In Christian theology, detraction is the sin of revealing another person's real faults to a third person without a valid reason, thereby lessening the reputation of that person. [1] [2]
In Christian theology, detraction is the sin of revealing another person's real faults to a third person without a valid reason, thereby lessening the reputation of that person. [1] [2]
Detraction differs from the sin of calumny and the civil wrong of defamation, which generally involve false accusations rather than unflattering truths.
The Catholic Encyclopedia clarifies:
According to J. Delaney of Catholic Encyclopedia, "Detraction in a general sense is a mortal sin, as being a violation of the virtue not only of charity but also of justice. It is obvious, however, that the subject-matter of the accusation may be so inconspicuous or, everything considered, so little capable of doing serious hurt that the guilt is not assumed to be more than venial. The same judgment is to be given when, as not unfrequently happens, there has been little or no advertence to the harm that is being done."
As in the case of stealing, detraction is a sin which demands restitution, even though rebuilding a victim's reputation may be nearly impossible. [2] A commonly cited parable in this regard concerns a priest, often said to be Philip Neri, who gave a woman who had confessed to spreading gossip the penance of retrieving feathers that had been scattered on the wind—a task as impossible as undoing the damage she had done. [3] [4]
Some have thought Catholics need to guard better against the sin of detraction [5] than they are currently. In 2011, Seán Patrick O'Malley was accused of risking possible detraction when he published a list of names of accused abusers among the clergy before their canonical cases were completed. [6] Pope Francis accused other Catholics of detraction when they criticized his appointment of Juan Barros Madrid. [7]
On the other side of this issue, the counting of detraction as a sin has been criticized as "a kind of spiritual blackmail" [8] when used to silence victims of abuse. The Roman Catholic Diocese of Lincoln specifically cited detraction among other reasons why it would not participate in the study leading to the John Jay Report. [9] Concern about the sin of detraction was singled out as a contributing problem in the Murphy Report, which concluded: [10]
Many of the failures to report appalling behaviour by clergy may well be attributable to a wish to avoid committing the sin of detraction.
Defamation is a communication that injures a third party's reputation and causes a legally redressable injury. The precise legal definition of defamation varies from country to country. It is not necessarily restricted to making assertions that are falsifiable, and can extend to concepts that are more abstract than reputation – like dignity and honour. In the English-speaking world, the law of defamation traditionally distinguishes between libel and slander. It is treated as a civil wrong, as a criminal offence, or both.
There have been many cases of sexual abuse of children by priests, nuns, and other members of religious life in the Catholic Church. In the late 20th and early 21st centuries, the cases have involved many allegations, investigations, trials, convictions, acknowledgement and apologies by Church authorities, and revelations about decades of instances of abuse and attempts by Church officials to cover them up. The abused include mostly boys but also girls, some as young as three years old, with the majority between the ages of 11 and 14. Criminal cases for the most part do not cover sexual harassment of adults. The accusations of abuse and cover-ups began to receive public attention during the late 1980s. Many of these cases allege decades of abuse, frequently made by adults or older youths years after the abuse occurred. Cases have also been brought against members of the Catholic hierarchy who covered up sex abuse allegations and moved abusive priests to other parishes, where abuse continued.
Crimen sollicitationis is the title of a 1962 document ("instruction") of the Holy Office codifying procedures to be followed in cases of priests or bishops of the Catholic Church accused of having used the sacrament of Penance to make sexual advances to penitents. It repeated, with additions, the contents of an identically named instruction issued in 1922 by the same office.
The Diocese of Rockville Centre is a Latin Church ecclesiastical territory, or diocese, of the Catholic Church in the Long Island region of New York State in the United States. It is a suffragan diocese in the ecclesiastical province of the metropolitan Archdiocese of New York.
The Diocese of Kansas City–Saint Joseph is a Latin Church ecclesiastical territory, or diocese, of the Catholic Church in northwestern Missouri in the United States. It is a suffragan diocese in the ecclesiastical province of the metropolitan Archdiocese of Saint Louis.
The Diocese of Erie is a Latin Church ecclesiastical territory, or diocese, of the Catholic Church in western Pennsylvania in the United States. It is a suffragan diocese of the metropolitan Archdiocese of Philadelphia.
The Nature and Scope of the Problem of Sexual Abuse of Minors by Catholic Priests and Deacons in the United States, commonly known as the John Jay Report, is a 2004 report by the John Jay College of Criminal Justice, commissioned by the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, based on surveys completed by the Roman Catholic dioceses in the United States. The initial version of the report was posted on the Internet on February 27, 2004, with corrections and revisions posted on April 16. The printed version was published in June 2004.
This page documents Catholic Church sexual abuse cases by country.
Anthony Sablan Apuron is a Guamanian American former prelate of the Catholic Church. He served as Archbishop of Agaña from 1983 until 2016, when the Holy See removed him for child sexual abuse crimes.
There have been many lawsuits, criminal prosecutions, and scandals over sexual abuse by Roman Catholic clergy in the United States of America.
From the late 1980s, allegations of sexual abuse of children associated with Catholic institutions and clerics in several countries started to be the subject of sporadic, isolated reports. In Ireland, beginning in the 1990s, a series of criminal cases and Irish government enquiries established that hundreds of priests had abused thousands of children over decades. Six reports by the former National Board for Safeguarding Children in the Catholic Church established that six Irish priests had been convicted between 1975 and 2011. This has contributed to the secularisation of Ireland and to the decline in influence of the Catholic Church. Ireland held referendums to legalise same-sex marriage in 2015 and abortion in 2018.
The ecclesiastical response to Catholic sexual abuse cases is a major aspect of the academic literature surrounding the Catholic Church's child sexual abuse scandal. The Catholic Church's response to the scandal can be viewed on three levels: the diocesan level, the episcopal conference level and the Vatican. Responses to the scandal proceeded at all three levels in parallel with the higher levels becoming progressively more involved as the gravity of the problem became more apparent.
The Catholic sexual abuse scandal in Europe has affected several dioceses in European nations. This article summarises reported cases of sexual abuse perpetrated by clergy and representatives of the Catholic Church by country and diocese.
"Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor" is one of the Ten Commandments, widely understood as moral imperatives in Judaism and Christianity.
The Murphy Report is the brief name of the report of a Commission of investigation conducted by the Irish government into the sexual abuse scandal in the Catholic archdiocese of Dublin. It was released in 2009 by Judge Yvonne Murphy, only a few months after the publication of the report of the Commission to Inquire into Child Abuse chaired by Sean Ryan, a similar inquiry which dealt with abuses in industrial schools controlled by Roman Catholic religious institutes.
The parish transfers of abusive Catholic priests, also known as priest shuffling, is a pastoral practice that has greatly contributed to the aggravation of Catholic Church sexual abuse cases. Some bishops have been heavily criticized for moving offending priests from parish to parish, where they still had personal contact with children, rather than seeking to have them permanently returned to the lay state by laicization. The Church was widely criticized when it was discovered that some bishops knew about some of the alleged crimes committed, but reassigned the accused instead of seeking to have them permanently removed from the priesthood.
"Mission to Prey" is the title of an episode of the RTÉ programme Prime Time Investigates broadcast in May 2011. It falsely accused an Irish Catholic priest in Kenya of having fathered a child by engaging in child sexual abuse. The Broadcasting Authority of Ireland fined the RTÉ as a result and the decision to air the programme was described as "one of the gravest editorial mistakes ever made" in the history of RTÉ broadcasting.
The sexual abuse of minors by clergy of the Catholic Church in Chile and the failure of Church officials to respond and take responsibility attracted worldwide attention as a critical failure of Pope Francis and the Church as a whole to address the sexual abuse of minors by priests. Among a number of cases, that of Father Fernando Karadima, which became public in 2010, raised questions about the responsibility and complicity of several Chilean bishops, including some of the country's highest-ranking Catholic prelates.
A grand jury investigation of Catholic Church sexual abuse in Pennsylvania lasted from 2016 to 2018, and investigated the history of clerical sexual abuse in six Pennsylvania dioceses.
The Vatican sexual abuse summit, officially the Meeting on the Protection of Minors in the Church, was a four-day Catholic Church summit meeting in Vatican City that ran from 21 to 24 February 2019, convened by Pope Francis to discuss preventing sexual abuse by Catholic Church clergy.