- Michael Moloney

The long-awaited book from insider Mike Moloney, suggests Religious Instruction (RI) has a more influential role in clerical child abuse than previously recognised.

Over half our schoolchildren join in daily acts of worship, mainly Christian in character.¹ They are asked to take blame for original sin and to recite self-reproachful prayers, by a lay teacher or cleric holding himself/herself out to represent God.² Guilt and shame, used by an authoritarian figure, is a stipulated form of child sexual grooming.³ Might RI be playing a role in abuse?

St Augustine, who reframed original sin in 412 AD, wrote he saw ‘lust’ and ‘filth’ in infants.⁴ Comparing his writings with profiles of convicted paedophiles, reveals striking similarities. Was St Augustine a paedophile? If children are stained with sexual sin, does this help groom them for wayward priests?

Click below for answers, and please contribute to the Forum.

1. TeacherTapp. Teachers are losing their religion – Part one. (2019). Retrieved Apr 29, 2020. https://teachertapp.co.uk/teachers-are-losing-their-religion-how-religious-are-teachers/
2. Ten Ten Resources. The Penitential Act. Retrieved on May 1, 2020 – https://www.tentenresources.co.uk/sunday-liturgy-for-families
3. NSPCC, Grooming, retrieved on May 24, 2020 from https://www.nspcc.org.uk/what-is-child-abuse/types-of-abuse/grooming/#types
4. The Confessions, Book IX, Chapter 1 Translation by Edward B Pusey.

Note: All claims made above and throughout this site are evidence based. Supporting materials, documents and sources are comprehensively cited and referenced in the book, St Augustine’s Sin: Why child abuse bedevils Christianity.