Ecological way of understanding and explaining clergy sexual misconduct

College

College of Liberal Arts

Department/Unit

Theology and Religious Education

Document Type

Article

Source Title

Sexuality and Culture

Volume

16

Issue

3

First Page

287

Last Page

305

Publication Date

9-1-2012

Abstract

In trying to understand and explain clergy sexual misconduct, this article seeks the help of two interrelated interpretive frames: (1) social structures and other network of relationships that immediately surround or embed persons, and (2) human behavior which is expressed through and because of social rules and resources, groups and grids, structures and systems. It presupposes that the not-so predictable and less-visible sexual misbehavior could be brought into discussion with the help of other ideas: habitus (enduring predispositions) and limen (threshold). Through these ideas, covert behavior may become less hidden for it will be conceptually gathered from its entangled condition between the psychological and socio-cultural factors. In its more integrated psycho-social environmental way of explaining, this essay avoids both the overly psychological and the too-sociological approaches of interpreting behavior. In other words, it avoids a single manner of viewing sexual misconduct. This manner of understanding misconduct is a way of broadening the canvass and giving up an outdated either-psychology-or-sociology strokes. This study also raises some questions regarding character formation and institutions. © 2011 Springer Science+Business Media, LLC.

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Digitial Object Identifier (DOI)

10.1007/s12119-011-9124-z

Disciplines

Catholic Studies | Religion

Keywords

Sexual misconduct by clergy

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