From “Wicked Crisis” to Responsive Witness: Jean-Luc Marion and the American Roman Catholic Sexual-Abuse Scandal

This article uses the work of Jean-Luc Marion to explore the Roman Catholic sexual-abuse scandal in the United States, perhaps the most damaging crisis in American religious history. We argue that Marion’s phenomenological philosophy, particularly his notion of responsive witness, extends crisis communication theory by providing resources to help institutions like the Catholic Church facing what we call wicked crisis—events so intractable and threatening that they leave even the best leaders speechless and the most prepared organizations grasping for answers. While nothing can “fix” wicked crisis, responsive witness offers organizations experiencing such situations another possibility: an opportunity to become what they always should have been.