The Emperor's New Clothes: Psychopathy in the Church

There's a fellow in my graduate theology program who is a constant reminder to me of how the orthodox Western church ended up preaching the doctrines of sin, salvation, sacraments, and separation from God (the four S's). If we were to put this fellow -- I'll call him Titus -- in a time machine, and send him back to Carthage in the early fifth century CE to argue with the famously tortured Christian theologian Augustine of Hippo, I'm not sure which of the two would prevail. That's because, in traditional parlance, "they're both cut from the same cloth." They share certain dysfunctional psychological traits along with certain coping mechanisms to compensate for their dysfunctional traits. They're also both deeply sincere in their beliefs. This is why both men cause so much suffering in the lives of others.

It's important to emphasize that the man I know, Titus, is absolutely convinced that he's been called to ministry by God. He's not a con man or a criminal with a conscious intent to harm others. In fact, if you asked him about his motives, he'd look you straight in the eye and tell you that he's a humble servant of God. He truly believes this.

But Titus has serious issues -- as in unresolved psychodynamic issues. He's a walking powder keg of narcissistic bullying, and he's utterly blind to this. (His classmates, who are the targets of his behaviour, see his issues quite clearly). So serious is his lack of empathy and his lack of respect for boundary issues that I suspect he suffers a great deal. I suspect he suffers inside his own head. He's tormented by his own "demons," and, like so many other people, he's looking for some form of relief from his inner despair. And who can blame him? It's not fun to feel like crap all the time.

Secular treatments have given him no long-term relief. So now he's looking to the Church -- traditionally, one of the great sanctuaries for narcissistic men (and narcissistic women). Here he can find a logical explanation for his suffering. Here he can be absolved of personal responsibility for the current state of his life. Here he can finally use his intellectual gifts, his musical gifts, and his badger-like tenacity in order to create something meaningful in his life. I'm not being facetious here -- Titus is a talented, well educated man.

I have no doubt that he's finding psychological comfort and relief in the teachings of men such as Paul the Apostle, Augustine of Hippo, and Martin Luther. That's because these famous theologians were also talented, well educated men who were suffering from the effects of their own unaddressed issues. They were not stupid, nor ill-informed, nor criminally minded. But they knew something was wrong, and they earnestly wanted to fix it. If they found themselves forced to alter everything Jesus once taught in order to fix it, then so be it. Once they'd found a theological solution that offered some relief for their personal feelings of emptiness, well, who can blame them for wanting to tout their solution to others? Who can blame them for intentionally supplanting Jesus' message of personality responsibility and forgiveness with a message of sin and salvation? It's a much easier "sell" than Jesus' message, and besides, each of these men had personally felt the relief that came with the "4-S package." So they weren't really lying -- they were just improving on Jesus' message.

 

Silenos was a figure from Greek Mythology. He was said to be a close companion of the Greek god Dionysos and was known for his drunkenness, one of the "sins" that human beings tend to blame on everyone but themselves until they find the courage to take responsibility for their own actions. Anyone who has succeeded in healing an addiction to alcohol knows that this particular "sin" can be overcome with the right sort of help (which doesn't include being told you're a worthless, hopeless, "demon-possessed" wretch who has no control over your unloving choices because of Original Sin). This Roman marble after a Hellenistic work of the 3rd C BCE is on display at the Royal Ontario Museum. Photo credit JAT 2019.

 
The problem is that this package of theological doctrines -- the 4-S package of sin, separation, sacraments, and salvation -- only offers psychological relief to a certain subsection of the population that's suffering from certain kinds of psychiatric dysfunction. It enables the narcissistic bullies to feel a lot better about themselves. But it doesn't do a damned thing for anybody else.

This notion will be extremely unpopular among devout Christians who cherish their traditional, orthodox beliefs about original sin, etc., etc., and this notion will be especially offensive to those who insist that Church doctrines are the handiwork of God instead of the handiwork of a few dysfunctional theologians. But there you have it -- the Church has codified within its body of sacred laws a self-correcting, virtually impregnable suit of body armour to protect the "rights" of a select group of self-entitled, selfish, controlling, abusive, HUMBLE (!!!!) servants of God.

How could such a self-serving system survive for so long if it wasn't God's true intention?

Well, that's an easy question to answer. Have you ever tried to live with a severe narcissist? Or work with a severe narcissist? Or live in a community (or even a country) ruled by a severe narcissist? Once a narcissist crosses the line into full-blown psychopathy (and this happens more often than good-hearted intellectuals want to admit), the rule of terror takes over. It's very hard to think straight, let alone challenge official doctrine, when you and your loved ones are being terrorized, abused, relentlessly persecuted, tortured, raped, imprisoned, and silenced in every way imaginable.

We've recently seen this kind of psychopathic behaviour emerge in group form in the European Holocaust, the Cambodian Holocaust, and the Rwandan Holocaust. These holocausts were all instituted by "revered leaders." The Church, I would argue, has had its own share of "revered leaders" who relentlessly preached holocausts (crusades) against "heretics" who rejected official church doctrine.

Am I saying that some of the Church's revered theologians and past leaders would match today's understanding of psychopathy?*

That's exactly what I'm saying.

* For more information, please see Robert D. Hare's Without Conscience: The Disturbing World of the Psychopaths Among Us (New York & London: The Guilford Press, 1993.)