The Intersection of Gender-Based Violence and Vulnerance in Pastoral Care

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

The article gives important insights on the connection between abuse and vulnerability in the field of pastoral care. The arguments are compelling. I have only a few minor comments:

One sentence in the third paragraph of 2.3 does not make sense to me, please check if the "with" (p. 3. line 115) is correct.

Please explain why the risk of women to be abused multiplies (p. 6, lines 246-250).

Author Response

Thank you very much for the review, I really appreciate your accurate work. I have included the comments and corrected them in the text.

Reviewer 2 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

The article deals with an important and very sensitive issue; I have read it with great interest and attention; I praise the research done by the author and the fact the author tried to understand some of the factors which led perpetrators to some different forms of abuses. I do not agree with everything said and I placed some comments in the text (please see my comments in the article attached) for the author's consideration.  My general understanding is that the article has been well-researched and referenced with many sources mentioned, however I would like to add the following points:

- The Catholic church went through a series of scandals in relation to abuses, correct, however there are many priests, bishops etc who have not and are not doing it, this should be noted into the article in my opinion, otherwise there is a risk to make people believe that everybody within the Church is behaving incorrectly, which is clearly not the case;

- The article seems to refer specifically to Swiss and German dioceses/cases and this should be pointed clearly as well as the time frame the article is referring to, so that readers are aware of the historical period(s) the author is talking about.

- the article could help to shed some light in relation to specific behaviours/abuses which happened within the Catholic Church, but in order to be scientific in its examination, it should be completed with some statistic analysis, which implicitly could help to place data into general perspective,  at least for Germany and Swiss where the majority of the cases in the article seem to have been taken place. 

- I understand what Pope, Francis I and the Synodal Path refer to in relation to motherhood for women, however women have always held a primary importance within the Catholic church beyond that role, just thinking about the many women who were not mothers but have been proclaimed Saints by the Church because of their work and actions, this should also be considered as a way of comparison in my opinion.

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Author Response

Thank you very much for the review, I really appreciate your accurate work. I have improved what was commented directly in the article.

Comment 1: The Catholic church went through a series of scandals in relation to abuses, correct, however there are many priests, bishops etc who have not and are not doing it, this should be noted into the article in my opinion, otherwise there is a risk to make people believe that everybody within the Church is behaving incorrectly, which is clearly not the case;

Response 1: Thank you for this comment. It's true that not every clergy is an explicit perpretator. That's why I mainly refer to systemic factors that they reveal from the victims' reports. However, I can't change anything at the specific point in the text where you noted it, as it's a verbatim quote that I can't interfere with: (Kohler-Spiegel 2022)

- Comment 2: The article seems to refer specifically to Swiss and German dioceses/cases and this should be pointed clearly as well as the time frame the article is referring to, so that readers are aware of the historical period(s) the author is talking about.

Response 2: Thank you for pointing this out. I agree with this comment. Therefore I have made it clear in the article that even though this text mainly refers to German-speaking countries, it is a worldwide phenomenon.

Comment 3: - the article could help to shed some light in relation to specific behaviours/abuses which happened within the Catholic Church, but in order to be scientific in its examination, it should be completed with some statistic analysis, which implicitly could help to place data into general perspective,  at least for Germany and Swiss where the majority of the cases in the article seem to have been taken place. 

Response 3: Thank you again for pointing this out. I absolutely agree with the need for statistics. Unfortunately, this is exactly one of the main problems, especially in the environment of adult women as victims. This is because there are no valid studies that provide statistical data. The question of statistical analyses is therefore one of the most important research deficits.