Catholics and the National Fight against Child Sexual Abuse

In 1989, two Chicago Catholics founded the Survivor’s Network of those Abused by Priests (SNAP).  Within several years, SNAP had grown into a national organization with branches in every state.  Since then, SNAP has further expanded its membership by creating chapters for non-Catholic survivors, and by opening offices throughout Europe.  Now comprised of more than 25,000 members internationally, SNAP is so influential that it recently appealed to the International Criminal Court to charge Vatican officials for crimes against humanity.  For all of its notoriety, SNAP is only one among dozens of Catholic activist organizations that have been formed in response to the Church’s recent sex abuse crisis.  Over the past two decades, these Catholic groups have radically altered the judicial and legislative landscape of sex abuse issues across the United States.   Using an ethnohistorical approach, this paper critically examines two recent efforts by SNAP and Voice of the Faithful (VOTF) to further strengthen their national influence in such debates.  This fall, VOTF will launch a national think tank dedicated to analyzing the problem of child sexual abuse across the U.S.   Simultaneously, SNAP will begin its second phase of planning for a national museum that honors sex abuse victims.  In describing their goals for the museum, SNAP leaders continually stress their desire to memorialize not only Catholics but also the millions of Americans who were abused outside of the Church.  With a historical gaze that draws on other events throughout the twentieth century, this paper discusses how the dynamic interplay of identity, power, and authority have revitalized a longstanding sense of moral distinctiveness amongst American Catholics.  Just as conservative Catholics were prominent in national debates on contraception and abortion, today’s progressive Catholics seek to control the discussion of how Americans should combat the epidemic of child sexual abuse.