Suffer little children: human sacrifice, child sexual abuse, and the Catholic Church

Opinion

Matthew J. Walsh

In the current era of global Coronavirus pandemic, the resurgence of human sacrifice tropes in the media has been palpable. The concept of sacrifices — both those that we make and those that many of us benefit from — is on everyone’s mind during these extraordinary times as much of the world continues to give up social freedoms, economic choices, and as some give their very lives. As a scholar whose job it is to literally study human sacrifice traditions from prehistory into the modern era, I find this fascinating, but also troubling. Troubling because, as the world focuses on the very real and noble ‘sacrifices’ that first-responders, medical personnel and even grocery store clerks (among many others) face, it is incredible how prevalent thoughts of human sacrifices have become. But, it is also disturbing how non-reflectively such sacralized violence has been evaluated in modern contexts. Human sacrifices have not emerged in this time of need — actually or figuratively — they have surrounded us all along. Well beyond the recent pandemic and those heroes that stand at the front lines struggling to keep the majority of the world’s populations safe in the wake of COVID-19, various and insidious forms of human sacrifice have been lurking beneath our feet, like shadows in plain view. In illustration of this, I would like to discuss the ongoing atrocities of sexual abuse towards children still prevalent within the Catholic Church in light of a recent references made by Pope Francis in relation to contemporary child abuses and referred to in the contexts of pagan child sacrifices.

2020 marks ten years since the Vatican began its official investigations into the sex-abuse scandals of the Legionaries of Christ and Regnum Christi organization, more commonly known simply as the Legion. In the ten years since, it has become well-established and well-known that the Legion was (and is) at the center of a vast cover-up of sexual abuses of children. For example, the sex-scandals related directly to the Legion’s founder, the late Father Marcial Maciel, are old news, having been revealed for nearly a decade. As the AP published in January, the deviancies of the order continue to plague survivors, just as new cases of abuse continue to emerge[1]. Reflecting on this anniversary and the atrocities that it marks, I cannot help but be reminded of words spoken by Pope Francis just over a year ago in relation to the subject of abuses, and a phrasing which struck me as oddly misplaced then, and truly inappropriate now. Please allow me to explain.

In February of 2019, the Vatican hosted a summit entitled Protection of Minors in the Church. During this event, the highest pontiff of the Roman Catholic Church, Pope Francis, equated the extensive nature and wide-spread cover-ups of child sex abuses within the Catholic Church to pagan human sacrifices. In a BBC transcription[2] of the Pope’s remarks, he stated

“I am reminded of the cruel religious practice, once widespread in certain cultures, of sacrificing human beings — frequently children — in pagan rites… The inhumanity of the worldwide phenomenon [of sexual violence toward children] becomes even more serious and more scandalous in the Church, because it is in contrast with its moral authority and its ethical credibility… The consecrated person, chosen by God to guide souls to salvation, lets himself be subjugated by his own human frailty, or by his own illness, thus becoming a tool of Satan. In the abuses, we see the hand of evil that does not spare even the innocence of children.”

This is certainly not the only time that a pontiff has spoken out about such transgressions. Prior to this, as recently as 2014, Pope Francis spoke similarly in condemnation of sexual abuses of children by clergy members and established the Papal Commission for Protecting Minors from Clerical Sex Abuse. As a person who was raised Catholic and a scholar whose current research focuses specifically on studies of human sacrifice, this equivalence struck me as remarkably myopic, because to compare such abuses even metaphorically to ancient human sacrifices is actually to downplay the severity of the contemporary situation. In point of fact, where and when ‘pagan human sacrifices’ were undertaken in the past, they were sacred acts of offering carried out sincerely and with purpose — with fear and trembling, whether we understand the motivations in play or not. Child sexual abuse on the other hand is a cruel and profane criminal activity undertaken by evil and ill individuals; it is a selfish and destructive mistreatment of life. One of these should not remind us of the other.

The term ‘sacrifice’ comes from the Latin sacrificium, which literally translates as ‘to make holy’. Therefore, an act of human sacrifice is one in which a human victim is made holy. In this sense, the victim is rebranded as sacred, perfect, sublimely special. In theory, all sacrifices are made with an intended purpose. They are undertaken with an anticipated function or some ultimate goal, whether implicitly or explicitly expressed. As, for example, David Carrasco (2012: 214) puts it, in diverse cultural contexts and with complex societies in mind, “Human sacrifices were carried out to restore authority and rejuvenate the well-being of towns and cities.” However, is such the case in the context of conjuring images of child sacrifice from the sexual abuses of members of the Church? Has the Church made those victims holy? Flawless, special, or sacred? Was there purpose to each victim’s suffering beyond the will to obscure the goings on of decades of abuses by members of the clergy?

Addressing the Protection of Minors in the Church summit, Pope Francis noted that such abuses of children were “a widespread phenomenon in all cultures and societies” and in his concluding remarks pointed out the myriad forms of “sacrifice of children to the gods of power, money, pride and arrogance”. However true, this statement fails to recognize the drastic hypocrisy of such an admission by an institution founded on the tenets of Christ, above all: love, kindness, generosity, humility and modesty. In contrast to human sacrifices across cultures and throughout time, there has been an underlying logic to practices of ritual killing — a purpose and an understanding of how and why such things were undertaken: the making holy. As macabre as it may seem, within this making holy logic, there remains an underlying implicit method to the madness of human sacrifice. That is, that there is sanctity afforded the victim. In other words, the victim is perceived of as possessing exceptional value. However, not so with the Church’s explicit role in child sexual abuses. Here there is no method, just madness. Here we observe only the monstrous deeds of those in authority, performed and perpetuated by individuals who are supposed to be the epitome of trusted community members and leaders. Sadly, the only method involved has been in the systematic cover-up of these atrocities that has gone on for decades and longer.

The Pope is right that human sacrifices — often of children — loom frequent in the traditions of many pre-Christian societies throughout time and around the world. Archaeological evidence for human sacrifice can be found almost everywhere, from prehistory and antiquity and certainly through the last two millennia anno Domini — even in contemporary contexts. Indeed, the practice of ritually killing each other for profit or prosperity is something humans are quite good at and stands as a disturbing reminder of the congruity of human ritual traditions. Sadly, it seems, the urge to sacrificial violence runs deep in our species.

It is laudable that the Pope is calling on His institution to address these very serious crimes. However, if the Pope is to express these matters in such comparative terminology, let us consider for a moment the gravity and implications of such statements. To compare the sexual abuses of children (or anyone else) to past practices of human sacrifice is to misconstrue 1) the complexities associated with such sacrificial practices — their values and meanings; and 2) the enormity of the life-altering and perpetuating damaging effects of sexual assault on victims and also those close to them who suffer as a consequence of those acts. Of course, such comparisons also fail to recognize the nuances and values at work in pre-Christian cosmologies and ritual practice.

I submit that, in deed and scale, the Church’s failure in regards to its own duplicitous involvement with child abuses, is far more foul than any ‘pagan’ human sacrificial tradition[3].

By the numbers

The most recent and on-going sexual abuse scandal in the Catholic Church has revealed a staggering proliferation of claims of child sexual abuse by members of the clergy. One article by the BBC[4] outlines a 2004 report commissioned by the Catholic Church which documented cases in which over 4000 priests had sexually assaulted at least 10,000 children. Similarly, a 2017 Australian study concluded that “’tens of thousands of children’ were sexually abused in Australian institutions over decades, including churches, schools and sports clubs.” In the US, a grand jury reported that over 300 members of the clergy had in some way taken part in the abuses of over 1000 children in the state of Pennsylvania alone. Similar allegations and reports have continued, which was largely the impetus for the Church to call for the Protection of Minors in the Church summit as part of the Pope’s “decisive action” on the matter.

As such, bishops from 130 nations attended the February 2019 summit. Ironically, many of the countries from which attendees hailed have long histories of human sacrifice. In some cases, with traditions going back millennia. However, this is only somewhat ironic, since it is actually rather difficult to identify many historical cultures or societies that have not — at some point — maintained traditions of ritualized human violence manifested through sacrifice. Here I will draw from a select few New World examples to illustrate my point in this regard. Since Francis is the first Pope ever to hail from Latin America, this regional focus seems at least superficially fitting. What follows are but a few examples from the myriad sacrificial traditions of the ancient Aztecs of North and Central America as well as among the Chimú, Moche, and Inca Empires of western South America.

The pre-Conquest Mesoamerican world was, in many ways, a world of human sacrifice. While colonial sources certainly have exaggerated the extent of human sacrifices throughout the pre-colonial Americas (and may indeed have exacerbated them), there is ample evidence to support pervasive human sacrificial practices. In his detailed look at human sacrifice in the Aztec world, David Carrasco (1999) notes that, as the Empire expanded, so too did the use and extent of human sacrifices amplify. As a symbolic prerogative of state violence, increasingly systematized human sacrificial practices became a means of displaying power and thus extracting increasing levels of tribute from neighboring regions. An economy of human sacrifice emerged.

To put this into perspective, if we are to believe post-colonial authorities, anywhere between 20,000 to 50,000 individuals were estimated to have been the annual number of human sacrifices performed within the Aztec Empire around the time of Conquest. Juan de Zumarraga, the first bishop of Mexico, asserted that his count of 20,000 human sacrifices was specifically those of children. Caroline Dodds Pennock (2012) and Glen Carman (2016: 283) provide excellent overviews of these statistics and their source materials. While the archaeology does not provide evidence for mass-sacrifice on the remarkable scales suggested, it does support wide-spread use of the practice. Alfredo López Austin and Leonardo López Luján (2008: 141) point out that, while the highest estimates must clearly be exaggerations (some sources suggest in excess of 80,000 individuals were sacrificed during a dedication ceremony at the Templo Mayor in 1487 AD alone), still large amounts of remains, numbering into the hundreds of individuals have been found in association with religious buildings throughout the Aztec Empire.

While the statistics are certainly debatable (and conveniently impossible to concretely prove or disprove), human sacrifices were notoriously prolific in the Aztec world and widespread throughout much if not all of Mesoamerica, and contemporary archaeology continues to back this up. For example, excavations of Tenochtitlan, beneath what is now Mexico City, have revealed the previously-debated reality of the tzompantli, an elaborate façade made from human skulls adjoining the Templo Mayor[5]. It is estimated that this structure could feasibly have displayed the skulls of thousands of sacrificial victims, accumulated over centuries. Comparable structures for the ritual display of human corpses elsewhere in the world are also evident in the archaeological record, such as at the ‘sanctuary’ structure erected circa 260 AD by the Belgae at the Iron Age battlefield of Ribemont-Sur-Ancre in northern France. Some such sites may have served the purpose of excarnation rather than spectacle per se, but it suffices that the ritualized display of human victims has been a time-honored tradition across cultures for millennia. In many ways, performance and exhibition are at the heart of human sacrifice and related violence.

Children as victims

Recently, archaeological excavations around the site of the Pre-Columbian Chimú capital of Chan Chan, now Huanchaco, a suburb of modern-day Trujillo in northern Peru, have uncovered the remains of at least 227 child victims of human sacrifice. These victims ranged in age between circa four to fourteen and were of both sexes. The Chimú flourished from around 900 AD, emerging out of the more loosely delimited Moche polities in the region. The city-states of the Chimú were eventually conquered by the Incas circa the 1470s. The child sacrifices unearthed at Huanchaco — the single largest child sacrifice event in the archaeological record to date — were presumably made in the hopes of abating a particularly disastrous El Niño weather phase sometime around 1350. Similar evidence for ritualized- or sacrificial-violence among the Chimú was uncovered in 1997 along a beachhead at Punta Lobos. There, over 200 individuals (adult victims this time) were found to have been bound and blindfolded and had their throats cut. Largescale and violent sacrifices seem to have been at least somewhat regular events, nonetheless during times of crisis. Earlier, in the same broad region, the Moche (e.g. Eeckhout and Owens 2008; Hill 2003; Sutter and Cortez 2005; Toyne et al. 2013; Verano 2001) and later the Inca (e.g. Besom 2009; Reinhard and Ceruti 2010; Wilson et al. 2013) also practiced well-established forms of human sacrifice. For the Moche (as we have seen also among the Aztec) sacrifice was implicitly tied to warfare and the capture of enemy prisoners (Bourget 2016). Regarding children, arguably the most famous of the South American sacrificial traditions was the so-called capacocha sacrificial rites of the Inca. In this, children were drugged, ritually killed and deposited high up on Andean mountaintops (Wilson et al. 2007). Unequivocally, each of these sacrifices were made with purpose: the term capacocha literally means “solemn sacrifice” and/or “royal obligation” (see Andrushko et al. 2011). These were not simply elaborate abuses for the satisfaction of a few. They were holy sacrifices in the truest sense: solemn and obligatory offerings to the gods for the sake of maintaining cosmological and societal order in a broad sense (e.g. Sillar 1994). The victims were made holy through transformative rituals and their deaths meant life for the communities from which they came. Such events and their implications were certainly not sanctioned or undertaken lightly.

David Carrasco (2012: 221) provides a wholly different sacrificial process among the Aztecs in his description of the sacrificial victim transformed into the personage of the deity Tezcatlipoca before being put to death in highly ritualized fashion. In this example, the victim

“…was escorted throughout the city for nearly a year, greeted as a living god, enjoying luxuries even while in training in Aztec arts. He was eventually given four female companions… for sexual coupling during the last month of his existence… [These women represented] the goddesses of love, corn, salt, and water. The five of them, representing the five-part universe (four quarters and the center), sang and danced in public and distributed food and gifts to people at specific locations. It was reported that at the place of his death on the outskirts of the city, “he ascended by himself, he went up of his own free will, to where he was to die.” As he ascended the temple, he broke his flutes and whistles on the steps. Then the scene speeded up as the offering priests seized him, “threw him upon his back on the sacrificial stone: then cut open his breast, he took his heart from him, he also raised it in dedication to the sun.”

Here we see the victim transformed into a god, being prepared for a full year as the essence of a divine figure. We see how the priests translate his death into a dedication to the sun itself. This describes a very specific sacrificial occasion involving an adult victim, but it provides a good illustration of the intricacies involved in such complex and symbolically-charged traditions. Again, these were not undertakings to slake the vile predilections of the few. In contrast, is there such a transcendental transformation for victims of sexual assault, children or otherwise, manifested in the Church?

The Aztecs rarely practiced the sacrifice of children and when they did it was no less elaborate. Again, Carrasco presents that

“A remarkable festival, celebrated on the first day of the month of Atlcuaualo, involved the paying of debts to Tlaloc, the rain god. On this day, children (called “human paper streamers”) with two cowlicks in their hair and favorable day signs were dressed in costumes — some set with pearls — of dark green, black-striped with chili red, and light blue were sacrificed in seven different locations. The flowing and falling of tears of the children insured the coming of rain. It should be noted that some sources indicate the difficulty that priests had in carrying out these particular debt payments.”

Here, the sacrifice of children to Tlaloc was clearly awful — even to those enacting the ritual. But, for all of its horror, it was equally essential: it is arguably logical that within Aztec cosmology it was perceived that rain should come at the highest price imaginable — rain was life. Phil Arnold (1999: 227, also quoted by Carrasco) equates this exchange poignantly as “the central theme of correspondence between human life and the landscape; blood and water… the ritual acquisition of water required paying a high price in children’s blood, which offset the costs of the sacrifices given by Tlaloc.” Beyond the observation that even the priests performing the sacrifices faced personal difficulties in delivering the lives of children to Tlaloc, there is more embedded in this. Namely, the mention of the “cowlick” in combination with “favorable day signs” can be further unpacked and may be more telling features than they seem at a glance. The term ‘cowlick’ refers to the whorl of hair at the back of the head, the intensity and directionality of which are genetic. In some individuals one or more hair whorls are more or less noticeable depending on hair length and type. However, relevant here is that studies have found that individuals with a conspicuous double whorl make up just 5% or less of any given population (Lauterbach and Knight 1927; Schwarzburg 1927). Accordingly, this means that on average just 1 in 20 of all children in a given cohort would have been eligible as victims for the sacrifice described above. Further limit selection to a sub-group of that chosen five percent who exhibited the requisite ‘favorable day signs’ and the pool for victims would have been remarkably limited. In other words, the rules of selection for this sacrifice were so exceptional as to delimit very particular individuals whose identity as a potential victim could have been recognized within the family and the community at a very young age. Thus, the selection of one’s child for this event would not likely have come as a shock to anyone involved. Inga Clandinnen (1991: 137) supports this notion and suggests that the chosen children were even purchased from their families, and at a very young age. This suggests that the choice of victims was not capricious, but rather extraordinarily tacit. The people performing these hallowed rites were not monsters as is easy to imagine. They were not sadists. They were pious members of communities desperately attempting to maintain a fragile cosmology to which their very existence was intrinsically bound. This is no better illustrated than in the words of the 16th century Dominican friar Diego Durán (1975: 111) when he observed — even in the very midst of page after page of documenting the vicissitudes and horrors of Aztec child sacrifices — that “No people on earth have loved their children as the people of this nation do.” Durán recognized that in the contexts of Aztec cosmology, acts of sacrifice seen as despicable and horrific to us outsiders and to us now, were carried out literally to avert a cataclysmic universal breakdown. Further, by the time of Conquest, these practices had been perpetuated for generations and refined by a social and theocratic hierarchy which reinforced (and enforced) the legitimacy and necessity of such acts. The same cannot be said of the Church’s delinquency in curbing abuses within itself — abuses which are explicitly focused on children and hypocritically condemned whilst being obfuscated. Indeed, we must ask here, which tradition hides the real monsters?

Sexual Abuse and its repercussions

Sexual abuse has long-term effects and implications which reverberate through families and communities, sometimes for generations. Victims of sexual assault habitually suffer from symptoms of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), similar to those exposed to warfare and other exceptional hardships and violence. Victims are not only damaged emotionally, psychologically and physically. The effects of such abuses — particularly when perpetrated by figures of authority — lead to increased frequencies of anxiety disorders, depression, low self-esteem and self-loathing, substance abuse issues, difficulty establishing trust and/or forming/maintaining relationships with others, and increased rates of self-harm. Sexual abuse in early childhood is recognized as “consistently associated with suicidal behavior” (Lopez-Castroman et al. 2013: 149). Expressions of violence both domestic and outside the home are often frequent among survivors. Prolonged sexual abuse can also lead to dissociative behaviors as victims mentally remove themselves from certain situations. This in turn serves to alienate victims from friends and family, which may hinder them from seeking help or exposing or getting away from an abuser or from the collateral symptoms of the abuse. In short, the long-term effects of sexual abuse on an individual cause dramatic harm not only to the surviving victim, but commonly echo through families and amongst loved ones and friends in ways that go well beyond the notion of a singular ‘victim’. These acts destroy many lives. In equating such dynamic and broad implications to the ‘making holy’ of sacrifice — even figuratively — upends the very value of human life. In reality, for victims, particularly of child sexual assault by members of the Church, the wanton ineffectiveness of the institution’s dealing with these crimes eclipses the most macabre and prolific communities of sacrifice the world has ever seen.

No more excuses, no more meaningless sacrifices

My argument here is admittedly pedantic. I admire Pope Francis’ admission of the Church’s appalling transgressions and decades-long cover-up of sexual abuses of children by members of the clergy. Admirably, on December 17, 2019, Pope Francis officially abolished the Church’s secrecy policy toward sexual abuses by members of the clergy. Prior to this, since the policy was put in place in 2001, information on such abuses was deemed a “pontifical secret” not to be divulged to secular authorities. While this is a major step forward, the actions of the Church in the wake of these events must speak louder than words and must remain ongoing. What is at stake is the integrity of the Church, the religious beliefs upon which it is founded, and the moral tenets it espouses. The endemic sexual abuses of children by members of the Catholic clergy is unfathomable. Equally damning is the institution’s cover-up of those crimes. It must be understood that this point makes the Church complicit in every hidden act of abuse its members have wrought. In the end, in so doing, the Catholic Church as a society — as a community of practice — is in fact one of the greatest perpetrator of the sacrifice of children in history. Ultimately, without effective action, the Church and its representatives, as well as those who support them, are no better than the trope images of human sacrifice: the plunging dagger, the pulsing heart, the blood-stained alter, fear and trembling, and the ambivalent horror and awe of the spectators. But in this case the Church’s own child sacrifices represent much worse than these images conjure. There is no wherewithal, no purpose, no greater good intended by the horrible deed — there is no making holy in the abuses perpetrated here. This should not remind anyone of pagan human sacrifice. It should remind us all of something far worse.

Matthew J. Walsh is an American archaeologist. This opinion piece stems from my ongoing involvement with the Human Sacrifice & Value project supported by the Research Council of Norway (PI Rane Willerslev; FRIPRO HUMSAM, project 275947). For an overview of the project please see (link) and to see our ongoing research and outputs please visit our website hosted by the Museum of Cultural History at University of Oslo, here.

References

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Carrasco, David. Human Sacrifice: Aztec Rites. In Encyclopedia of Religion, 2nd Edition, edited by L. Jones, pp. 4185–4191. Farmington: Thomsen Gale.

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[1]https://apnews.com/d71dbfb06b1065b2e9f910c2581371e2?fbclid=IwAR2zjl_WUU_fqb47FigRkYkSqw8lsWGBvAdHQcQG7A8IZdUhIGXhTAp9fyQ; https://apnews.com/TheReckoning?fbclid=IwAR2UoY1S2Y6lJ9wXpUwfBnH0rUhbQkf10s8IztG_SzJ1msnrxD_Bir07wnc

[2] https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-47348479

[3] The Western religious notion that ‘pagan’ peoples were somehow without moral compass or lacking ethical frameworks or integrity is a tired misconstruction. In point of fact directly relevant to the discussion here, writing in the mid- to late-1500s, Diego Durán (see below) observed of the Aztecs that in their recognition of the Beatitudes — their attitudes to and treatments of the needy, the sick and the poor — the Aztec people were remarkably Christian-like in outlook. Durán (1975: 184) writes that “Everything I have described here shows that these people [Aztecs] knew something of the Divine Law, the Holy Gospel, and of the Beatitudes, since rewards were promised for a good life and punishment for a wicked one. I interrogated the Indians regarding their ancient preachers, and I myself have written down their sermons, with the same rhetoric and style and metaphors. In reality they were Catholic. When I realized the knowledge the Indians had regarding the Beatitudes, of Eternal Rest and the holy life that must be lived on earth in order to obtain these things, I was amazed. However, all of this was mixed with their idolatry, bloody and abominable, and it tarnished the good.” (all emphasis mine)

[4] https://www.bbc.com/news/world-44209971

[5] https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2018/06/feeding-gods-hundreds-skulls-reveal-massive-scale-human-sacrifice-aztec-capital