The Self-Transformation of the Catholic Church and Its Barriers

Abstract

Fifteen years after the first public disclosure of sexualized violence at the Canisius College in Berlin (2010), the Catholic Church in Germany remains engaged in a self-initiated transformation process of transformation. This article examines why, despite various reform efforts, including the introduction of procedures for intervention, prevention, and compensation (“Anerkennung des Leids”)—this process has largely come to a standstill. The central thesis is that the Church, as an organization, obstructs its own transformation through structural self-blockades.

Drawing on the differentiation of system levels (society – organization – interaction), we identify several forms of self-blockade: (1) immunization through commissions of inquiry set up by the Church itself; (2) legal abuse by playing off ecclesiastical and secular law against each other; (3) insufficient structural reforms in both investigation and intervention/prevention; (4) papal counter-reactions and the referral of responsibilities from one department to another (so-called autopoietic self-defense); (5) transcendentalization and dogmatization of both sexualized violence and (6) organizational structures; and (7) strategies of externalization that shift responsibility onto society, God, or other ecclesiastical levels.

These self-blockades prevent the transformative process anticipated by both the Church and survivors: self-transformation does indeed occur, but not as an intended or deliberately managed process. Rather, it takes the form of a highly transintentional transformation.