The Unhealed Wound: The Church and Human Sexuality

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Summary: Five Stars for Kennedy's "The Unhealed Wound!"
Review: "The Unhealed Wound : The Church and Human Sexuality" by Eugene Kennedy is a very well written historical exposition and elegant human reflection on the Mystical Church vis-a-vis the Institutional Church. The Church of Mystery focuses on the celebration and sharing of one's special gifts to support the expansion of the "Good News" while the Institutional Church focuses on the control of its membership to preserve its organizational power structure.

This book is on the recommended reading list for the "Sex, Gender, and Spirituality" course in the Institue for Pastoral Studies, at Loyola University Chicago. According to the Mustard Seed Bookstore manager, it was the best book on the supplementary reading list. He was correct!

Beginning with the 1880's, Kennedy provides a brief but mesmerizing historical development of the American Church showing the tension between the intellectual and spiritual reflection on Jesus' mission and the dogmatic and curial sanctions placed on theologians. Did you know that "Fighting Father Duffy" was a Theology professor before he was a chaplain?

The purpose of Kennedy's book is certainly not to wallow in his leaving the priesthood. He just doesn't leave us in the muck and mire to sympathize with those who have been victimized by insensitive members of the hierarchy. His purpose is to focus on our mystical and spiritual gifts with which we have been graced. His invitation is to all hierarchy, clergy, religious and laity to listen to one another, to offer each other the gifts of the Spirit as St. Paul encourages us to do, and to implement those promtings wherever they take us. Kennedy suggests what some might consider 'revolutionary' options for healing our wounds, such as sharing responsibility and recognizing the Word of the Lord where we least expect it, not in dogma, but in each other.

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Summary: Dipping into the altar whine
Review: As a Roman Catholic in the Archdiocese of Boston, epicenter of the recent priest molestation scandals, I am well aware that my Church has more than its share of problems. I am at least as critical of its faults as the next person, but this was a book, purporting to pinpoint the Church's fundamental fault, that I just could not bring myself to like.

In "The Unhealed Wound," Eugene Kennedy has written a tiresomely repetitive book in which he lays all the faults of the Catholic Church on its "unhealed wound" concerning human sexuality. Kennedy discerns this wound in the Percival legend (he of the genital wound that would not heal) through the tragic story of Heloise and Abelard and into our day of pedophilic priests. The Church, as Kennedy sees it, pits Flesh against Spirit, forcing human beings to split themselves so that their heaven-tending souls may subdue their sin-prone flesh.

It's not a bad premise, except that it doesn't fully align with the Church's positive teachings about sexuality and embodiment. The Church has taught from the beginning (as in the Resurrection of Christ) that we are not souls trapped in disposable bodies, but are unified beings - embodied spirits. If the anthropology of a body-soul split has more than its share of representatives, its because the Church fails to counter this mistaken view, not because the Church embraces it.

Kennedy makes much of the existence of celibacy being a sign and symptom of the unhealed wound. But celibacy does not have to be read as life-denying, as legions of priests and saints throughout the ages can testify. The most fruitful celibate life is not accomplished by denying sexuality, but by using its power and drive for purposes other than "mere" genitality. True, some Catholics over the centuries have demonized bodiliness and feared sex. But those outlooks have not prevailed. Anyway, the recent abuses in Boston (as well as elsewhere) have nothing to do with poor, desexed priests trying to heal their sexual wounds. It's about an institution that saw itself above and apart from the rest of sinful creation, refused to police itself, and used its power to hide the criminals in its midst.

I am sympathetic to writers who wish to shed light on the problems of the Church -- if only to help us to right the Barque of Peter. Yet I found "The Unhealed Wound" to be tedious, whiny, off the mark and utterly unhelpful in its attempts to fix what ails Catholicism. The mere repetition of the words "wound" and "unhealed wound" was enough to make me dread turning every page. A less doctrinaire approach to the delicate and tangled subject of the Church and sexuality might have been more helpful in this time of change and crisis.

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Summary: A book which can only appeal to those who already believe
Review: Eugene Kennedy has written a heartfelt, impassioned polemic against the Catholic Church's teachings on sexuality. For those who are already troubled by the Church's teachings, Kennedy's rhetorical flourish will seem insightful. For those who wish to think more deeply about the strengths and weaknesses of the Church's teachings, Kennedy offers little of substance. The Church needs to find a way to have an open and healing dialogue between those who accept the Church's teachings and those who do not. Unfortunately, Kennedy's book can only widen the gap between them... which is particularly unfortunate since the book's title suggests that the author recognizes how much we are in need of healing.

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Summary: Diocesan Priest for over 40 years
Review: I am a parish priest and I have taught in seminaries .
This book is so needed. It's brave and solid as it addresses the RC theological poverty in the area of sexuality. Kennedy goes for the jugular - ie power and control motivation at the heart of the church's official position , dysfuction and immaturity in the clerical world. John

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Summary: Revealing a Deep Problem
Review: Kennedy discusses a problem in the Catholic Church which has been evident for centuries. How does a religion based on love involve itself with extreme violence toward women (witch hunts), control of men and women through terrorism (the Inquisition), and the mutilation of children (the castration of boys)? Yet according to official church policy there is no problem at all. If there is no problem then are serial murder, mutilation and torture are acceptable religious practices?

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Summary: Author says much that needs to be said but needs an editor
Review: Kennedy, of course, is faulted by fundamentalists (both Catholic and non-Catholic), for saying up is up and down is down. But their criticism is foolish, and when examined, really unchristian. In this book Kennedy says what is so obvious it should be written in neon: the institutional church (not the real church, the people) has a hang up on sex. It cannot heal this sexual wound because it will not admit it exists. Amen. He is right, absolutely. My only objection is with his writing style. Run-on sentences are the norm. Parenthetical thoughts abound. But read through them. The message is worth the effort.

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Summary: Revealing a Deep Problem
Review: The Unhealed Wound is not just about human sexuality and the church. It gets deep into the sexism of the church. It is a much-needed book! Kennedy shows that the Catholic Church has historically practiced extreme sexism and continues to do so. This church desires to exercise total institutional control of women. It accomplishes this through a number of tactics. He quotes researcher A. W. Richard Sipe that this control is expressed "in the restriction or subjugation of the inferior group at the pleasure or for the use of the group in power..." He points out that this denomination prefers to ordain openly professed homosexuals as priests than to ordain a woman, primarily because the priest is supposed to be representative of Jesus and female differ so much physiologically from Jesus.

The author begins the book by examining the way the public opinion of priests has changed over the past century. They were once regarded as clean and pure. They were highly respected. They exercised great power and control over people, even nonbelievers. But in the last century, they have fallen from this high standing within society. Today, they are most often disregarded. Often, they are met with disdain. The Catholic Church has lost the primary source of its power.

Kennedy has utilized his investigative journalism skills to dig up lots of dirt on the church. Things such as the church changing death certificates of priests that have died with AIDS to cover their sexual problems. He exposes numerous cover-ups and immoral activity by the church.

This is a must read! Every church official, regardless of denomination, should be required to study it. Every woman should own a copy and read it aloud to the men in her life: father, husband, boyfriend, boss, and so forth. It is high time for the world to hear this message and force the officials to deal with the issues presented. I recommend this book to everyone.

Eugene Kennedy is a professor emeritus of psychology at Loyola University of America, a syndicated columnist, and an award-winning author.

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Summary: Of little worth . . .
Review: This book is well written and holds the readers attention. In it, Kennedy presents a well argued and powerful case. Unfortunately, his argument is deeply flawed. For his thesis to make any sense at all one must assume that Catholic priests are more likely than is the general population to committ acts of sexual abuse.

Where is the data? The data that does exist (see Phillip Jenkins of Penn State and Thomas Plante of Stanford U.) suggests exactly the opposite is the case. Despite all the media hoopla priests are, if anything, less likely than the general population to commit sexual abuse of minors. That being the case, how can sexual abuse be the result of the Church's teachings and practices?

So, in the final analysis, Mr. Kennedy's book presents an interesting theory which has no objective data supporting it.

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Summary: Incredibly timely
Review: With the American Catholic Church rocking from its biggest (and, unfortunately, still growing) sex scandal ever, Eugene Kennedy's book is a timely and welcome reflection.

The basic thesis defended by Kennedy is that sexual transgressions committed by priests are, for the most part, not because the individual transgressors are wicked men, but because their sexuality has been warped by repressive power structures within the Church. Claiming that the insistence on clerical celibacy is both unnatural and unscriptural, Kennedy argues that the Church insists upon it primarily as a way of exerting power. This is an institutional mechanism, part of the way in which the curial structure maintains itself, and not the premeditated plan of a secretive group of men in red.

Kennedy's analysis is well worth taking seriously, although I suspect he overstates his case at times. The contemporary Church, for example, seems much more open and sensitive to sexuality than did the pre-Vatican II Church. Today's 50-something priests whose sexual development was traumatized and arrested as adolescent seminarians aren't representative of younger clergy. Moreover, it's not clear that the elimination of clerical celibacy is the needed restorative to the problem of sexual abuse. It could be the case that the malaise is spiritual rather than psycho-sexual.

Still, Kennedy's book is a good and much needed read. Highly recommended.