The Church as a Fragile State: A New Institutional Model for Understanding the Persistence of the Sexual Abuse Crisis

The institutional model of the church has fallen into disfavor as a means for ecclesiological investigation because Avery Dulles, SJ, regarded it with suspicion because of its association with the notion that the church is a perfect state and the ways that institutionalism encourages clericalism. At the same time, there has been an ongoing debate as to the value of models for addressing the concrete reality of the church and for engaging the social sciences. Engaging economics as a dialogue partner, the author considers how the institutional model can be understood in terms of a fragile state instead of a perfect society to explain the persistence of sexual abuse in the Catholic Church and to suggest a strategy for institutional reforms.