By Magdalena Sanchez 
In the first article of this series, we addressed the silence of seminaries as a pastoral problem: pastors who arrive at the pulpit without the tools needed to support people wounded by abuse, domestic violence, or trauma. This void is not an administrative accident nor a simple thematic omission; it is rooted in the curriculum. What seminaries teach—and, above all, what they choose not to teach—directly shapes the way pastors and leaders will respond, years later, to a woman who arrives battered, to a child who discloses abuse, or to a victim who can barely name the harm that has been done to her. Academic silence gradually becomes pastoral silence. And that silence wounds.
Theological education is not made up only of courses and syllabi. It is also shaped of absences. The absence of systematic training in trauma, domestic violence, spiritual abuse, power dynamics analysis, and an ethic of care is not neutral; it is a form of ideological selection. Paulo Freire reminded us that there is no innocent education; every form of teaching transmits a particular vision of the world and of human relationships.¹ When a seminary curriculum focuses almost exclusively on exegesis, systematic theology, church history, and homiletics—all important areas—but leaves out the concrete suffering of violated bodies, it is silently saying: “this is not part of theology.” That unspoken message may never appear as an explicit sentence, but it becomes inscribed in the minds and hearts of students as a hierarchy: doctrine above, pain below; orthodoxy at the center, victims at the margins.
This kind of curriculum functions as a “hidden curriculum”: a subterranean layer of formation in which what is not mentioned appears not to exist, and what does not exist in the classroom rarely exists in the pulpit. Elsa Támez has warned that the silence of religious institutions in the face of injustice is not neutral; it is part of the structural violence that sustains oppressive systems.² Transposed to the academic sphere, that silence means that the experiences of those who have suffered abuse are not considered a legitimate locus for doing theology, nor a necessary source for pastoral formation. The consequence is serious: seminaries that produce leaders capable of debating the Christology of the councils, yet incapable of holding the gaze of a survivor who recounts abuse that occurred within the very church itself.
Added to this problem is a deeply ingrained artificial separation within the theological formation: the division between “theological” and “psychological” or “clinical.” In many Latin American seminaries, speaking about trauma, cycles of violence, attachment, dissociation, or depression is perceived as foreign, “secular” territory—belonging to psychology or social work, not to theology. This boundary, sometimes defended with language of “doctrinal purity,” excludes precisely the tools that could help people understand what happens within them when they have been harmed. Judith Herman has shown how trauma disorganizes memory, the body, and basic trust in the world.³ If a pastor or minister has never heard the word “trauma” even once during their formation, it is likely that, when encountering a person fragmented by violence, they will interpret that suffering as lack of faith, rebellion, hardness of heart, or “spiritual bondage.” It is not that they are cruel by nature; it is that they were formed within a theology that never entered into dialogue with the accumulated knowledge about human trauma.
From this separation emerges a dangerously reduced pastoral practice: prayer is offered where safety should be guaranteed; a verse is quoted where authorities should be contacted; forgiveness is demanded when it would be ethically necessary to name the harm and establish boundaries. Nancy Ramsay and other pastoral theologians have insisted that Christian care, if it is to be truly evangelical, must take seriously the psychic and social complexity of human suffering. ⁴ A pastoral practice that ignores these dimensions is not “more spiritual”; it is more fragile and, often, more harmful.
The curriculum that remains silent is also marked by patriarchy. Most programs of study were designed by men, in male-dominated contexts, primarily to form men. The experiences of women, girls, and feminized bodies are virtually absent from the theology taught as “normative.” Marcela Lagarde has pointed out that what is not named does not exist in the symbolic space of a culture.⁵ If, over four or five years of theological formation, a student never encounters serious reflection on domestic violence, sexual abuse, or ecclesial harassment, nor finds authors who address these issues within the curriculum, the message received is that these pains are not theological matters—perhaps “pastoral” in a vague sense, but not central to the mission of the church. And yet, in the concrete reality of our communities, these are precisely the pains that most profoundly destroy trust, faith, and life.
Ivone Gebara has denounced the profoundly abstract character of certain theologies that speak of the “human being” in general, but never say “battered woman,” “abused child,” “exploited migrant,” or “domestic worker without rights.”⁶ That abstraction is not innocent: it erases concrete bodies, erases specific histories, and with them erases the possibility of hearing God through those experiences. When a seminary teaches a theology detached from the body, it silences those whose bodies bear the marks of abuse. A patriarchal curriculum not only makes harm invisible; it also protects the structures that generate and conceal it.
The pastoral consequences of this academic silence are tangible. Consider a scene that repeats itself far too often: a woman approaches her pastor and confides that her husband humiliates her, controls her, coerces her sexually, and has pushed or struck her on multiple occasions. The pastor—formed in a seminary where gender violence was never discussed and the cycle of abuse never analyzed—responds from the only framework he knows: a handful of verses about marriage, forgiveness, and the cross. He asks her to be patient, to pray more, to be “prudent” and not “exaggerate”; perhaps he invites her to “submit to the spiritual leadership” of her husband. From the outside, the horror of this counsel is evident. From within, it is the logical outcome of a curriculum that never taught that pastor how to identify abuse, how to distinguish between conflict and violence, or how to protect life above the appearance of family unity.
The same occurs with children who disclose inappropriate touching by a “spiritual leader,” or with young people who report psychological manipulation. When pastoral formation does not include tools to listen, discern, and validate victims’ testimonies, the first reaction is often suspicion, silence, or institutional self-defense. The “good image” of the church is prioritized over the care of vulnerable bodies. In this way, the curricular void becomes pastoral violence. It is not only what the pastor or minister “does not know”; it is what victims pay for with their mental health, their faith, and, in extreme cases, their lives.
From the perspective of liberation theology, this silence reveals where theological formation actually stands in practice. Gustavo Gutiérrez insisted that theology arises from the historical praxis of the liberation of the oppressed.⁷ If the reality of millions of abused women and
children does not enter the classroom as a theological locus, if their suffering is not studied nor a serious pastoral response developed, theological formation in practice aligns itself with the established order—even if its discourse speaks of justice and mercy. It is not enough to preach “God is on the side of those who suffer” if seminaries continue to organize knowledge as though that suffering did not exist.
Breaking this silence requires far more than adding an optional course on “counseling” or “family.” It demands a profound transformation of the curriculum and, with it, of the very identity of pastoral formation. It means recognizing that trauma, violence, spiritual abuse, and power dynamics are not peripheral topics, but realities central to the life of communities. It entails integrating into the heart of the curriculum an ethic of care, a gender perspective, trauma literacy, critical analysis of patriarchal structures, and serious engagement with the human sciences. Leonardo Boff has described care as a fundamental ethical category without which the fabric of life is torn. ⁸ To train pastors without an ethic of care is to train pastors who, without intending to, may become complicit in systems that destroy people.
At the same time, this transformation requires re-examining who teaches and from where they teach. Abuse cannot be addressed only from theory; it is necessary to open spaces for theologians, psychologists, survivors, and specialists to accompany the formative process. Nancy Pineda-Madrid has shown how theological reflection changes when it takes seriously the concrete suffering of women murdered in Ciudad Juárez.⁹ Something similar must occur in seminaries: allowing the experiences of victims to enter the classroom—not as anecdotes to illustrate sermons, but as theological loci that question, destabilize, and reorient our understanding of God, the church, and ministry.
Ultimately, what is at stake is not merely the academic quality of a program of study, but the fidelity of Christian ministry to the One who said he came “that they may have life and have it abundantly.” Curricular silence is not a technical problem; it is a spiritual one. What seminaries silence, churches carry for generations. And those who bear the highest cost are always the same: women, girls, children, impoverished persons, racialized bodies—those whose vulnerability is exploited because those who should protect them were never trained to see them, hear them, or believe them.
For this reason, this series is not a simple critical exercise; it is a call to academic and pastoral conversion. As long as the curriculum remains silent, abuse will continue to find refuge in our temples. The challenge is clear: either seminaries break the silence and become spaces where one learns to care, to listen, and to protect, or they will continue—however unwillingly—to be part of the problem. At this moment in history, we can no longer afford to look away.
This analysis of the silenced curriculum leads us inevitably to the next question: what happens within theology itself when human pain is excluded from the classroom? In the next essay, we will explore how certain forms of theological teaching—abstract, dehumanized, and disconnected from the body—end up spiritualizing suffering and normalizing abuse. If Blog 2 addressed what is missing from the curriculum, Blog 3 will address what is excessive: a theology that, without intending to, can become an ally of violence.
References
- Paulo Freire, Pedagogía del oprimido (México: Siglo XXI, 1970).
- Elsa Támez, Contra toda condena: la justificación por la fe desde los excluidos (San José: DEI, 1991).
- Judith Herman, Trauma and Recovery (New York: Basic Books, 1992).
- Nancy J. Ramsay, Pastoral Care and Counseling: Redefining the Paradigms (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 2004).
- Marcela Lagarde, Los cautiverios de las mujeres (México: UNAM, 1990).
- Ivone Gebara, Romper el silencio: una fenomenología feminista del mal (Santander: Sal Terrae, 2000).
- Gustavo Gutiérrez, Teología de la liberación: Perspectivas (Lima: CEP, 1971).
- Leonardo Boff, El cuidado esencial: Ética de lo humano, compasión por la Tierra (Madrid: Trotta, 2002).
- Nancy Pineda-Madrid, Suffering and Salvation in Ciudad Juárez (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2011).