Religious authorities displace responsibility for abuse onto supernatural agency

Evidence

In the attribution of blame, Father Gabriele Amorth, the chief exorcist for the Vatican, claimed that the priests’ sexual molestations were “prompted by the Devil” (Owen, 2010). Moreover, he saw evidence that the Devil had also infiltrated the Vatican itself and was waging war with the pope: “Because he is a marvelous Pope and worthy successor to John Paul II, it is clear that the Devil wants to grab hold of him.” — Albert Bandura, Moral Disengagement, 536

Categorization

• CANDY: The Vatican’s chief exorcist blaming the Devil for the abuse scandal is a striking, shareable absurdity.
• XREF: Displacement of responsibility onto cosmic evil rather than institutional actors is a pure instance of Bandura’s mechanism the reader can cite.
• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — Albert Bandura, Moral Disengagement: How People Do Harm…, 536