Healing the Body of Christ: Liturgy, Trauma, and the Works of Mercy

Team Members/Contributors

Sheila McCarthy University of Notre Dame Contact Me

About this dissertation fellowship

Moral injury describes the internal shattering of the self when one acts against one’s conscience or moral code. Formerly seen as an aspect of PTSD, it is often linked to having experienced traumatic events. It is a term that has been used primarily to describe the suffering of recent US veterans, but I argue that is also a fitting term for survivors of sexual violence. Moral injury results in a distorted image of the self, a guilt-ridden obsession with one's "badness," such that love of self or neighbor is impossible. This is common to survivors and veterans. Whereas PTSD has been treated as the purview of psychologists and psychiatrists, the widespread crisis of moral injury calls upon theologians in particular to offer a response. This is a unique opportunity for the repair and strenghtening of American religious life as the wound of moral injury cries out for spiritual healing, a healing that comes especially in the context of a faith community. The challenge is that such healing remains elusive because the morally injured one's distorted view of self causes him or her to see the church as preoccupied with suffering, sacrifice, and sin. While these all certainly have a role, a proper understanding of sacrifice can change this erroneous view. It can also create a path for healing. Such an understanding is informed by three things: deification, that is, being created in the image and likeness of God, with the ability to carry out God's action in the world; God’s work of mercy to us in the liturgy; and our response in performing the Works of Mercy. Using interlocutors that include American trauma scholars and theologians, Thomas Aquinas, Augustine, The Liturgical Movement in the US, and the Catholic Worker Movement, I argue that a proper understanding of sacrifice leads to a proper love of self, and therefore a healing from the distorted self-image caused this traumatic moral injury for not only the individual veteran or survivor, but for the whole church.