Marie Keenan

When I wrote my first book, Child Sexual Abuse and the Catholic Church: Gender, Power and Organisational Culture,¹ I offered a multi-layered analysis of the problem based on extensive clinical experience, a strong body of research, and deep personal reflection.² I was concerned about cruelty and about institutional and personal hypocrisy, preaching water while drinking wine, and I had seen much of this in relation to abuse in the Catholic Church³ and indeed in other organisational contexts in which abuses had occurred. I suggested that child sexual abuse in the Catholic Church could best be understood as a multi-layered, multifaceted problem that needed to be addressed in all its complexity. At the time, there was evidence of abuses in the Catholic Church in Australia, the United States, Ireland, and England – mainly the English-speaking countries – with relative silence from non-English speaking countries who appeared to regard it as ‘a problem of the West’. Given the reach of the Irish diaspora, including the Irish Catholic Church, sexual abuse of minors was even considered as an exported ‘Irish problem’ and that the abuse by clergy and religious originated in Irish Catholicism.

As many of us predicted, sexual and other abuses in the Catholic Church have unfortunately shown up in many countries across the world. I fear it is only a matter of time for its emergence in those countries not yet on the abuses map. Let us be clear, however, the Catholic Church is not the only faith-based or secular organisation in which abuses have become apparent since the 1980s. Those organisations include sporting organisations, higher education institutes, the military, and Muslim and Buddhist faith traditions, to mention but a few.⁴ That child sexual abuse happens in other societal organisations and institutions, including the family, is, however, cold comfort for the Catholic Church itself.

So why does it happen and what is it all about and how does any of this relate to faith and justice? To begin I will recap on what and why. In section two, I will move on to the Irish Church response. Section three will examine if there are better ways to do justice, and in this I examine restorative justice and its synergies with Catholic Social Teaching. In section four, I suggest ways the Catholic Church could respond restoratively and proactively. In the conclusion, I suggest we change the lens from viewing abuse in the Church as a crisis to an awakening that requires new justice-responses, based on faith, going forward.

Sexual abuse in the Catholic Church: causes and contexts

Rarely are organisational abuses simply a matter of ‘bad apples’. Of course there are individuals who act in bad faith, with full or partial awareness of the impact of their actions. However, in every organisation I have studied in which abuses occur, contextual factors are also important. Particular organisational features are often found to be part of the problem. Any organisation that has been plagued by enduring abuses of power, including multiple incidents of sexual violations of children and adults, must consider the specific organisational factors that may be contributing to the genesis of the problem, its enduring nature and the institutional and organisational responses.

Organisational factors, where they are found to be implicated, must be addressed to avoid recurrence. An over-arching feature of abuse in organisations also relates to the use and misuse of power. Therefore, power relations, power positions, and opportunities to misuse power must also be examined. In essence, where inequalities in power exist, which are inevitable in all organisations, adequate oversight processes, appropriate checks and balances, robust accountability structures, and support/supervision for people in positions of power must be in place as additional safeguards against the risk of abuses.⁵

My work linked detailed knowledge of the church administration and the institution of the Church to the personal narratives of some offenders and found that each reflected back on the other. Further, when the results of my micro case-study of clerical perpetrators and the Church in Ireland were interpreted in the larger church context (based on research and reports emanating from other countries), it became obvious there were noticeable links between what happens on the local level and on the grand scale of things. I found that the individual, organisational, and the institutional dimensions of abuse in the Church were actually influencing each other and bound together in a particular dynamic relation. The same holds true for other organisations in which abuses occur. My analysis led to me to the view that sexual abuse against minors and vulnerable adults in the Catholic Church involved many interrelated and intersecting parts including the psychology of the perpetrator, organisational structure, organisational culture, and the social and cultural context in which the Church operated. As Clifford Geertz pointed out, it makes sense to engage in ‘a continuous dialectical tracking between the most local of detail and the most global of global structure in such a way as to bring both into view simultaneously’.⁶ That was what I attempted to do, bringing forth explanations that had explanatory merit no matter how partial at that time.

While it is tempting, and popular, to focus on the individual perpetrators, I found that when the individual and the institutional dimensions of the abuses were brought together what became evident was how the individual perpetrators, the bishops and religious leaders, the lower-ranking clergy, and the Catholic laity were interconnected by a web of interacting dynamics and relationships that were part of the problem. The individual and the institutional dimensions of the Church, when studied all together, reflected beliefs and values that were usually obscured from view when one focused solely on individual action. As time went on, the role of civil society and the political class also became clearer.⁷ My examination led me to the conclusion that a number of factors were important in relation to abuses in the Church. I will outline some here, mainly for the purpose of asking have any of these factors been addressed in the past thirty years, a question to which I will return in my concluding thoughts.

One factor I highlighted was the theology of clerical sexuality, which I argued gave rise to an unrealistic understanding of a perfect clerical masculinity that was impossible to live for many clergy and religious.⁸ This, in turn, supported individual rationalisations for sexual acting-out of many kinds, including the sexual abuse of minors for some.

A second factor included the dynamic interplay of power and powerlessness⁹ in which the clerical perpetrators lived out of an unreflective script of private powerlessness (for a variety of reasons including emotional loneliness, isolation, poor attachments, cognitive distortions, and empathy deficits) while ministering in a site of unsupervised and unchallenged public dominance.¹⁰ An understanding of authority that was devoid of a theology of power, in which the focus was on the oppressive forces of being ‘under’ authority rather than on the obligations that go with having authority ‘over’ people, contributed to this dynamic.

A third factor included a poor understanding of moral theology and the steps involved in making good moral judgements. An education in moral theology that was overly intellectualised and that focused primarily on theoretical or abstract problems did not equip its students to make good moral choices.¹¹ An understanding of moral absolutes that was devoid of sufficiently honest human engagement, emotional expression, and a questioning atmosphere, rather than a silencing one, was bound to fail many. Space for the development of the emotional and relational intelligence required to navigate human life when knowledge of moral absolutes did not provide answers to life’s complexities appeared to be absent in the education of many clergy at the time of my research and writing (1996–2010).

A fourth factor, at a broader social and political level in the Irish case, included the state’s deference to the Church. The fact that the Church had an important role in helping to gain international legitimacy and respectability for the poor, emerging Irish state by running the schools, hospitals, and care homes on its behalf gave the Church a particular increased power position within the new Irish state that was to be recognised in the Irish constitution of 1937.¹² It also left the Church vulnerable to state inadequacies regarding proper governance, finance, and the lessons emanating from international research in child and adult psychology, social policy, and human rights.

The interdependence of Church–state relations is therefore part of the social context in which abuses in the Catholic Church in Ireland were allowed to persist for so long and were not adequately addressed and called out.¹³ The process of institutionalisation of women and children, largely related to sexuality and poverty, which was the norm in Ireland until the 1990s, contributed to the trauma for many victims and survivors. Poor regulation of these institutions run by the religious orders on behalf of the state directly implicated the state as well as the Church in these abuses, a factor well known to victims and survivors.¹⁴

As argued by Derek Scally, civil society also had a role in the abuses perpetrated within the Catholic Church.¹⁵ Individuals and groups can be positioned at various points along ‘the continuum of knowing’.¹⁶ At one end of the spectrum some citizens cast a blind eye or colluded with what they knew, informed by their own commercial or respectable self-interest, giving them the status of ‘implicated subjects’.¹⁷ At the other end of the spectrum, some citizens could be cast as too afraid or ashamed to ‘know’ or to act, the holding of the secret ‘knowing’ functioning as ‘a form of care’.¹⁸ Members of civil society can be positioned at all points along the continuum. This complex web of interacting subjects and systems makes for significant difficulties in deciphering where exactly responsibility and accountability lie, and to what extent and for what precisely the Church and state are responsible in each individual case.¹⁹ Many victims and survivors have endured life-long impacts from physical, sexual, emotional, financial, and spiritual abuses and demonstrated incredible resilience and resistance to the trauma and its after-effects.²⁰ Despite this, many have been re-traumatised by the wait for accountability, reparation, redress, and the healing that comes from sincere and honest acknowledgement, validation, and vindication.

The Irish Church response

The responses of the Irish Church to the abuses could be described in the beginning, at least, as largely reactive. The Irish Church responded when pressed or shamed into doing so by victims/survivors, their advocates, the media, or when legally challenged. The same can be said of the state responses. As an insider/outsider observer of Church (and state) responses, I have noted a number of factors in play over time. These include: denial; lack of understanding of the impact of the abuses on victims, perpetrators, families, clergy and church communities; minimisation of the extent of the problem and its systemic and organisational dimensions; dominance of the ‘bad apple’ theory; defensive positioning, drawing heavily on the advice of lawyers, accountants, insurers, and public relations companies to protect the institution; and a tendency to blame others for the problems that the organisation faces, including victims, survivors, and the media.

My research with others,²¹ based on interviews with leaders of Church and state as well as victims and survivors, legal practitioners, and academics, suggests there are several factors involved in why these reactive stances have been adopted. These include fear of the floodgates opening in litigation, resulting in financial and legal liability; disputes over the distribution of responsibility between the Church and state; protection of institutional reputation; a concern with proportionality/fairness in how accountability is distributed; legal perspectives taking precedence over faith and justice perspectives; fatigue; demoralisation; and, in some cases, loss of confidence on the part of religious leaders as to what is the right thing to do. However, in that study, some victims and survivors also spoke of meeting officials in Church and state who were motivated to do the right thing, and who did.²² Despite its defensive, reactive positioning, much good work has been done by the Catholic Church in Ireland in responding to abuses in the Church, and there are hopeful signs of a shift in thinking from reactive to proactive positioning, to which I will return later.²³ Some important initiatives include: establishing a safeguarding office at a national, one-Church level; funding a free counselling service and helpline for victims/survivors at Towards Healing; offering treatment at home and abroad for clerical offenders; providing individual and group support for non-offending clergy, religious, and church leaders;²⁴ organising information and healing gatherings for church communities; engaging with state-run commissions of investigation; contributing to a state redress scheme (the amount of the contribution however remaining controversial); establishing Towards Peace for spiritual healing for victims/survivors or anyone impacted by the abuses; and supporting education through research and conferences.

While much has been done primarily at the level of safeguarding and counselling, much remains to be done, primarily at the levels of justice and healing, including truth-telling, reparation, and redress, as well as at the levels of structural and theological reflection. The response must now move from a reactive to a proactive one; from one driven by legal ideology and fear to one of justice and healing based on faith. Restorative justice has much to offer in this sphere.

Can we do justice better?

What is restorative justice?

There is no agreed definition of restorative justice; it is described as a ‘compass more than a blueprint’, a lens through which to see crime, wrongdoing, and justice.²⁵ At its basic level, restorative justice can be distinguished from criminal and civil justice by the questions it asks. Criminal justice asks what laws have been broken, who broke them, and what do the guilty parties deserve, mostly in terms of punishment. Civil justice asks who is liable based on ‘the balance of probability’ and what should the liable party pay the injured party in monetary terms for the harm suffered. Restorative justice asks who has been harmed, what are their needs, and whose obligation is it to respond to that harm and those needs. Restorative justice recognises that many people are harmed by abuse and wrongdoing, including the perpetrators, families, and members of organisations. However, victims and survivors are at the heart of restorative justice, particularly when it comes to interpersonal and organisational abuses.²⁶ A theory of relationality, involving the interconnectedness of individuals, communities, and organisations/institutions, grounds the orientation.²⁷ It is a humanising, harm/needs-based concept of justice as distinct from a legalistic/ punitive-based one.²⁸ Despite the term ‘restorative’, there is recognition that many of the abuses and wrongs experienced by victim and survivors and others impacted by abuses are sometimes ‘unrectifiable’.²⁹ The aim, therefore, is to find new ways to ease the suffering by acknowledgement, honest human engagement, truth-telling, validation, vindication, reparation, and redress.³⁰ As Zehr puts it, ‘[a] core element of trauma is disconnection. The road to transcending trauma is through re-connection.’³¹

The most frequently used restorative justice approaches in response to organisational abuses and wrongdoing are victim/offender mediation/ dialogue, victim/institutional representative restorative conferences, healing circles, restorative inquiries, and restorative redress.³² The pillars and values that guide these approaches include: voluntary participation; respectful, inclusive, collaborative, and non-adversarial engagement; comprehensive and holistic non-siloed understandings (taking contexts, causes, and circumstances into account); flexibility in the design of each process; prevention of future harm; and reintegration.³³ The moral repair work of restorative justice in changing the hearts and minds of identified offenders, institutional leaders, communities, and implicated subjects, deepening understanding and increasing the acceptance of responsibility and accountability, is seen as one of its strengths.³⁴

Restorative justice focuses not only on interpersonal restorative interventions and transformations but also on structural transformations and reform.³⁵ The structural, reformist, aim of restorative justice is for learnings from restorative narrations at the micro-level (in victim/offender dialogues or victim/institutional representative restorative conferences and healing circles) to bubble up to macro-level management, to inform and reform institutional culture and act as drivers for policy and institutional change.³⁶ Suitable mechanisms need to be established for these micro–macro feedback loops wherever restorative justice initiatives are established.

Restorative justice and Catholic Social Teaching

Some scholars give weight to the resonances and principles shared by restorative justice and Catholic theology in several respects, including repair of harm, human transformation, and reconciliation.³⁷ Some see restorative justice as suited to accountability-taking by the Church,³⁸ to healing and rehabilitation of the institutions,³⁹ and to provoking institutional cultural change.⁴⁰ A genuine commitment on the part of the Church to repair the harm and avoid recurrence is deemed necessary for the success of restorative justice in these contexts.⁴¹

In addition, while my expertise is not in the area of theology, and it will be for others to assess the merits of my argument here, it appears to me there is alignment between restorative justice and Catholic Social Teaching in a number of respects. Perhaps these alignments have been overlooked in past times as responses to the problem have been largely informed by legalistic, secular, and fear-based dispositions. I will briefly outline where I see some synergies between restorative justice and Catholic Social Thought.

The foundation of all Catholic social teaching is the inherent dignity of the human person, as created in the image and likeness of God. The Church, therefore, has a concern about the well-being of each human person in every aspect: physical, economic, political, social, ecological, and spiritual. As suggested in the Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church, ‘a just society can become a reality only when it is based on the respect of the transcendent dignity of the human person.’⁴² There is nothing respectful or dignified about denying a human person’s lived reality or about minimising the impact of the abuses suffered by children and vulnerable adults who have experienced abuse. Restorative justice is premised on respect for the dignity of all human persons and offers methodologies to respond to the problem in a new way.

Catholic Social Teaching is also premised on the principle of the common good, whereby the good of others and of the human family must be considered over commercial interests.⁴³ Solidarity and the interconnectedness and interdependence of the human family and community are emphasised. Restorative justice is built on a theory of relationality. Its processes, methodologies, and values reflect an understanding of the inter-relationality of the human community, the ripple effects of abuses, and the need for repair of the harm, reparation, and reintegration.

Participation and collaboration are principles that are emphasised in Catholic social thought with the understanding that all human beings are entitled to participate in decisions that impact their lives and cannot or should not be excluded for any reason.⁴⁴ People directly impacted by abuses within the Church being marginalised by agents employed to protect the institution, such as legal professionals, accountants, or public relations companies, is not reflective of church thinking in accordance with the principles of participation and collaboration. Co-design of responses with the persons directly impacted is key to how all processes are designed in restorative justice.

Individuals and institutions have rights and responsibilities, and where the rights of children or vulnerable adults are violated, individuals and institutions who subscribe to Catholic Social Teaching are asked to take responsibility for ensuring those wrongs are put right to the extent humanly possible. This principle is also core to restorative justice and community engagement.

Catholic Social Teaching is ultimately about peace and justice, to be in right relationship with God and with each other. As observed by the Second Vatican Council,⁴⁵ peace is the fruit of justice or a sign of ‘caritas in action’.⁴⁶ Without justice for all there cannot be peace.

Given such alignments, it is perhaps time for the Church in Ireland to consider adopting a new approach to abuse in the Church, as some religious orders⁴⁷ and societies⁴⁸ and dioceses⁴⁹ have begun to do. The second annual report of the Pontifical Commission for the Protection of Minors⁵⁰ also recommends restorative measures for addressing abuses in the Church more broadly. I am not sure why it felt the need to develop a new terminology for this work, which it calls ‘Conversional Justice’. Nonetheless, it signals a trend in the right direction.

Responding restoratively and proactively

What has become apparent in the Catholic Church in Ireland is that, despite the important efforts and innovations made by the Church in responding to organisational abuses at the level of prevention and safeguarding in particular, the need for healing, reparation, redress, integration, reconciliation, and maybe even redemption has yet to be realised on the scale that is required. Some victims and survivors feel hurt and re-traumatised in a secondary way by delays in reparation, redress, and truth-telling or in being given access to the documents that pertain to their lives. Responding restoratively and proactively in a spirit of truth-telling, reparation, and reconciliation involves opening spaces for having the right conversations, asking the right questions, and taking the right action in a timely manner, recognising that delays cause more hurt and pain. The right action can include the provision of counselling and therapy for impacted persons; restorative justice meetings and healing circles; restorative redress programmes (as distinct from forcing legal litigation); narrative truth-gathering mechanisms; memorialisation; and institutional reform based on the learnings that accrue from these processes, as well as theological and other examinations.

The provision of space for restorative justice encounters and healing circles is core to a proactive, restorative response that could be offered by the Church to all impacted parties, recognising that choice is involved and not all victims and survivors will want to participate. While the victim and survivor must always be centred in restorative justice encounters, healing circles can also take place on an ongoing basis with the ordained and religious church membership, the organisation leadership, the persons identified as having perpetrated the abuses, and with the broader church community. I will briefly identify some of the areas for exploration that may be helpful in preparation for restorative encounters and during healing circles.⁵¹

Victim and survivors can be invited to discuss as little or as much of the abuse experience that they wish and its impacts on them then and now. They can be asked about what matters most now to them and what they need. They can be asked if they have statements they wish to have heard and understood, and by whom. Have they questions they wish to be put, and to whom? What are the substantive actions that must be taken, and by whom? Crucially, victims and survivors can be asked who must receive their story, their questions, and their statements. Who must answer them? What action do they require to be taken in response?

Questions that can guide the conversation/healing circles with the ordained and religious members can include a question about how they are impacted. How is the organisation to which they have given their lives wounded? What relationships are impacted and why does this matter? What is it about the organisation’s system, culture, theology that allowed these abuses to happen? How can or should these be changed? What synergy should there be between the faith and justice responses to victim and survivors? How should that be actioned?

Questions that can guide the conversation/healing circles with the institutional leaders can include : What it is like for them to find themselves in this position regarding the abuses that have happened, sometimes on their watch, within their organisation? How do they make meaning of it? How are they impacted? What has been lost in this for them? What do others need to realise about how this has been for them? Who needs to know this? How would it be for them if the people they needed to know have heard how it is for them? What do they remain puzzled about? Who needs to know this? What substantive action needs to be taken in the Church?

Questions that can guide the conversation/healing circles with the person who perpetrated the abuse can include: What it is like for them to have these matters raised now? What do they recall of that time, and what occurred then? What impact did it have on them at that time? How did they make sense of what they were doing then? What impact does it continue to have on their lives now? How do they make sense of it now? What matters most to the person now? Are there statements they need to make and to whom? Are there questions they need to ask and to whom? Are there substantive actions they need to take, amends they need to make and to whom?

Questions that can guide the conversation/healing circle with the wider church community include: How is the Church impacted and wounded? How can the harm be repaired, and by whom? How can the church community be part of the healing and reparation?

While restorative conversations and healing circles are hugely important in facilitating healing and understanding and in changing lives, in responding restoratively and proactively it is important that facilitated conversations are followed up by any agreed actions in a timely and co-designed manner. Delays in follow-through can undermine confidence in the authenticity of restorative encounters.

Conclusion: Changing the lens from a crisis to an awakening

After many years of engaging with victims and survivors, perpetrators of abuse in and outside of the Church, Catholic clergy and religious, and church leaders in many countries, I noticed that many church leaders have responded to the abuses in the Church as ‘a crisis to be managed’. Something they hoped could be managed away, so that they could get on with the ‘real’ ministry. This is in part understandable because of how responding to the abuse in the Church impacted their lives and ministries. The description of the problem as a crisis in popular media and academic publications (including my own) perhaps contributed to conceptualising the problem as a crisis. Here I wish to offer another perspective. Perhaps this is not a crisis at all. Perhaps this is the human face of a broken Church, involving significant human suffering, that speaks to the need for an institutional awakening from its complacency. Perhaps this is the real ministry. The complacency of which I speak concerns its position on gender, power, authority, sexual and intimate bonding, celibacy, relationships, organisational culture and organisational structure – organisational factors that I have suggested contributed to the problem of abuse in the Church.

When I wrote my first book on this topic, I suggested that the problem of abuse by Catholic clergy and religious, and the response to abuse by the church hierarchy and the Vatican, was one that would be settled only by structural reform, a new more critical theology and a new ecclesiology.⁵² I argued that no one individual, not even the pope, no matter how sincere or well intentioned, would be likely to diffuse the contradictions and tension that had been building up within the Catholic Church for a very long time. The essential tension at the heart of the Catholic Church, I argued, following Dorgan,⁵³ was between Catholicism as a moral and social proposition on the one hand and the power apparatus that the Church had turned into on the other. Sometimes set as the tension between the divine message and the human institution that helped to spread the Word, the problem as I saw it was that the human institution had moved far away from the moral and social proposition that had given it its life. I suggested that anything less than structural reform, a new, more critical theology for contemporary times, and a new model of Church would be seen in the minds of many believers as a missed opportunity; a crisis weathered rather than a crisis transformed.⁵⁴

While much has been done in the Church in Ireland at the level of safeguarding and prevention, much remains to be done at the level of justice, healing, reparation, redress, truth-telling, reintegration, reconciliation, and memorialisation, so that we never forget. There is hope that the work of the synodal process (2021–present) will go some way towards the structural reform that many have seen as necessary for a long time. An optimist could believe that a new model of Church could yet be born in our lifetime. My concern is that unless accompanied by a new, more critical theology of gender, power, authority, sexuality, and relationships, structural change alone will not provide the transformation required to fill the moral vacuum left in people’s lives by the broken trust and the pain and devastation that the abuses have caused. New thinking is required at all three levels: individual, structural, and theological. Restorative justice has something to offer here. I suggest it is time for reactive responses, based on legal ideology, protectionism, and fear, to give way to proactive restorative responses and renewed justice commitments, guided by faith.

Dr Marie Keenan is Professor at the School of Social Policy, Social Work and Social Justice, University College Dublin. She is a leading international scholar in the field of Child Sexual Abuse, especially in the context of the Catholic Church, as well as of restorative justice and sexual violence.

Notes

1. Marie Keenan, Child Sexual Abuse and the Catholic Church: Gender, Power and Organisational Culture (Oxford University Press, 2012).
2. Many years of engagement with church leaders in Ireland and abroad; many years working with clerical men who had abused minors and vulnerable adults, in part spent in the first treatment programme of its kind in Ireland, the Granda Institute, where we also worked with the men’s families and colleagues; an international study of the issues involved, and, extensive experience of working with victims/survivors of sexual violence and abuse and with their families.
3. From here on in I will refer to the Catholic Church as the Church, unless otherwise specified.
4. I. Aersten et al., eds, Abuse in Organisations and Restorative Justice (De Gruyter Brill, 2026).
5. For discussion of these issue in relation to the Catholic Church, see P. Jones et al., The Cross of the Moment: A Report from the Boundary Breaking Project (Centre for Catholic Studies, 2004), www. durham.ac.uk/research/institutes-and-centres/catholic-studies/about-us/news/boundary-breaking- report-the-cross-of-the-moment
6. Clifford Geertz, Local Knowledge: Further Essays in Interpretive Anthropology (Basic Books, 1979), p. 239.
7. See Derek Scally, The Best Catholics in the World (Penguin, 2021).
8. Keenan, Child Sexual Abuse and the Catholic Church, p. 234.
9. Keenan, Child Sexual Abuse and the Catholic Church, p. 235.
10. Keenan, Child Sexual Abuse and the Catholic Church, p. 238.
11. Keenan, Child Sexual Abuse and the Catholic Church, p. 240.
12. See: J. H. Whyte, Church and State in Modern Ireland 1923–1979 (Gill & Macmillan, 1980).
13. Abuses in the Catholic Church in Ireland have been emerging with painful regularity for more than three decades now, in various contexts. They include abuse of male and female children in diocesan settings, industrial and reformatory schools, day and boarding schools, Magdalene Laundries, mother and baby homes and in some hospitals run by religious on the part of the state.
14. A-M. McAlinden et al., Transforming Justice Responses to Non-Recent Institutional Abuses (Oxford University Press, 2025), p. 80.
15. See, for example, Scally, The Best Catholics in the World, pp. 116–122.
16. Marie Keenan, ‘Child Sexual Abuse and the Catholic Church: A Multi-Layered Perspective’, in Broken Faith:Why Hope Matters, ed by P. Claffey et al. (Peter Lang, 2013), p. 101.
17. M. Rothberg, The Implicated Subject (Stanford University Press, 2019). See also M. Coen et al., eds, A Dublin Magdalene Laundry: Donnybrook and Church–State Power in Ireland (Bloomsbury, 2023).
18. C. Wills, Missing Persons, Or My Grandmother’s Secrets (Allen Lane, 2024), p. 174.
19. For an elaborated discussion of these issues, see McAlinden et al., Transforming Justice Responses.
20. Keenan, Child Sexual Abuse and the Catholic Church, xxiii.
21. McAlinden et al., Transforming Justice Responses.
22. McAlinden et al., Transforming Justice Responses, p. 87.
23. Including some restorative justice initiatives being worked on by the Spiritan Order, in consultation with Restore Together, an advocacy and support group for victims and survivors; a restorative justice initiative co-designed by the Society of Jesus, also known as the Jesuits Ireland, and a core group of representatives of victims and survivors; and a restorative justice initiative in the Diocese of Raphoe.
24. I believe there has not been nearly enough support and reflective spaces provided for the non- offending clergy and religious and the church leaders.
25. H. Zehr, Restorative Justice: Insights and Stories from My Journey (Walnut Street Books, 2023), p. 173.
26. Zehr, Restorative Justice, p. 56.
27. J. Llewellyn, ‘Restorative Justice: Thinking Relationally About Justice’ in Being Relational: Reflections on Relational Theory and Health Law and Policy, ed by J. Downie and J. J. Llewellyn (University of British Columbia Press, 2012).
28. Llewellyn, ‘Restorative Justice: Thinking Relationally About Justice’, p. 19.
29. M. Zolkos, ‘”The Return of Things as They Were”: New Humanitarianism, Restitutive Desire and the Politics of Unrectifiable Loss’, Contemporary Political Theory, 16:3 (2016), p. 321.
30. Marie Keenan, ‘Why Restorative Justice after Sexual Crime?’, conference, ‘Whose Justice Is Restorative Justice?, 26 November 2020.
31. Zehr, Restorative Justice, p. 34.
32. Marie Keenan and Estelle Zinsstag, Sexual Violence and Restorative Justice: Addressing the Justice Gap (Oxford University Press, 2022), pp. 109–116.
33. See McAlinden et al., Transforming Justice Responses, pp. 252–261.
34. See, again McAlinden et al., Transforming Justice Responses, pp. 252–261. See also Tony Ward et al., ‘Restorative Justice, Offender Rehabilitation and Desistance’, Restorative Justice: An International Journal, 2:1 (2014), pp. 24–42.
35. L. Walgrave, Being Consequential about Restorative Justice (Eleven, 2014).
36. J. Braithwaite, ‘Building Legitimacy through Restorative Justice’, in Legitimacy and Criminal Justice: International Perspectives, ed by A. Braga et al. (Russell Sage Foundation, 2007), pp. 148, 150.
37. Theo Gavrielides and Dale Coker, ‘Restoring Faith: Resolving the Roman Catholic Church’s Sexual Scandals Through Restorative Justice (Working Paper I)’, Contemporary Justice Review, 8:4 (2005), pp. 345–365.
38. Douglas E. Noll and Linda Harvey, ‘Restorative Mediation: The Application of Restorative Justice Practice and Philosophy to Clergy Sexual Abuse Cases’, Journal of Child Sexual Abuse, 17:3–4 (2008), pp. 377–396.
39. Meredith Doyle, ‘Circles of Trust: Using Restorative Justice to Repair Organisations Marred by Sex Abuse’, Pepperdine Dispute Resolution Law Journal, 14:2 (2014), p. 177.
40. Tony Foley, ‘Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse: How a Moral Conversation with Its Lawyers Might Contribute to Cultural Change in a Faith-Based Institution’, Legal Ethics, 18:2 (2015), pp. 164–181; Tony Foley, ‘Changing Institutional Culture in the Wake of Clerical Abuse – the Essentials of Restorative and Legal Regulation’, Contemporary Justice Review, 22 (May 2019), pp. 171–187.
41. M. Knoll, ‘Silence in Organisations: What We Need to Know, What We Know, and What We Don’t Know’, in The Silence of Organisations: How Organisations Cover Up Wrongdoings, ed by K. Holy and S. Starystach (heiBOOK, 2021). See also McAlinden et al., Transforming Justice Responses, pp. 256–261.
42. Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace, Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church (Burns & Oates, 2006), 132.
43. Canadian Catholic Organisation for Development and Peace, ‘10 Principles of Catholic Social Teaching’, St Michael, 2020, 1, https://stmikes.utoronto.ca/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/180- Catholic-Teaching-v2.pdf.
44. Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace, Compendium, 189.
45. Pope Paul VI, Gaudium et Spes (The Holy See, 1965), 78.
46. Canadian Catholic Organisation for Development and Peace, ‘10 Principles’, 4.
47. The Congregation of the Holy Spirit, also known as the Spiritan Order.
48. The Jesuits Ireland, also known as The Society of Jesus.
49. The Diocese of Raphoe.
50. Pontifical Commission for the Protection of Minors, Annual Report on Church Policies and Procedures for Safeguarding (The Holy See, 2025), 14, www.tutelaminorum.org/annual-report/
51. My sincere thanks to a dear colleague, Janine Carroll, a restorative justice practitioner and accredited trainer who shared her thoughts with me on these questions, https://restorativenow. com
52. Keenan, Child Sexual Abuse and the Catholic Church, p. 266.
53. Theo Dorgan, ‘Scandals Could Undermine the Church’s Foundations’, Irish Times, 14 December 2009, www.irishtimes.com/opinion/scandals-could-undermine-the-church-s-foundations-1.789936
54. Keenan, Child Sexual Abuse and the Catholic Church, p. 267.