When Sarah Mullally was
formally installed in a historic ceremony at Canterbury Cathedral on March 25,
2026, a former nurse became the Archbishop of Canterbury. Her vocational
background highlights the importance of healing, which was appropriate because
her predecessor, Justin Welby, had stepped down because he had failed to
address a serial sexual-abuse scandal. It had been important most of all to the
victims—boys at a church camp who were sexually molested by a gay man
volunteering at the camp—that Welby go. Close to the day of the ceremony, Mullally
promised explicitly to attend to such victims, as is fitting and proper for a
Christian cleric to do. It is what Jesus Christ would do, whereas he would not recognize
the sexual predators or their enablers in the hierarchies of Christian denominations.
The contrast itself bears witness to just how far some denominations had fallen
from being justified in claiming to follow the principles preached by Jesus in
the Gospels. That those sects had been able to do so even while representing
themselves as distinctly Christian institutions shows just how power clerics
have in beguiling laity.
Mullally emphasized her
commitment to “do all I can to ensure that the Church becomes safer and also
responds well to victims and survivors of abuse.”[1]
Being safer refers to the Church proactively policing its own, whereas responding
to victims is a reaction to past abuse. Regarding the latter, she said the Church
was “seeking to become more trauma informed, listening to survivors and victims
of abuse.”[2]
As a former nurse, she could have gone further by saying that she would make her
Church into a facilitator of victims getting connected to therapists so the healing
process could really begin, for being listened to is just a first step in the
help that victims of sexual abuse need in order to heal.
Psychology not being my field,
I can only surmise that victims of sexual abuse avoid commitment and instead
may engage in anti-commitment behavior, such as having sex with friends and
anonymous men or women. Of course, this is not to say that every man or woman
who is sexually promiscuous has been sexually abused. Using rampant sex to push
commitment away is a defense mechanism that only needs a fear of emotional
intimacy to be able to control a person’s life and serially thwart genuine (i.e.,
intimate) romantic relationships. For some victims, sex itself may just be too
painful.
It is precisely because sexual
abuse can scar its victims so deeply that Welby’s abject failure to properly
handle the case of John Smyth, “who sexually and physically abused young men at
Christian camps in the UK, Zimbabwe and South Africa over five decades,” is so
damning, especially as Welby was a Christian priest (and Archbishop).[3]
This is not to say that such enabling and lack of accountability on such a
crime only occurs in religious institutions. Penn State University’s athletic
director and football coach looked the other way as an older men molested student
football-players in the showers for decades. Even so, it is more shocking when older
men molest younger men under a Christian flag.
Sexual abuse by an older man can be tacit, or subtly legitimated because it is camouflaged by a relationship arrangement that gives the younger man the go-ahead to be sexually promiscuity that keeps emotional intimacy away. There is, in other words, a cost to the younger man in being what is known as a trophy. An older man having such a “trophy” younger man bears no cost, as the older man can even be living with another man romantically. That the trophy is being kept from having an emotionally intimate partner of his own is of no concern to the older man who gets to have his cake and eat it too. The trophy may even be deluded into thinking that the older man is his partner. In short, this is sadly very unfair to the younger man, and thus I contend that the arrangement is a subtle form of abuse.
A fear of emotional intimacy, such as motivates a person to push people away when they get too close (such as by using sexual promiscuity), fits well with being in a trophy role. It can be caused by sexual abuse or from having witnessed abusive relationships, or even simply a low self-esteem. Such fear is, I suspect, very difficult for therapists to heal because people who don’t think they are worthy of emotional intimacy will lash out to thwart it in its tracks. This is precisely why Christian institutions could play such an important role in connecting victims of sexual abuse with psychological clinics, rather than merely be good at listening. The damage done mentally is surely very deep. That a former nurse became the Archbishop of Canterbury is a good indication of where Christian Churches could go in emphasizing healing in such cases. After all, Jesus heals in the Gospels.
2. Ibid.
3. Oman Al Yahyai, “Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby Resigns amid Sexual Abuse Scandal,” Euronews.com, 12 November, 2024.
