Nuala Kenny
Sister Nuala Kenny is a Sister of Charity of Halifax, a pediatrician, medical educator and bioethicist. She is currently Emeritus Professor at Dalhousie University and Ethics and Health Policy Advisor for the Catholic health Alliance of Canada. She has been involved in clergy sexual abuse since the 1989-1990 St John’s Newfoundland Archdiocesan Commission of Enquiry and has recently written Healing the Church: Diagnosing and Treating the Clergy Sexual Abuse Crisis (Novalis, 2012).
Bio last updated April 30th, 2018.
Articles by Nuala Kenny
Time for Francis to Bind the Church's Wounds
By Nuala Kenny
April 1, 2014
Pope Francis has turned heads with his fresh approach to the papacy. Now it’s time he turned his mind to the structures that fed clerical sex abuse, says Sister Nuala Kenny
Pope Francis must act now and link his insights regarding clericalism to the abuse of power and trust at the heart of the crisis The shocking revelations of the sexual abuse of children and youth by clergy are, as Pope John Paul II said, a "profound contradiction of the teaching and witness of Jesus Christ Speaking to the bishops of Latin and South America, Francis identifies key attitudinal chane needed when he names three temptations of the Church: the Gospel as ideology, functionalism and clericalism It identified six factors in urgent need of further exploration by Church leaders for their role: power, education, sexuality, support for priests, a management approach and avoidance of scandal motivation to abuse, such as psychological and psycho-sexual immaturity, emotional congruence with the victim, deviant sexual arousal and blockage of healthy relationships; overcoming internal inhibitions against harming children, as with mental illness, the use of alcohol, and the creation of excuses and justifications; overcoming the child's or youth's resistance through the special status of the offender, grooming with gifts, and threats; and overcoming external protective factors by seizing or planning for opportunities to abuse in the context of decreased familial and social vigilance According to the Catholic News, Pope Francis also warned against a functionalism that "reduces the reality of the Church to the structure of a nongovernmental organization