ABSTRACT
The argument of this chapter is that the sexual abuse crisis in the Catholic Church is not the result of the egregious crimes of individual abusers. Rather, the crisis is a systemic problem that depends on a uniquely Catholic way of imagining the relationships between God, power, and sexual morality. I call this understanding the “Catholic sexual imagination.” Its main components are as follows: first, the almost exclusive identification of a holy life with consecrated celibacy/virginity. Second, a gendered hierarchy of holiness within the consecrated life. Third, a fierce defense of the institution of the priesthood over the moral standing of the priest. Lastly, the fear of scandal and the obsession with the Church’s (appearance of) moral and spiritual integrity. In order to demonstrate this, the chapter is divided in two sections. First, I focus on the formation of the Catholic sexual imagination by identifying its genesis in some key ideas about gender, purity, and power in antiquity. Second, I examine the case of the Jesuit Alfonso Pedrajas in Bolivia to show that his case reproduces widespread patterns of abuse in the Catholic Church, patterns that become more intelligible through the analysis of the Catholic sexual imagination.
