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What Did Jesuits Know About Father Rupnik?

Twenty years after clerical sex abuse became global story, and Church vowed reform, cover-ups continue
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When I was in Rome last week, a couple of priests I met mentioned to me in passing that under Pope Francis, who is a Jesuit, Jesuits have been named to a number of senior curial positions at the Vatican, giving the religious order enormous influence over the future of the global Catholic Church. If you ask me, this is bad news, and not just because the Jesuits are, generally speaking, hyper-liberal (there are individual exceptions). It's bad news because the order apparently cannot be trusted to reform itself when its members sexually abuse others.

The situation with the prominent and powerful Jesuit priest Marko Ivan Rupnik, a popular church artist who stands accused of sexually abusing nuns, and who was treated with kid gloves by the Jesuits and the Vatican. A bishop who investigated the charges against Father Rupnik for the Holy See has now said that they are true, and that the Church's silence on the matter when it knew the truth added to the pain of Rupnik's alleged victims.

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Here's an English version of an interview with one of his alleged victims. It makes for grievous reading. Excerpts:

When did you decide to rely totally on Rupnik’s spiritual guidance?
In the summer of 1986, before he left on a trip, we met in his workshop. We celebrated together the Eucharist and then he expected me to undress and let him touch me as usual.

That time, however, I refused, and he attacked me with very harsh and nasty words, saying that I was worthless, that I would never do anything good; he added that for him two other women only mattered, whose names he named, and that he wanted to end all relations with me.

I was desperate because I was now totally dependent on his approval.

It was not love, just fear of making a mistake.

From that time on, I decided to put my doubts aside and rely totally on him. I believed that what we experienced together would make me a better person before God; instead, it was only the beginning of the distortion of my identity and the loss of myself.

So, it was duress?
It was an outright abuse of conscience. His sexual obsession was not extemporaneous but deeply connected to his conception of art and his theological thought.

Father Marko at first slowly and gently infiltrated my psychological and spiritual world by appealing to my uncertainties and frailties while using my relationship with God to push me to have sexual experiences with him.

And so, feeling loved like ‘Wisdom playing before God,’ as is written in the book of Proverbs, turned into a request for more and more erotic games in his studio at the Collegio del Gesù in Rome, while painting or after the celebration of the Eucharist or confession.

More:

Did the abuse only happen in Slovenia?
No, it also happened in his room at the Aletti Centre in Rome.

There Father Marko asked me to have threesomes with another sister of the community, because sexuality had to be, in his opinion, free from possession, in the image of the Trinity where, he said, “the third person would welcome the relationship between the two.” On those occasions, he would ask me to live out my femininity in an aggressive and dominant way, and since I could not do so, he would deeply humiliate me with phrases that I cannot repeat.

The final step in this descent into hell was the move from theological justifications of sex to an exclusively pornographic relationship.

In 1992, while I was in my fourth year of philosophy at the Gregorian, he also took me twice to see pornographic films in Rome on Via Tuscolana and near Termini station. By then I was feeling terrible.

The ex-nun says that she's aware of at least twenty other women Father Marko allegedly abused. One of them broke her arm trying to fend him off. And you knew this part was coming:

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Were you helped by anyone at that time?
No one helped me: neither the Superior Ivanka Hosta, whom I eventually turned to, nor the other sisters of the community. Not even Rupnik’s Jesuit superiors and Archbishop Šuštar.

Father Marko was protected by everyone, and I was nothing more than the scapegoat of an embarrassing situation, the weak link in a chain that could be sacrificed for the ‘greater’ good.

Read it all.

This priest's art is pretty awful, in a familiar way: it's the kind of trite crap that defaces so many Catholic churches since the Second Vatican Council. Here's a short TV report from 13 years ago about Rupnik and his work. The creepiest thing are the all-black bug eyes; they look to me like a weird, cartoonish combination of sentimental and dead.

Look, it surrounds the incorrupt body of St. Pio:

I am trying to help an Orthodox friend right now who feels betrayed by the clergy -- nothing criminal, or even remotely close, but he endured shabby pastoral treatment that has shattered his ability to trust priests. It reminds me of the immense power priests have, and of the deep damage that can be done when they misuse that power, even when the misuse was not technically abusive. T.S. Eliot wrote, "After such knowledge, what forgiveness?" I think it's actually easier to forgive than to permit trust to be restored, which requires putting oneself in a position to be hurt again.

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Fran Macadam
Fran Macadam
Call no man your Father, (in the religious sense) for you have one Father in Heaven. What jesuitical logic can be abused to deny this clear warning from scripture?
schedule 1 year ago
Peter Kurilecz
Peter Kurilecz
Jesuits are no longer the Defenders of the Faith. Ignatius would be embarrassed
"the society was founded for "whoever desires to serve as a soldier of God,[a] to strive especially for the defense and propagation of the faith, and for the progress of souls in Christian life and doctrine".[9] Jesuits are thus sometimes referred to colloquially as "God's soldiers",[10] "God's marines",[11] or "the Company".[12] The society participated in the Counter-Reformation and, later, in the implementation of the Second Vatican Council."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jesuits
schedule 1 year ago
    Fran Macadam
    Fran Macadam
    It's not entirely recent. The ability to prove black is really white has been called jesuitical. Dostoyevky's famous Grand Inquisitor chapter of Brothers Karamazov has the Jesuit claiming the keys of the kingdom give him the right to crucify Christ should he dare appear on earth again. Yes, I've read biographies of Ignatius. However, being counter-Reformation in itself can be seen as a political rather than spiritual warfare.
    schedule 1 year ago
Bogdán Emil
Bogdán Emil
"I think it's actually easier to forgive than to permit trust to be restored, which requires putting oneself in a position to be hurt again."

Heartbreaking, if realistic enough. We all know a thing or two about betrayal, especially trusted authority figures abusing their positions can leave lasting scars. Some scars won't disappear, but given enough time and perspective, they can even be worn like tattoos, decorative reminders of trials suffered and survived. Ultimately, one can only hope for signs of healing, the emergence of forgiveness, and yes, even the return of trust, for love is like a muscle that requires exercise, and there's a point. Not that we have much of a choice, since the alternative is unpalatable. For solace, here's some Emily Dickinson:

I think just how my shape will rise

I think just how my shape will rise
When I shall be forgiven,
Till hair and eyes and timid head
Are out of sight, in heaven.

I think just how my lips will weigh
With shapeless, quivering prayer
That you, so late, consider me,
The sparrow of your care.

I mind me that of anguish sent,
Some drifts were moved away
Before my simple bosom broke, —
And why not this, if they?

And so, until delirious borne
I con that thing, — "forgiven," —
Till with long fright and longer trust
I drop my heart, unshriven!
schedule 1 year ago
    Fran Macadam
    Fran Macadam
    When you said worn like tattoos I couldn't help but remember those I saw on concentration camp survivors. It's a given that there is some abuse that is so extreme that recovery in this vale of tears does not occur. So much so that the authors of such abuse would have been better off to never have been born.
    schedule 1 year ago
    Bogdán Emil
    Bogdán Emil
    You always make a point worth pondering, Fran, although I have no personal experience with such levels of abuse, in either direction, hopefully, but some of that is on others to point out. At the very least, I can say that nobody ever treated me in a such a manner that I thought it would have been better for them to never have been born, although one person came a bit close, I must say. I still don't wish evil on him, just lawful consequences, even rehabilitation. Philosophically, I agree that we have a right to judge the wrong and the heinous and call it by name, and we even have the right to take a life in self defense. But declaring that someone would have been better off to never have been born vehemently reeks of the death penalty -- pragmatically speaking, for what else could you mean by this in practice? -- which I don't support, not even for Nazis. I don't like the habit of killing apprehended people. Such things have a way of spinning out of control. I'm aware that Jeffrey Dahmers exist, and all of us would have been better off had he not been born, but he was born anyway. Had we known in advance, he could have been exterminated in the womb, or maybe genetically manipulated. Surely his life would have been better unlived, meaning: he deserved death. It's also true that many that die deserve to live. Imploring with the voice of Gandalf: can you give it to them? Then don't be so quick to proclaim death as someone's just reward. I believe there's something about how not even the wise can foresee all ends. Hence, the final judgment is best left to a higher authority, who may very well intervene in unforeseen ways. So yes, I do agree with your statement, about the reality of evil, extreme crimes, violent abuse of trust, inhumane horrors on Earth, just not the punitive implication, if I understand it right.
    schedule 1 year ago
      Fran Macadam
      Fran Macadam
      Matthew 18 and Mark 9 both say that for anyone who causes these little ones belonging to the Lord offense it would be better for that person to be cast into the ocean with a millstone around their neck; never born. I do believe that murderers can be forgiven and gain salvation; however I also think that except in mitigating circumstances that wilfully and premeditatedly taking the life of someone else's life requires the exchange of that person's own life.
      schedule 1 year ago
      Bogdán Emil
      Bogdán Emil
      Sounds logical, it all makes sense in theory, but if you put it into practice, that ends up being a whole lot of killing. Here's my familiar line: if you take Matthew 18 and Mark 9 literally, then sign up to be the state executioner, the person who ties millstones around the guilty necks and then pushes them overboard. It might pay well, for there is a permanent demand, but I'm not interested in that job, I don't even think it should exist, and I'm not supporting that policy. For example, I don't think mothers who willfully and knowingly abort their babies should be cast into the ocean with cement boots. However, they would certainly benefit from reading the Bible. Furthermore, I'm at a loss about how to achieve rehabilitation as well as justice for the victims. Certainly there are wrongs in this world. The question is: how to put them right? Eye for an eye? Blood for blood? Death for death? That is one way, but not the only way, and probably not even the most effective way to deliver shining, admirable Justice. But I admit, the idea does have the benefit of being clear and simple.
      schedule 1 year ago
        Fran Macadam
        Fran Macadam
        Let me know when you succeed in ending the mass murder known as war...
        schedule 1 year ago
          Bogdán Emil
          Bogdán Emil
          Why would I do that? Let me know when you have killed someone and called it justice. Don't talk about it, do it. Tie the millstone. Push the person over.
          schedule 1 year ago
          Fran Macadam
          Fran Macadam
          Bogdan, my point is that logically speaking our leaders already engage in mass executions of even innocents in war and are not as far as I understand held accountable in this life. So by following their logic, akin to that of a mobster boss presiding over gangland murders, we ought to be as lenient as possible in the matter of those murdering in fewer numbers.
          schedule 1 year ago
          Bogdán Emil
          Bogdán Emil
          And you are criticizing our elected mafia leaders and their philosophy of countenancing mass death on one hand, while calling for the death penalty on the other hand, obviously mishandling your juggling act. I tend to wriggle out of these things somehow, so I'm not worried about you, either. The Second Rule of being in a hole advises as follows: keep digging, and who knows, you might end up in China.

          My first name is Emil, I'm using Hungarian name order: last name first.
          schedule 1 year ago