Diocese's Darkest Chapter

From its quiet inception in 1988, to a hailstorm of statewide and national controversy over thirty years later, this bookfollowsthe development of public discourse regarding a clergy sexual abuse scandal in a small Catholic Diocese in Central Pennsylvania. Weaving together the evolving local and national narratives, it offers a striking account of how stakeholder rhetoric has influenced public perception of the Catholic abuse crisis inAmerica, and driven public actions. While the book enriches our local knowledge of the tragic--and ongoing--cultural trauma triggered by the revelation of clergy perpetrated abuse in a smallCatholic Diocese, it also makes a critical theoretical contribution to our understanding of the role of rhetoric in publicizing private pain, and galvanizingcollectives to take it on as their own. The process of cultural trauma, Niebauer contends, unfolds through rhetorical forms that provide individuals with a constraining and enabling set of rhetorical choices. Highlighting the recurrentrhetorical forms of narration, kategoria, apologia, and topoi,The Diocese'sDarkestChapterbrings a new vocabulary and explanatory force to the study of cultural trauma, and the Catholic abuse crisis in America.