20). Psychologically, denial is cause and effect of harming another being. It is intrinsic to the infliction of harm. “He has blinded their eyes, and hardened their heart, so that they might not look with their eyes and understand with their heart” (John 12:40). Perpetrators avert their eyes and block their ears to avoid seeing, feeling, and hearing the pain inflicted on victims. This is true for all acts of violence, but especially so for agents who act within structures of authority that use legitimate force to maintain order. Hierarchical systems give some people power over others who are deemed essentially different and in need of control because of some perceived lack of rationality, authority, or agency. Ideologies of gender, sexuality, age, ability, race, and class justify why certain people deserve less protection of their integrity and autonomy and somehow feel less pain and suffering. As long as such ideological force fields remain operative, there is no consciousness of culpable wrongdoing. Atrocities, which on Claudia Card's definition include sexual and domestic violence against women and children, suck entire communities into moral indifference, complicity, and denial.8

If the dis-ease consists in the absence of cognitive and emotional guilt awareness, then the cure cannot rightly promise release from its burden or purification of its remainders. But this is exactly what the liturgical and sacramental language of reconciliation promises. Built on biblical models of sacrificial atonement, Christ's death saves because his blood washes away sin and because he bears the weight of iniquity. Such metaphors are invoked to explain his death for the “forgiveness of our trespasses” (Eph 2:13), “that he might redeem us from all iniquity and purify for himself a people of his own who are zealous for good deeds” (Titus 2:14). In the sacraments of baptism, “you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified” (1 Cor 6:11) and of the eucharist, where the “blood of Jesus Christ his Son cleanses us from all sin” (1 John 1:7). This language is not unique to Christianity.9 Sacrificial blood and sacred water are universal detergents to cleanse spiritual and social violations of the social and symbolic order. In the Hebrew Bible, trespasses against God's divine ordinances require expiation that take the form of rituals of purification, often involving the entire community, which is mandated to purify in response to violation of the sacred law. Unless the culprit is punished, the entire community is implicated in guilt by association, which pollutes the land, undermines social cohesion, and obstructs relations with G-d:

On the Biblical paradigm, it is the entire community that is implicated and under obligation to respond, prosecute, and punish the culprit. Only some people in a community are guilty, but all are responsible. Unless and until a community vindicates the victims by imposing the rule of law, the pollution of moral violation spreads.10 While this may sound like an ancient tribal blood feud custom, we can see this dynamic clearly playing out in the current church crisis, which stems from the community's failure to mark wrong and punish wrongdoing. The cover-up becomes the pollution, in addition and quite distinct from the original crime of sexual predation. Retribution checks this contamination and restores moral health to the community.11 The scapegoat ritual provides the other setting by which a community rids itself of personal and communal guilt:

This ritual visualizes sin and guilt as a burden that can be loaded and carried away. In Christianity, Christ takes on the role of sacrificial substitute who carries away the weight of iniquity and disposes it somewhere safely in a remote corner of the universe. This language must be challenged on moral and ecological grounds: The remainders of wrongdoing do not disappear magically, and they do not drain down mysterious pipes or vanish on the backs of waste management scapegoats. But these metaphors are suggestive and can be used to imagine new approaches to guilt contagion by association. A toxic pile radiates, pollutes, and contaminates. Guilt accrues as a result of a community's inability and unwillingness to censure evil and does not magically evaporate. It must be cleaned-up, bioremediated, and composted.

The metaphor of composting affirms the messy materiality of the past and enriches existing imagery of washing and waste removal. Composting the remainders of wrongdoing requires patience and engagement, strategy and supervision. The etymology of the word is derived from the Latin compositum (later compostum) which the OED defines as “(1) composition, combination, compound, (2) literary composition, compendium, as well as (3) a mixture of various ingredients for fertilizing or enriching land, a prepared manure or mould.”12 It is the exact opposite of purity, which is defined as “the state or quality of being free from extraneous or foreign elements, or from outside influence; the state of being unadulterated or refined.” Purity is white and clear, immaculate and untouched, while compost is rich, dark, smelly, and blended. When Pope John Paull II spoke of the “purification of memory” to guide the millennial celebrations in 2000, he invited the Church to come to terms with history, including the crusades, the inquisition, the slave trade, colonialism, and the Holocaust.13 He invoked the image of the Virgin Mary, whose purity consists of youth, innocence, and intactness. The old is never innocent, and that is true for individuals as much as for religious heritages and national histories. Age, inevitably, accumulates breakage and malfunction, failure and debris. By envisioning purity in the image of the Virgin, the untouched bride, “dressed in a simple robe of white linen, the finest linen, bright and pure”14 we scorn processes of maturation and ripening. By contrast, symbols such as fermented wine or leavened bread could be used to appreciate processes of fermentation and aging. Wine gets better with age. Sour dough enlivens tasteless and bland flour into flavorful bread. Purity that derives from composting validates the digestion of the old, broken, discarded, and the guilty into rich, new ground for being.

Even the most poisonous remainders can be digested into basic stable elements. Scientists have only recently begun to use composting for the most protracted cases, known as POC (persistent organic compounds) that resist natural biological degradation. Bioremediation proves promising and often successful. But even if it did not, what else, exactly, is supposed to happen to toxic garbage, including radioactive waste? Neither our material garbage nor our moral legacies dissolve into thin air. Composting sequesters detritus but does not pretend its magic elimination. The new always grows out of the old. Putrefaction and fermentation create the conditions in which the new takes root and grows.

The Catholic Church has a sacramental system of penance that lends itself to sustainable practices of critical engagement with past wrongdoing. Its performative sacramental process prescribes three distinct steps before absolution. This sacrament aims at spiritual reconciliation with God and is facilitated by an ordained priest, but its basic grammar is applicable to any process of repair of relationship and recovery of personal integrity. The three steps are: contritio cordis, heartfelt contrition, confessio oris, verbal confession, and satisfactio operis, acts of penitential restitution. They are self-explanatory. The most secular people expect culprits to show some remorse, to admit their wrongdoing, and to repair the damage as much as possible. These are the cues that people are looking for, for instance, when we watch prominent men who have been accused by the #MeToo movement apologize and attempt to return to public life. In private and public, we decide, based on the performance of these steps, whether we are willing to grant forgiveness.

What makes the language of sacraments intriguing is precisely their performative, external character. Sacraments are “outward and visible signs of an inward and invisible grace.” This makes them relevant to the real world, where actions count. It is the visible performance of penance that establishes credibility and integrity more so than the internal changes to the soul. Of course, Martin Luther was right to observe that the depth and quality of a person's contrition can never be measured or proven. Every apology is a performance, which may or may not be heartfelt. Luther concluded from this fact that contrition should not be made the condition of God's grace and justification. On his view, contrition is the gift of justification, which is received unconditionally and works to open the eyes and soften the heart. Penance and sanctification follow after this change of heart has occurred. God's unconditional justification works to convert the sinner and to generate internal feelings of remorse and contrition.

Luther was right that contrition is a precious gift. The evidence that contrition is lacking and woefully incomplete is overwhelming. We certainly also observe that in the case of the Roman Catholic hierarchy. Just the other week, retired Pope Benedict XVI issued a statement blaming the “scandal of sexual abuse” on secular culture, declining faith in God, and resistance to the doctrinal authority of the church. His rambling letter left open the possibility that the scandal was caused by the audacity and insolence of the victims rather than the moral bankruptcy of the leadership. Pope Benedict XVI, who has controlled the highest levers of power in the Church for decades, does not feel any remorse. In his view, the injured party is the Church (and he himself) rather than the victims of clergy sexual abuse, who are barely mentioned. He does not apologize.15

How does one purify recalcitrance? Conversions do not happen instantaneously. They require time and active engagement, which makes the metaphor of composting apt and compelling. The Roman Catholic sacrament mandates a threefold engagement with wrongdoing: Contritio cordis cultivates intellectual recognition and moral knowledge of what has happened; confessio oris exacts transparency and seeks language that can convey the truth of events that are unimaginable and indescribable; satisfactio operis implements reparative action to recompense the victims and to work toward institutional change of the conditions that enabled the wrongdoing. This process is not chronological or sequential, there is no beginning, middle, and end. It is an interlocking spiral that is cumulative and transformative.