Thank you for writing this article. Maria Goretti is the saint whose story affects me the most. My mother first told me about her and incorrectly said that she had been raped. For her, as well as for me, the greatness of St. Maria's virtue was in her heroic capacity to forgive at only 11-years old, which lead to the conversion of her attacker Alessandro. If something like that happened to me when I was 11, would I have been able to forgive? (God help me.)
I have a friend who suffered sexually as a child and she used to feel like she was "beaten over the head" with Maria's purity. Thankfully, as time went on, she developed a correct way of understanding her story and now considers her to be one of her intercessors. I will be sharing this article with her.
Maria Goretti’s story appeared in every religious education textbook I was assigned in my parochial schools from sixth grade onward. The lesson was always that death was preferable to impurity. Once, in sophomore year of high school, one of the guys brought up St. Augustine’s comment mentioned here (this kid was a sort of insufferable religious nerd). The answer given by the Marist brother teaching the class was that Augustine’s pious opinion had been overruled by the sensus fidelium. This was a Catholic school in the liberal northeast, by the way.
So, since the Magisterium has heavily implied that the lesson of Maria Goretti is exactly what is being called into question here, and since it is the Magisterium who is empowered by the Holy Spirit the interpret such things, and since such a notion exactly matches the purity culture I’ve been taught, why shouldn’t I take this as just another one of Christ’s many “hard sayings” and believe simply that God doesn’t love the individual as much as He loves the abstract qualities (like purity) that individual may or may not come to embody?
Thanks for your question, Irksome1! This isn’t a real answer, but the first thing that occurs to me is that, although I obviously can’t prove it to you, I’m morally certain from my reading of both men that Pius XII and Pope St. John Paul II, if specifically questioned on this point, would agree with and confirm the teaching of Augustine and Aquinas on this point—contra what you report the Marist brother saying! Exactly how they would address the apparent discrepancy between their own words and the teaching of Augustine and Aquinas, I couldn’t presume to say. It should also be noted that neither of the papal statements quoted above are magisterial; they represent the popes’ beliefs or opinions, not their magisterial teaching. (I can explain why if you’re interested.)
More substantially, the sensus fidelium is exactly the opposite of what the Marist brother in your story claimed! In particular, Catholic moral teaching and moral theology today offers no support for his premise, and considerable evidence to the contrary. The accepted understanding in Catholic moral theology is and always has been that a person subjected to unwanted sexual advances should resist as much as they are able without endangering their life or some other serious harm. If someone consciously and freely chooses to resist to the point of death, in effect bearing witness with their life to the sanctity of the human body, that might be considered an example of heroic, above-and-beyond virtue, but there is certainly no sin in preferring to live.
And of course we now understand that “as much as they are able without endangering their life or some other grave injury” is a relative term! People with different psychological makeups have different instinctive or reflexive responses to grave threats. Some resist furiously no matter what, not out of heroic virtue, but automatically (the fight response); others freeze or play dead (the freeze response); still others do whatever they must to get it over with and survive (the fawn response). The fact that these are instinctive or reflexive responses of the nervous system obviously changes the way we think about them morally. We are only morally responsible for what we choose. People in great duress don’t always have the ability to weigh options and make free choices.
Also worth noting: The historical reality (implied by Augustine in the passage in question) is that many of the virgin martyrs through the ages honored for their resistance to rape probably were actually raped—a terrible fact cleaned up in the hagiography in an effort (misguided, as we might now think) to protect their honor. This kind of honor (and dishonor) is not a Christian value; it has no place in the New Testament or in Christian catechesis. It’s a cultural idea with which Christian sensibilities have historically been entangled.
Thank you for writing this post. Problematic thinking about stuff like this also happens when people talk about St. Rita. Her husband was physically abusive and eventually repented. People often point to her as an example to those in such situations, praising her for staying with him. What many don't realize is that she didn't have a choice. She lived in the 14th and 15th centuries. They didn't have the resources that we do today such as domestic violence shelters. Wives and children were considered the legal property of husbands and fathers. Abusers rarely change permanently. Many are murdered by their abusers. By all means pray for abusers and other sinners to be converted, but don't stay with them. The idea that you can change someone by dating and even marrying them, which is usually done by women, is unhealthy.
As with all things human, it's almost never as simple as a single motive.
Maria Goretti did in fact defend her purity - by *refusing to consent to Alessandro's advances!* The heroic virtue of purity is not that she died rather than be raped, it is that the threat of death did weaken her resolve. She preferred to die than to *consent.*
The reality is that Alessandro could have raped Maria without killing her - and her virtue of chastity would still have been heroic. As would her charity towards Alessandro's soul. In either case, her upright *will* is the key factor.
She is a saint because she displayed chastity in refusing Alessandro *and* because she showed charity in caring for his soul, so gravely harmed by his evil actions towards her. The fact that he killed her rather than rape her does not change the quality of her virtue at all.
So no, we should not imply that sexual abuse survivors are somehow morally at fault because their attacker, unlike Alessandro, chose to rape rather than kill.
And to those who did consent due to fear, all is not lost! The fear of death *massively* reduces the culpability of an act in most cases. Moreso the younger you are. Had Maria consented, no one should justly blame her. What makes her virtue *heroic* is precisely the fact that it is so above and beyond the ordinary strength of will of a typical 11 year old girl. The fact that many do not possess that strength in similar circumstances does not make them *wicked,* it just means they are not yet *heroically* strong.
Had Maria consented, we may not have ended up calling her saint. Then again, maybe we would have, but for a different set of virtues developed later in life (as is the case for most ordinary lives of holiness).
Hi Alexander. Unfortunately, in your efforts to clarify, it looks to me like you’ve fallen into perpetuating the dangerous error I’m writing against here.
“To those who did consent due to fear, all is not lost! The fear of death *massively* reduces the culpability of an act in most cases.” ABSOLUTELY NOT. The truth is that not resisting, or even complying, in the face of threatened death or other serious threats, is NOT CONSENT. There is NO SIN—none at all—in not resisting in the face of threat of death or other serious threats.
Thus, for example, the Servant of God John Hardon, SJ: “A woman being ravished must offer internal resistance absolutely, in not consenting with the will; and SUCH EXTERNAL RESISTANCE AS IS POSSIBLE *WITHOUT* ENDANGERING HER LIFE OR HER REPUTATION.” By this qualification Fr. Hardon means not, of course, that endangering one’s life by resisting is morally *wrong*, but that it is *not morally obligatory*. (I am morally certain that Fr. Hardon would also have agreed that not resisting a rapist where resistance would endanger other lives, as in the case in the real-life story behind the movie Irena’s Vow, is also in no way morally wrong.)
Again, from Germain Grisez (one of the most prominent and most orthodox moral theologians of the post-Vatican II era): “Considered in itself, a woman’s choice not to resist rape is a choice, not to *do* anything, but to *suffer*—that is, passively accept—penetration rather than suffer the rapist’s other violence and/or accept the risk of death or injury. A woman being raped also can rightly obey the rapist’s orders to do various things not wrong in themselves: undress, lie down, spread her legs, and so on. Though such behavior facilitates penetration, she need not choose it for that end, but can choose it, without consenting to intercourse, to avoid undergoing other evils” (emphasis in original).
The contrary message—that to fail to resist to the greatest degree possible, even in the face of threatened death or other grave threats, is at least somewhat sinful—is not only false, but deeply harmful to survivors. This harm is compounded by the fact that, for many people, their response in grave duress may respond in different instinctive or reflexive ways, without making a moral choice at all or being free to do so. Some resist furiously no matter what, not out of heroic virtue, but automatically (the fight response); others freeze or play dead (the freeze response); still others do whatever they must to get it over with and survive (the fawn response). While this reality can be accommodated by the erroneous view that resistance even in the face of threatened death or other serious threats is obligatory, my point is not that they are contradictory. My point is that the view is erroneous and harmful, and that this reality compounds the harm done by this error.
In St. Maria’s case, without questioning her heroic virtue in general, there is no way to know whether her resistance was an instinctive fight response or itself a manifestation of heroic virtue. It is important to recognize that equally virtuous women may respond very differently under similar circumstances. We also, of course, have to reckon with the defects in Maria’s culture that left her without the tools that we would want for our own daughters in such situations: the understanding, for example, that an 11-year-old girl who is targeted for repeated sexual advances and threats should not keep this a secret, but should tell a trusted adult.
Please understand that because I consider the view you seem to have articulated to be not just erroneous but harmful, I will not entertain it further in this combox, which may be read by survivors or by other vulnerable people. If I am right about who you are, we are in touch on Facebook, and you may message me privately there if you wish to challenge my position here.
I think there's a misunderstanding here. I chose the word "consent" on purpose. "Consent" and "not resisting" are not the same thing - at least in my intended usage above.
I agree with your vehement insistence that "not resisting" is not a sin. I said "had Maria consented" not "had Maria not resisted" for a reason. Indeed, for some of the reasons you outline: the freeze or fawn response. In extreme cases, what one *wills* and what one *does* are not identical.
I should have been clearer that it's not a binary: "consent and don't fight" vs. "fight and don't consent." The realm of "don't fight but also don't consent" is what you're speaking to but what I did not explicitly address. I guess that's because I figured my earlier point about her still being a saint had she been raped covered that. Your inference that I consider that outcome to be even remotely sinful is not my view.
I do appreciate that you qualified it as what "seem to have articulated" because it is not the view I intended to articulate.
Well done! I have never heard before that rape doesn’t destroy virginity. It’s a comforting thought.
Thank you for writing this article. Maria Goretti is the saint whose story affects me the most. My mother first told me about her and incorrectly said that she had been raped. For her, as well as for me, the greatness of St. Maria's virtue was in her heroic capacity to forgive at only 11-years old, which lead to the conversion of her attacker Alessandro. If something like that happened to me when I was 11, would I have been able to forgive? (God help me.)
I have a friend who suffered sexually as a child and she used to feel like she was "beaten over the head" with Maria's purity. Thankfully, as time went on, she developed a correct way of understanding her story and now considers her to be one of her intercessors. I will be sharing this article with her.
Thanks so much for your comment, Christopher. I will say a prayer for your friend.
Maria Goretti’s story appeared in every religious education textbook I was assigned in my parochial schools from sixth grade onward. The lesson was always that death was preferable to impurity. Once, in sophomore year of high school, one of the guys brought up St. Augustine’s comment mentioned here (this kid was a sort of insufferable religious nerd). The answer given by the Marist brother teaching the class was that Augustine’s pious opinion had been overruled by the sensus fidelium. This was a Catholic school in the liberal northeast, by the way.
So, since the Magisterium has heavily implied that the lesson of Maria Goretti is exactly what is being called into question here, and since it is the Magisterium who is empowered by the Holy Spirit the interpret such things, and since such a notion exactly matches the purity culture I’ve been taught, why shouldn’t I take this as just another one of Christ’s many “hard sayings” and believe simply that God doesn’t love the individual as much as He loves the abstract qualities (like purity) that individual may or may not come to embody?
Thanks for your question, Irksome1! This isn’t a real answer, but the first thing that occurs to me is that, although I obviously can’t prove it to you, I’m morally certain from my reading of both men that Pius XII and Pope St. John Paul II, if specifically questioned on this point, would agree with and confirm the teaching of Augustine and Aquinas on this point—contra what you report the Marist brother saying! Exactly how they would address the apparent discrepancy between their own words and the teaching of Augustine and Aquinas, I couldn’t presume to say. It should also be noted that neither of the papal statements quoted above are magisterial; they represent the popes’ beliefs or opinions, not their magisterial teaching. (I can explain why if you’re interested.)
More substantially, the sensus fidelium is exactly the opposite of what the Marist brother in your story claimed! In particular, Catholic moral teaching and moral theology today offers no support for his premise, and considerable evidence to the contrary. The accepted understanding in Catholic moral theology is and always has been that a person subjected to unwanted sexual advances should resist as much as they are able without endangering their life or some other serious harm. If someone consciously and freely chooses to resist to the point of death, in effect bearing witness with their life to the sanctity of the human body, that might be considered an example of heroic, above-and-beyond virtue, but there is certainly no sin in preferring to live.
And of course we now understand that “as much as they are able without endangering their life or some other grave injury” is a relative term! People with different psychological makeups have different instinctive or reflexive responses to grave threats. Some resist furiously no matter what, not out of heroic virtue, but automatically (the fight response); others freeze or play dead (the freeze response); still others do whatever they must to get it over with and survive (the fawn response). The fact that these are instinctive or reflexive responses of the nervous system obviously changes the way we think about them morally. We are only morally responsible for what we choose. People in great duress don’t always have the ability to weigh options and make free choices.
Also worth noting: The historical reality (implied by Augustine in the passage in question) is that many of the virgin martyrs through the ages honored for their resistance to rape probably were actually raped—a terrible fact cleaned up in the hagiography in an effort (misguided, as we might now think) to protect their honor. This kind of honor (and dishonor) is not a Christian value; it has no place in the New Testament or in Christian catechesis. It’s a cultural idea with which Christian sensibilities have historically been entangled.
That was extremely interesting and thoughtful. Thank you (as always).
Thank you so much for reading, Benjamin!
Thank you for writing this post. Problematic thinking about stuff like this also happens when people talk about St. Rita. Her husband was physically abusive and eventually repented. People often point to her as an example to those in such situations, praising her for staying with him. What many don't realize is that she didn't have a choice. She lived in the 14th and 15th centuries. They didn't have the resources that we do today such as domestic violence shelters. Wives and children were considered the legal property of husbands and fathers. Abusers rarely change permanently. Many are murdered by their abusers. By all means pray for abusers and other sinners to be converted, but don't stay with them. The idea that you can change someone by dating and even marrying them, which is usually done by women, is unhealthy.
As with all things human, it's almost never as simple as a single motive.
Maria Goretti did in fact defend her purity - by *refusing to consent to Alessandro's advances!* The heroic virtue of purity is not that she died rather than be raped, it is that the threat of death did weaken her resolve. She preferred to die than to *consent.*
The reality is that Alessandro could have raped Maria without killing her - and her virtue of chastity would still have been heroic. As would her charity towards Alessandro's soul. In either case, her upright *will* is the key factor.
She is a saint because she displayed chastity in refusing Alessandro *and* because she showed charity in caring for his soul, so gravely harmed by his evil actions towards her. The fact that he killed her rather than rape her does not change the quality of her virtue at all.
So no, we should not imply that sexual abuse survivors are somehow morally at fault because their attacker, unlike Alessandro, chose to rape rather than kill.
And to those who did consent due to fear, all is not lost! The fear of death *massively* reduces the culpability of an act in most cases. Moreso the younger you are. Had Maria consented, no one should justly blame her. What makes her virtue *heroic* is precisely the fact that it is so above and beyond the ordinary strength of will of a typical 11 year old girl. The fact that many do not possess that strength in similar circumstances does not make them *wicked,* it just means they are not yet *heroically* strong.
Had Maria consented, we may not have ended up calling her saint. Then again, maybe we would have, but for a different set of virtues developed later in life (as is the case for most ordinary lives of holiness).
Hi Alexander. Unfortunately, in your efforts to clarify, it looks to me like you’ve fallen into perpetuating the dangerous error I’m writing against here.
“To those who did consent due to fear, all is not lost! The fear of death *massively* reduces the culpability of an act in most cases.” ABSOLUTELY NOT. The truth is that not resisting, or even complying, in the face of threatened death or other serious threats, is NOT CONSENT. There is NO SIN—none at all—in not resisting in the face of threat of death or other serious threats.
Thus, for example, the Servant of God John Hardon, SJ: “A woman being ravished must offer internal resistance absolutely, in not consenting with the will; and SUCH EXTERNAL RESISTANCE AS IS POSSIBLE *WITHOUT* ENDANGERING HER LIFE OR HER REPUTATION.” By this qualification Fr. Hardon means not, of course, that endangering one’s life by resisting is morally *wrong*, but that it is *not morally obligatory*. (I am morally certain that Fr. Hardon would also have agreed that not resisting a rapist where resistance would endanger other lives, as in the case in the real-life story behind the movie Irena’s Vow, is also in no way morally wrong.)
Again, from Germain Grisez (one of the most prominent and most orthodox moral theologians of the post-Vatican II era): “Considered in itself, a woman’s choice not to resist rape is a choice, not to *do* anything, but to *suffer*—that is, passively accept—penetration rather than suffer the rapist’s other violence and/or accept the risk of death or injury. A woman being raped also can rightly obey the rapist’s orders to do various things not wrong in themselves: undress, lie down, spread her legs, and so on. Though such behavior facilitates penetration, she need not choose it for that end, but can choose it, without consenting to intercourse, to avoid undergoing other evils” (emphasis in original).
The contrary message—that to fail to resist to the greatest degree possible, even in the face of threatened death or other grave threats, is at least somewhat sinful—is not only false, but deeply harmful to survivors. This harm is compounded by the fact that, for many people, their response in grave duress may respond in different instinctive or reflexive ways, without making a moral choice at all or being free to do so. Some resist furiously no matter what, not out of heroic virtue, but automatically (the fight response); others freeze or play dead (the freeze response); still others do whatever they must to get it over with and survive (the fawn response). While this reality can be accommodated by the erroneous view that resistance even in the face of threatened death or other serious threats is obligatory, my point is not that they are contradictory. My point is that the view is erroneous and harmful, and that this reality compounds the harm done by this error.
In St. Maria’s case, without questioning her heroic virtue in general, there is no way to know whether her resistance was an instinctive fight response or itself a manifestation of heroic virtue. It is important to recognize that equally virtuous women may respond very differently under similar circumstances. We also, of course, have to reckon with the defects in Maria’s culture that left her without the tools that we would want for our own daughters in such situations: the understanding, for example, that an 11-year-old girl who is targeted for repeated sexual advances and threats should not keep this a secret, but should tell a trusted adult.
Please understand that because I consider the view you seem to have articulated to be not just erroneous but harmful, I will not entertain it further in this combox, which may be read by survivors or by other vulnerable people. If I am right about who you are, we are in touch on Facebook, and you may message me privately there if you wish to challenge my position here.
I think there's a misunderstanding here. I chose the word "consent" on purpose. "Consent" and "not resisting" are not the same thing - at least in my intended usage above.
I agree with your vehement insistence that "not resisting" is not a sin. I said "had Maria consented" not "had Maria not resisted" for a reason. Indeed, for some of the reasons you outline: the freeze or fawn response. In extreme cases, what one *wills* and what one *does* are not identical.
I should have been clearer that it's not a binary: "consent and don't fight" vs. "fight and don't consent." The realm of "don't fight but also don't consent" is what you're speaking to but what I did not explicitly address. I guess that's because I figured my earlier point about her still being a saint had she been raped covered that. Your inference that I consider that outcome to be even remotely sinful is not my view.
I do appreciate that you qualified it as what "seem to have articulated" because it is not the view I intended to articulate.