Verstrickungen im Glauben

This book is based on a qualitative interview study of adult men who were sexually abused by Catholic clerics as children or adolescents. Starting from the observation that the victims do not consistently distance themselves from the church or Catholic beliefs, the study examines the lasting impact of a religiously shaped background on them coping with the abuse they experienced as well as with general biographical conflicts from a religious and sociological perspective. The book’s empirical findings indicate that the aforementioned religious entanglements fulfil specific functions within the biographical context: they serve as means to generate conformity, to strengthen self-esteem or to relieve oneself of responsibility for one’s actions. Those entanglements and ambivalent institutional affiliations can therefore be understood as (dysfunctional) attempts to cope with biographical issues.