Faith as a legal good and the sexual abuses in the Church: reflections on the emeritus Pope Benedict XVI’s text

Abstract

In the document “The Church and scandal of sexual abuse” published in 2019, the emeritus pope Benedict XVI uses the category of “legal good” when referring to faith and its corresponding process. This article presents, first, an understanding of legal goods as intrinsic rights in the relationships of justice, and applies them to the Church and its specific legal goods; particularly, to the word of God and the Sacraments. Second, the article offers an interpretation of the legal good of faith as a common good of the Church’s horizontal dimension of communion. Specifically, it shows how sexual abuse crimes against minors committed by the clerk affect the communion within the People of God in terms of faith and hope. The article concludes with some suggestions for a renewed penal canon law, which should expanded to protect the ecclesiastical legal goods as a whole, and value thoroughly the legal process.