Spirituality as a Factor of Resilience in the Witness of Adult Survivors of Clerical Child Sexual Abuse

For Viktor Frankl, it is not possible to pursue happiness—happiness must ensue. Frankl’s approach to happiness is to understand it as the indicator of a successful search for meaning in life. Meaning and a sense of connection to something bigger than oneself are commonly accepted as components of spirituality. In the cases of abuse perpetrated by clergy, the spiritual component is often instrumentalized for the purpose of abuse and it may impact the path toward happiness. In this chapter, we look at the testimony of the survivors Teresa Pitt Green and Daniel Pittet who have each experienced a level of healing and integration after trauma, specifically from the vantage of the influence of spiritual practice. In view of René Girard’s anthropological approach to understanding the link between religion and victimage, and taking into consideration ethical principles such as human dignity, subsidiarity, and what Romano Guardini calls Gemeinschaft, values shared by both public ethics and Catholic Social Teaching, we will explore how spirituality may be a factor of resilience in cases of victimization through abuse in a church context and how it can lead to a renewed spiritual understanding for an authentic practice of religion.