Welcome to this course about spiritual abuse in the Catholic Church. This course will help you to recognize, prevent, and respond to spiritual abuse in the Catholic Church.
This module will present a theological foundation for understanding how spiritual abuse is a violation of a person's infinite dignity and a structure of sin within the Church.
This module will review a few different definitions of spiritual abuse in order to identify its components. Understanding what spiritual abuse is, and what it isn't, is crucial in identifying, responding to, and safeguarding against it.
This module will explore what research says about the subjective experience of spiritual about. By understanding how spiritual abuse can play out we can better identify the red flags of abuse in religious spaces.
This module will outline some of the lasting psychological and spiritual harm that spiritual abuse can cause.
This module will dive into moral injury, a specific kind of psychological and spiritual harm caused by profound moral betrayal.
This module will unpack an especially insidious kind of spiritual abuse: abuse of conscience.
This module will discuss the vulnerability that's inherent in all pastoral relationships as well as the responsibility that comes with spiritual authority.
This final module will look at clericalism as a pervasive and structural problem within the Church. And the course will end with some comments about the virtue of solidarity as a way to address abuse in the Catholic Church.