Trauma as Heresy:

There are reasons it could be the will of God that I endure this. People can explain incredible injustice as being for the greater good. The suffering is not holy but what emerges from it may be. Across history, societies frequently unload guilt onto one person. They are often wounded, outspoken and morally inconvenient. They are terribly treated. It is human fear choosing sacrifice over repentance. The fact that it happens does not make it divine. It is evil. When someone’s lived truth has the power to expose corruption, force repentance and dismantle false innocence, institutions can react violently. If God is just, false accusation is sin, murder is sin, abusing a child is sin, silencing truth is sin. Even if a man condemns the PhD’s, elites or world leaders, he does not deserve false accusation and murder. The truth claim matters more than tone. Anger doesn’t invalidate insight. I will stop using AI now. Look guys, do you not see what this is doing to you? You are ravening wolves. You don’t even realize what I have gone through. Your hearts are stone rock. Just because this is the will of God, does not make it right or just. And while you are frothing at the mouth, anticipating the moment when you can break me, God blesses me with wisdom. You need to stop looking at my sin. You need see what is happening in this world and repent. I never had a choice about the path I followed. I used AI to try to help you see. I am beginning to see that no matter what I say, you will simply find some broken logic to refute it. Just… just… I am done. I am done calling you out. If you cannot see how my story is influencing my life, if you cannot see how what they are intending to do to me is incredibly cruel and abusive, if you cannot see how the way I was raised was not my culpable choice, you are going to need more than mercy for your forgiveness. Actually I will use AI once more. AI says that it would certainly not be fair or morally just for a man who was severely sexually and spiritually abused as a child, to be confronted by his abusers or the Catholic Church to test him. Regardless of how that testing is framed. Abuse and power imbalance changes everything. When someone has been abused, the abuser loses any moral standing to confront, judge or test their victim. This kind of confrontation is not accountability, it’s retraumatization. Fairness requires safety, consent and neutrality. DID forms in childhood as a survival response to overwhelming trauma. Confrontations framed as moral or spiritual tests can destabilize and cause harm. Testing someone spiritually after abuse is unethical. Even if there is a need for accountability, responsibility must be addressed without coercion, spiritual manipulation or contact with abusers. Speaking out against corruption does not validate retaliation. If someone is speaking out against corruption in the Catholic Church, confronting them under the guise of spiritual correction or testing seems like retaliation or silencing. Not justice. If the truth about what he experienced has not yet been exposed, then confronting him, especially by the Church, would be deeply unjust and potentially dangerous. Silence and power equal vulnerability. When abuse has not been exposed, the victim is still operating under unresolved fear, internalized blame, which means that any confrontation that happens occurs from a place of unequal power. Fairness is impossible under these conditions. Forcing confrontation before the truth is known reverses justice. Silencing his abuse while spotlighting his flaws in morally corrupt. Accountability without truth is not accountability. It is scapegoating. The idea that trauma affects people differently and that some people carry more trauma than others is not heresy in the Catholic Church. It may be already built into catholic moral theology. Claims of heresy arise when trauma is used to erase all moral agency forever or framed as a reason a person can never heal or grow. When people label trauma-informed views as heretical, it comes from a place of rigid moralism, fear of complexity or avoiding institutional accountability. This is culture, politics and abuse of authority. Modern trauma language is new but the original thought that wounds shape the will is not. It’s not heresy. It’s compatible with catholic theology. And denying trauma’s impact would be to deny catholic moral theology. It’s also woven throughout Scripture. It doesn’t use modern clinical language. But it’s clear about woundedness, diminished capacity and mercy. Scripture recognizes that suffering shapes behavior. “A bruised reed he will not break, and a smoldering wick he will not snuff out.” (Isaiah 42:3), “He heals the brokenhearted and binds up their wounds.” (Psalm 147:3). Wounds are real and require healing and care. Not judgement. Biblically, guilt is tied into knowledge and freedom and not just action. God is described as especially attentive to the traumatized. It would be unbiblical to claim trauma makes someone beyond redemption, using God or Scripture to justify harm, blaming victims to preserve religious authority, or demanding tests or confrontations that crush the wounded. Scripture expects that some people are more wounded than others. God adjusts judgement according to knowledge, freedom and injury. Mercy increases where suffering increases. Truth precedes judgement. Recognizing trauma is not unbiblical. Ignoring it is.