Fault Lines: Incest, Sexuality, and Catholic Family Culture

Henry G. MacLeod teaches sociology at both Trent University and the
University of Waterloo.

Fault Lines addresses the interrelationship of incest and sexuality with
Catholic social teachings, family values, and practices. The author,
while acknowledging that incest occurs across all Christian traditions,
is especially concerned about those aspects of Catholic family culture
that promote sexual injustice—including sexual assault, domestic
violence, and incest.

For Langlois, practices endorsed by Catholic family culture support a
gendered division of family labor and a rigid control of sexuality that
contribute to the dominance and subordination of women and children,
leading to the onset and continuation of incest. The existing
patriarchal ideology in the larger society, which itself fosters incest
in Canada, is reinforced by Catholicism’s emphasis on patriarchal
authority.

Langlois uses a case study approach to examine how gender and sexual
relations were socially constructed in eight Catholic families in which
incest occurred. She supplements her individual interviews with focus
group interviews and with content analysis of official Catholic texts on
marriage, family life, and sexuality. Her analysis then draws upon the
feminist sociology of Dorothy Smith and her concept of “lines of
fault.” She shows the ideological character of Catholic family culture
emerging as fault lines in women’s lives. On one side are Catholic
practices; on the other are women’s experiences of oppression. The
idealized Catholic family life depicted in Catholic teachings is at odds
with Catholic families as experienced by incest survivors.

Langlois is primarily concerned with the dimensions of sexual justice
that relate to Catholic family culture, and with overcoming oppressive
gender and sexual relations in both Catholic and non-Catholic families.
Fault Lines contributes significantly to our understanding of the way
Catholic teachings on marriage, sexuality, and family foster sexual
abuse in families. Readers who are familiar with Catholicism will find
this book thought-provoking, women will find the feminist analysis
interesting, and incest survivors will find that they are not alone.