The Diocese's Darkest Chapter

From its quiet inception in 1988, to a hailstorm of statewide and national controversy over thirty years later, this book follows the development of public discourse regarding a clergy sexual abuse scandal in a small Catholic Diocese in Central Pennsylvania. Weaving together the evolving local and national narratives, it offers a striking account of how stakeholder rhetoric has influenced public perception of the Catholic abuse crisis in America, and driven public actions. While the book enriches our local knowledge of the tragic--and ongoing--cultural trauma triggered by the revelation of clergy perpetrated abuse in a small Catholic Diocese, it also makes a critical theoretical contribution to our understanding of the role of rhetoric in publicizing private pain, and galvanizing collectives to take it on as their own. The process of cultural trauma, Niebauer contends, unfolds through rhetorical forms that provide individuals with a constraining and enabling set of rhetorical choices. Highlighting the recurrent rhetorical forms of narration, kategoria, apologia, and topoi, The Diocese's Darkest Chapter brings a new vocabulary and explanatory force to the study of cultural trauma, and the Catholic abuse crisis in America.

Provides a study of clergy sexual abuse as it affected the Catholic Church in a Pennsylvania diocese Focuses on the media discourse, formal political debate, and legal process surrounding sexual abuse by Catholic clergy Examines the role of rhetorical forms in constraining and enabling stakeholder narratives in cultural trauma processes

Auteur
Allison Niebauer is a scholar of communication with particular interests in stakeholder conflict, public memory, and historical injustices. She received her PhD in Rhetoric from The Pennsylvania State University s Department of Communication Arts and Sciences. Her work has appeared in numerous publications, to include Rhetoric and Public Affairs and Rhetoric Society Quarterly. She is currently a Presidential Management Fellow with the United States Forest Service in Washington, D.C.

Contenu

Chapter 1. Introduction: Constructing a Cultural Trauma in the Altoona-Johnstown Catholic Diocese.- Chapter 2. The New Way the Holy Spirit Moves: Rhetorical Narration and the Enduring Legacy of the Luddy Case.- Chapter 3. It's Not A Catholic Problem: Definition and the Causes of CPSA.- Chapter 4. What is the Church?: Defining Communal Commonplaces in the Pennsyl-vania Statute of Limitations Debate.- Chapter 5. In the Name of Healing: The Politicization of Injury through Democratic Topoi.- Chapter 6. Why We Stay Catholic: Assimilative Strategies and Lay Responses to CPSA.- Chapter 7. Conclusion Rhetorical action in the Cultural Trauma of the Catholic Abuse Crisis