4 American Catholic Studies Our Accountability to Survivors Brian Clites 4 The Pennsylvania grand jury report was published in August 2018. 5 Within the following month, ten states launched new investigations into Catholic clergy sexual abuse, and Pope Francis called an emergency summit of leading bishops from across the globe. Although it is too soon to know whether these reactions will culminate in lasting reforms, it is imperative that scholars of Catholicism begin to think more critically about the scandal, including our complacency as a discipline and our accountability as a community. I began researching clergy sexual abuse in 2011. Those first conversations led me to explore the history of survivor-advocacy communities in Chicago, with a focus on their distinctively Catholic visions for political and ecclesiological reforms. 6 Since the release of the Pennsylvania grand jury report, many colleagues have reached out to discuss how they might begin incorporating the abuse crisis into their own research. I am grateful for this influx of new methodologies and perspectives. With an eye towards encouraging additional conversations, this essay lays out ten theses on our accountability to survivors. 1. We need to listen to the ways that survivors have interpreted their own abuse. Since the 1980s, many Catholic victims have stepped forward to share their private histories of abuse. Frequently, however, the news media has exploited victims’ intimate suffering while ignoring survivors’ analytical insights. In spite of the betrayal that they experienced as children, most survivors still have a keen intellect. In addition to inspiring award-winning films and documentaries, survivors have also produced their own interpretive literature, including numerous blogs, novels, memoirs, and edited volumes. We need to find ways to uplift and support survivors’ voices—not as data, but as co-producers and close conversation partners in our own 4. Brian Clites the Associate Director of the Baker-Nord Center for the Humanities and Instructor of Religious Studies at Case Western Reserve University. His current project, Surviving Soul Murder, is an ethnography of Catholic sexual abuse survivors in Illinois, Massachusetts, and Pennsylvania. 5. The “40th Statewide Investigating Grand Jury, Report 1, Interim – Redacted,” was released publicly by Josh Shapiro, Attorney General of Pennsylvania, on August 14, 2018, https://www.courthousenews.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/08/pa-abuse-report.pdf. 6. For the history of the Chicago’s survivor communities, see Brian Clites, “Breaking the Silence: The Catholic Sexual Abuse Survivor Movement in Chicago,” (PhD diss., Northwestern University, 2015).