For decades, the Roman Catholic Church has searched for an answer to one devastating question: why do some priests sexually abuse children while others, formed in the very same seminaries and religious communities, do not?
Dr. John Tourangeau — a priest, licensed clinical social worker, and organization development scholar — set out to answer it directly. For his doctoral research, he recruited forty American Catholic clergy in four matched groups: diocesan and religious-order priests, offenders and non-offenders, formed at the same time under similar circumstances, and asked each one to tell his life story in his own words.
What emerged is the first study of its kind: a sociological portrait of how family background, seminary formation, group culture, institutional secrecy, and organizational leadership combine over a lifetime to shape the men who become priests — and, in a tragic few, the men who go on to abuse. Tourangeau moves beyond individual pathology to expose the group, organizational, and environmental conditions that dioceses and religious orders must confront if they are serious about protecting children and restoring trust in the priesthood.
Written with a scholar's rigor and a priest's pastoral heart, What Makes Them Who They Are gives survivors, Church leaders, formators, clinicians, and researchers a clearer, more complete understanding of clergy sexual abuse — and identifies where the Church's own systems must still change.
For anyone committed to child safety and the healing of the Church, this groundbreaking research is essential reading.