Vatican City, 26 November, 2024 / 1:40 pm (ACI Africa).
The Vatican may make “spiritual abuse” a formalized crime in Church law, rather than merely an aggravating circumstance of other crimes.
The Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith (DDF) is forming a working group with the Dicastery for Legislative Texts with “the task of analyzing this possibility and presenting concrete proposals” on the matter, according to a paper from the doctrine office dated Nov. 22 and posted online this week.
According to the note, which was signed by DDF Prefect Cardinal Víctor Manuel Fernández and approved by Pope Francis, the term "false mysticism" is an "overly broad and ambiguous expression" in need of refining in certain contexts in the Church.
The term appears in the DDF’s regulations related to “problems and behavior connected with the discipline of the faith, such as cases of pseudo-mysticism, alleged apparitions, visions, and messages attributed to supernatural origin,” the note observes.
The expression “false mysticism” is also sometimes used by canon lawyers in the context of crimes of abuse, though it is currently not a delict, or crime, according to canon law, the document said.
