Political risks of recovering and discovering meanings in the collective memory of a perverse religious organization

2020. Organisational and Social Dynamics. Tomo 20, Nº 1. Pp 31-47

Eduardo Acuña A

Abstract:

The paper refers to the political risks that a group of five parishioners, members of an aristocratic catholic parish located in Santiago Chile, had to face when they recovered and discovered unconscious meanings about the hard and persistent psychological and sexual abuses they suffered in that religious organization. Recovering and discovering meanings, from the collective memory of that parish, was a sort of conversion event in the five parishioners, that determined their decision to bring into the surface of Chilean society the knowledge that the parish functioned as a perverse and totalitarian organization, led by the priest Fernando Karadima, That determination implied that the five individuals had to struggle against powerful forces in society, including the dominant Catholic Church in Chile and the political influences from the conservative catholic elite that attempted to ignore the existence of the  abuses denounced. The result of the paper explains how the five parishioners, through their concerted political actions and courage, forced the Catholic Church, to recognize, in an ambivalent way, the abuses committed by Karadima. The theoretical basis of this presentation is based in a socioanalytical approach that mainly considers the understanding of perversion in organizations and their consequences in the control of anxieties

Palabras claves: Abuses; religious organization; perversion; meanings; memories.

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