Chapter 8

Religious Image Repair

Religion is a part of the lives of billions of people around the world. This
chapter will investigate two instances of religious image repair. Apologies
from Cardinal Reinhard Marx and Pope Benedict XVI (formerly Cardinal
Joseph Ratzinger) on sexual abuse in the Catholic Archdiocese of Munich
and Freising will be examined first. Then we will consider accusations
that the Executive Committee of the Southern Baptist Convention inap-
propriately handled allegations of sexual abuse, ignoring and actually
denigrating victims.

Cardinal Marx and Pope Benedict XVI on the

Munich and Freising Sexual Abuse Scandal

The Catholic Church holds that its “public ministry” began on the first
Pentecost, fifty days after the resurrection of Jesus Christ around AD 30.
However one dates the origin of the Catholic Church, it is an extremely
long-lived religious organization. The Catholic Church is a very important
element of contemporary life. Glatz (2021) reported that “at the end of
2019, the worldwide Catholic population exceeded 1.34 billion, which
continued to be about 17.7% of the world’s population.” In 2022, the
Vatican reported that a total of 5,263 bishops, 410,219 Catholic priests,
and 48,635 permanent deacons served currently in the church (Agenzia
Fides 2022). This church oversees “almost 3,500 dioceses and eparchies”
around the world (“Catholic Church” 2023). The Vatican also reported
that “in the field of education, the Catholic Church runs 72,785 kinder-
gartens with 7,510,632 pupils; 99,668 primary schools with 34,614,488

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pupils; 49,437 secondary schools with 19,252,704 pupils. The Church also
cares for 2,403,787 high school pupils and 3,771,946 university students”
(Agenzia Fides 2022). So the Catholic Church matters greatly because it
is a huge organization that directly touches the lives of billions of people,
including millions of children.
Accusations of sexual misconduct by Catholic priests are an unfor-
tunate part of contemporary society. Sexual abuse by Catholic priests has
been in the spotlight since 2002, primarily because of a series of investi-
gative articles published that year in the Boston Globe. However, reports
of sexual offenses committed by priests first surfaced as early as AD 1051,
when St. Peter Damian wrote The Book of Gomorrah (2015), identifying
a variety of misdeeds by clerics.
Sexual abuse is an extremely deplorable offense whenever it occurs.
The Theory of Persuasive Attack (Benoit 2017, 2020, 2022; Benoit and
Dorries 1996; Benoit and Glantz 2017; Benoit and Harthcock 1999; Benoit,
Stein, and Barton, forthcoming; Delbert and Benoit 2014), drawing on
Pomerantz (1978) and Fishbein and Ajzen (2010), argues that a persua-
sive attack, criticism, or complaint has two key elements: responsibility
for an action (including inaction) and offensiveness of an action. This
theory identifies strategies for enhancing or elaborating each of these key
components. One strategy to increase the apparent offensiveness of an
act is to argue that “when victims are young, old, in some way disabled,
or otherwise innocent and/or vulnerable, the offensiveness of an act is
magnified” (Benoit and Dorries 1996, 468). Any victim of sexual abuse
deserves our deepest concern; however, when the victim is young, the
action appears even more reprehensible. This idea obviously applies to
Catholic priests who sexually abuse children.
Benoit and Dorries (1996) also wrote that perceptions of an alleged
misdeed are influenced by the nature of the abuser. An offense appears even
worse when “the accused had a special obligation to protect the victim.
This should increase the intensity of the offensive action. For example,
church leaders and their congregations, scout leaders and their scouts, or
doctors/nurses and their patients have special relationships of trust. We
expect these people to devote special attention to those in their charge.
They occupy positions of trust, and when they are accused of injuring
people under their care, it seems even worse” (Benoit and Dorries 1996,
469). So sexual abuse of children is very heinous no matter who is the
offender but some perpetrators of this awful behavior seem even more
despicable than other offenders.
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The idea of priests violating children is a terrible specter hanging over

the Catholic Church. Benoit and Stein (2009) analyzed political cartoons
about pedophile priests, identifying two key accusations: priests committed
sexual abuse against children and the Catholic Church worked to cover
up this abuse. Widespread abuse has been exposed in Europe, Australia,
Chile, and the United States, reflecting worldwide patterns of long-term
abuse as well as the church hierarchy’s pattern of regularly covering up
reports of abuse (“Catholic Church Sexual Abuse Cases” 2022). Sadly,
other religious leaders in addition to Catholic priests have abused children.
However, the huge size of this church, the large number of priests, and
the number of Catholic children combine to put problems situated in this
particular church in the forefront of social consciousness. Several scholars
have investigated Catholic image repair (see, e.g., Fortunato 2021; Garcia
2010; or Pang, Hogan, and Andrasevic 2022).
A scandal of sexual abuse erupted in 2021 in the Roman Catholic
Archdiocese of Munich and Freising in Bavaria, Germany. The archdiocese
commissioned a law firm to prepare an independent report on these con-
cerns; the resulting report revealed that “at least 497 people were abused
in the Archdiocese of Munich-Freising over a period of almost 74 years
(from 1945 to 2019). Most of them were young; 247 are male victims and
182 are female. Sixty percent of the victims were between the ages of 8-14.
The report identifies 235 perpetrators of abuse including 173 priests, nine
deacons, five pastoral workers, 48 people from the school environment”
(Cernuzio 2022). Keeping in mind the fact that these figures are likely
underestimates, almost 500 people were apparently victims of sexual abuse
by 235 church officials. Most of the victims were young, between 8 and
14 years of age. This scandal was, to say the least, extremely offensive to
people of all faiths.
Two people were blamed for failure in oversight. Joseph Ratzinger
served as the archbishop of Munich and Freising from 1977 to 1982, became
a cardinal in 1977, and served as Pope Benedict XVI from 2005 to 2013
(“Pope Benedict XVI” 2022). Reinhard Marx became the archbishop of
Munich and Freising in 2007 and was named a cardinal in 2010 (“Reinhard
Marx”). The report “faulted Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI and Cardinal
Reinhard Marx” for their handling of cases of sexual abuse. “ ‘Errors’
of behaviour” were “attributed to Cardinal Marx regarding two cases of
abuse in 2008” (Cernuzio 2022). The document also “identified four cases
that occurred during the ministry of then-Cardinal Ratzinger, with those
responsible for the abuses still remaining in office” (Cernuzio 2022). In
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two cases, priests who had been “criminally sanctioned by secular courts”
“continued to perform pastoral duties” under Cardinal Ratzinger (CNA
Staff 2022). The report also discussed a priest, Peter Hullermann, “who
is accused of abusing at least 23 boys aged eight to 16 between 1973 and
1996. The priest, identified in German reports only as ‘H.,’ was suspended
from his duties in the Diocese of Essen in 1979 over allegations that he
abused an eleven-year-old boy. He was moved in 1980 to the Archdiocese
of Munich and Freising. Hullermann was found guilty of molesting boys
in a parish of the archdiocese in 1986” (Catholic News Agency 2022). So
accusations were made that church officials had enabled priests to commit
abuses against children—and then continue to perpetrate these offenses
even after their abuse was reported. The age of these victims (60 percent
under fourteen years old) makes these acts especially heinous. Further-
more, surely if priests have a special obligation to protect children under
their care, the cardinals who manage their work have at least as much an
obligation to protect Catholic children from them.

Image Repair on Munich-Freising Sexual Abuse

Two high ranking Catholic officials produced image repair messages in

response to the accusations of sexual abuse in the Munich and Freising
archdiocese of Germany under their stewardship. Each of these texts will
be examined individually here.

Cardinal Reinhard Marx

Cardinal Marx repeatedly expressed his shame and guilt. He said, “I am

attributed responsibility in this report and I am prepared to take responsi-
bility.” He also declared that “I bear moral responsibility for this as acting
archbishop.” The cardinal apologized for the scandal: “I apologize once
again personally and also on behalf of the archdiocese to you as those
affected for what you have suffered in the sphere of the Church. I also
apologize to the faithful in this archdiocese who doubt the Church, who
can no longer trust those responsible and whose faith has been damaged”
(Catholic News Agency, 2022). These statements are clear examples of
mortification. His guilt also led him to offer his resignation—which was
not accepted—to Pope Francis.
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In addition of mortification, Marx also made minor use of defeasi-

bility, claiming that the victims’ suffering “is also due to systemic reasons”
(Catholic News Agency 2022). Similarly, he identified “administrative and
communicative failures” that contributed to the offenses. He referred to
corrective action without providing any details, announcing that he would
consult with experts “to learn from them and to implement changes”
(Catholic News Agency 2022). Marx relied primarily on mortification,
but he also used defeasibility and corrective action.

Pope Benedict XVI (Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger)

Pope Benedict suggested that his role in this scandal was minimal: “I
served as Archbishop of Munich and Freising for a little less than five
years.” He also employed the strategy of defeasibility, explaining that the
offenses occurred “amid the massive work of these days.” He characterized
his actions as “an oversight,” an “error,” and an accident that was “not
intentionally willed.” These statements preceded his use of mortification:

We ourselves are drawn into this grievous fault whenever we

neglect it or fail to confront it with the necessary decisiveness
and responsibility, as too often happened and continues to
happen. As in those meetings, once again I can only express
to all the victims of sexual abuse my profound shame, my deep
sorrow and my heartfelt request for forgiveness. I have had
great responsibilities in the Catholic Church. All the greater is
my pain for the abuses and the errors that occurred in those
different places during the time of my mandate. Each individual
case of sexual abuse is appalling and irreparable. The victims
of sexual abuse have my deepest sympathy and I feel great
sorrow for each individual case. (Benedict XVI 2022)

So the pope used minimization, defeasibility, accident, and mortification

for his role in this scandal.

Evaluation

The abuse in the Archdiocese of Munich and Freising is another hor-

rific example of the extremely serious problems in the Catholic Church,
116 | Accounts, Excuses, and Apologies

including both abuse and subsequent cover-ups of sexual predations by

priests and others. In this case, Cardinal Marx and Pope Benedict both
offered apologies or mortification. Mortification is the correct response
to these tragedies. However, both the cardinal and the pope also made
excuses for their failed oversight. When one relies on excuses, such as
defeasibility or accident, one ought to propose corrective action to redress
these problems. Cardinal Marx makes only a vague allusion to corrective
action, and the pope’s letter does not even do that much. These two cler-
ics are high policy makers in the church. They could have, and should
have, implemented more significant changes to address these scandals
and prevent instances of future abuse and cover-ups by the church. Of
course, this church is not an absolutely autocratic institution: “Catholics
are not required to accept everything the Pope says. . . . Catholics do
owe him a high level of respect” (Dunn 2021). Still, these church leaders
should have enacted and announced reforms to prevent both abuse and
cover-up of abuse. The steady drip, drip, drip of revelations of abuse in
the Catholic Church—actually, a series of tidal waves of scandals—surely
requires more than this from these spiritual leaders to repair the tattered
reputation of their church.
A relatively minor point to be made here is that the use of minimi-
zation undermines mortification by Pope Benedict. “I regret what I did but
it wasn’t so bad” is not a very effective response to these allegations. Who
knows how much sexual abuse occurred during these five years? This is
like a serial killer protesting that he only murdered for five years. These
two image repair messages, therefore, must be considered seriously inad-
equate responses to this scandal. Revelations of sexual abuse by Catholic
priests and church leaders’ enabling of these horrible actions continue to
plague the Roman Catholic Church.

Southern Baptist Convention Sexual Abuse Scandal

Sadly, these problems—sexual abuse and failure to respond appropriately

to these abuses—are not confined to the Catholic Church. In 2021, reports
surfaced about sexual abuse—some victims were allegedly minors—in the
Southern Baptist Convention (SBC), and further allegations arose that
the Executive Committee (EC) of the SBC had failed to take appropriate
action on alleged sexual abuse.
 Religious Image Repair | 117

The SBC is a large religious organization. It was founded in 1845

by “white supremacist Baptists in the Southern United States.” Today it is
“the world’s largest Baptist denomination, the largest Protestant and the
second-largest Christian denomination in the United States.” In 2021, the
SBC had over 13 million members in over 47,000 congregations (“South-
ern Baptist Convention” 2023). In 1995, the SBC voted to apologize for
its racist origin and actions (Carter 1995). This organization touches the
lives of many people.
Members voted in 2021 at the Memphis Convention of the SBC to
create a task force to investigate these charges. Wolf (2022) reported that
“some leaders on the committee covered up sexual abuse allegations for
nearly two decades, and denigrated survivors in favor of protecting the
denomination.” A list of “Baptist clergy members accused of abuse and
misconduct” with names of 703 alleged abusers had been compiled by the
EC but kept secret (Wolf 2022). Guidepost Solutions published a report
on its investigation of the SBC’s EC response to reports of abuse, noting
that “for almost two decades, survivors of abuse and other concerned
Southern Baptists have been contacting the Southern Baptist Convention
(‘SBC’) Executive Committee (‘EC’) to report child molesters and other
abusers who were in the pulpit or employed as church staff . . . only to
be met, time and time again, with resistance, stonewalling, and even
outright hostility from some within the EC” (Guidepost Solutions 2022).
Senior EC leaders “were singularly focused on avoiding liability for the
SBC to the exclusion of other considerations.” The report also found that
“survivors and others who reported abuse were ignored, disbelieved, or
met with the constant refrain that the SBC could take no action.” Those
who reported abuse were met with intimidation rather than support. Some
of those accused of abuse were allowed to remain in place (Guidepost
Solutions 2022). Such abuse is reprehensible; this report focused on the
totally inappropriate response of the EC to reports of abuse. Recall that
offenses seem even worse when the victims were innocent or helpless
(some victims were minors) and when the perpetrator had an obligation
to protect victims.
One victim of this shocking treatment was Jennifer Lyell. The
damning conclusions of the Guidepost Solutions report provoked the EC
of the SBC to respond. “The SBC Executive Committee acknowledges its
failures to Ms. Lyell.” More specifically, the EC admitted that it failed “to
adequately listen, protect, and care for Jennifer Lyell when she came forward
118 | Accounts, Excuses, and Apologies

to share her story of abuse by a seminary professor” (Porter 2022b). This

utterance itemizes EC failures. Acknowledging shortcomings is an element
of mortification. The EC also said that “the SBC Executive Committee
apologizes for all the hurt it has caused” (Porter 2022b). Apologizing for
causing harm cements the EC’s use of mortification.
Interestingly, the SBC’s official news service, the Baptist Press, also
employed mortification. It acknowledged its failures in coverage of the
sexual abuse scandal: “We greatly regret the editorial mistakes and mis-
steps in those stories. It is with deep sorrow that we recognize the impact
of those consequences on survivors” (Porter 2022a). The press admitted
that it made mistakes, acknowledged damage to survivors of sexual abuse,
and expressed regret for its actions. The press stated, “Today, we offer an
apology to survivors, churches, and those who have been harmed by the
reporting on the issue of sexual abuse by Baptist Press” (Porter 2022a).
This sounds like a heartfelt apology to those who were harmed by its
flawed reporting of allegations of sexual abuse.
The Baptist Press announced that it was embracing suggestions from
Guidepost Solutions for future reporting. “Baptist Press should commit to
seek and report truth by: acting independently, ensuring accuracy, verifying
information, and using original sources where possible” (Porter 2022a).
This is a clear example of corrective action, and these are excellent ideas.
However, reflecting on these commitments, these principles are ones the
Baptist Press should have followed from the very beginning.

Evaluation

The SBC’s Executive Committee used mortification, an approach that

was long overdue. The Baptist Press also issued an apology. Surprisingly,
it seems that the Press did a far better job of promising corrective action
than the Executive Committee. The latter only promised to publish the
secret list of names (Wolf 2022). One survivor of abuse, Hannah-Kate
Williams, declared, “It was honestly just a deja vu from previous Executive
Committee meetings where they’ll talk about it. They’ll be sad, they’ll say,
‘Of course, we support survivors.’ And unfortunately, apologies without
steps of restitution and repentance don’t mean anything” (Wolf, 2022).
The image repair from the Southern Baptist Convention Executive Com-
mittee made a start with mortification, but it fell extremely short with
corrective action, as survivor Williams indicated. The Baptist Press did
enact corrective action, unlike the EC.
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Conclusion and Implications

Mortification is a common element of these image repair methods. This is

an appropriate and necessary component of these defenses. Wrongdoing
clearly occurred, and if anyone should engage in mortification (and seek
forgiveness), it is a religious leader. Obvious misdeeds, particularly when
committed over and over again, cry out for corrective action. Unfortu-
nately, in the messages examined here, only the Baptist Press promised
appropriate remedies for these offensive acts. The Catholic and Southern
Baptist leaders began the journey to image repair but stopped far short
of completing this journey.