Clergy Sexual Abuse in the Church: Wound of Forgiveness

Recently I read an essay on clergy sexual abuse in which the phrase “a desire to see the church community healed of its hidden wound” jumped off the page and into my heart. After I said ouch I asked what that wound might be. The first thing that came to mind was forgiveness.

The article, “Spiritual Direction with Women after Sexual Abuse by Clergy” by Spiritual Director Trish McBride, appeared in the March 2010 issue of Presence: International Journal for Spiritual Direction. You can read it with the help of google, the new name for God. It is well informed and and clear that statistics in the U.S. and other countries indicate the problem to be “an occupational hazard that exists not just in the wilds of Africa.”

The article referenced two 2002 letters to the editor of a church newsletter. Both letters referred to a case in which sexual abuse survivors had made accusations to the Church against the pastor of the church, Father X.

First, the response letter, because the phrase that caught my attention appeared in that letter, the author of which on behalf of the Susanna group said that complainants to the Catholic Church about sexual assault/abuse by clergy and religious "usually act from a passion to stop the same thing happening to anyone else, and , if they care, from a desire to see the church community healed of its hidden wound."

Now, the letter to which the group responded. In it the writer raised objections to accusations of sexual abuse against Father X suggesting that the accusers lacked proper maturity, integrity, wisdom and compassion especially since the abuse happened seventeen years ago. The letter writer cited the New Testament phrase from John 8 “let who is without sin cast the first stone.” It further implied that the wounded ones should forgive as they have been forgiven.

This letter made me furious. Christian? Maturity? Whose? The responding letter made me cry.

All this got me going on forgiveness. Forgiveness stands at the center of the Christian gospel. It regularly gets misused, its healing power abused. Let me count the abuses: overuse, superficial (sinful) application, judgmental use and globalizing as above, clichéd cover-ups like “forgive and forget,” hasty use without process, thoughtless sloganeering using biblical quotes out of context as above, and forgiveness used in the service of institutional protectionism to dismiss or cover up crimes committed against the powerless by those in power.

Forgiveness as cover up colludes with the conspiracy of silence about clergy sexual abuse. This abusive use of forgiveness wounds the already wounded. Thus we crucify Christ over and over. Thus we wound the Church itself and its faithful. Thus we wound Jesus and the gift of healing he proffers.

We in the Church are loose-lipped with the most gracious gift God has given to us and calls us to share. Perhaps the worst abusive use of forgiveness is the sin of spiritual arrogance—assuming we can do it ourselves without divine help. Thus we wound even the mercies of God.

How long can this go on? My head spins on its axis like Janus. One side angry the other sad. But it’s all my face, angry and sad at once.

I have chosen and continue to choose to serve and love this damn Christian Church for better or worse. I try to say it's just the Roman Catholic Church. I make excuses for my Episcopal Church because its politics are conciliar; it’s more progressive; and by grace and grit it manages to pull off amazingly inclusive actions of which I’m proud.

But excuses are just excuses. None matter because this kind of abuse goes on in all churches to say nothing of all secular institutions. No one is exempt. More often than not all is “forgiven,” hidden, passed along without consequence except for those who live with unhealed wounds. That, not clergy sexual abuse, is the true hidden wound of the Church.

Whatever happened to repentance another pretty strong Christian teaching? Ignored for some, demanded for others? Forgiveness misused itself becomes a stone, hurled without reflection.

I think of a woman who was sexually abused consistently and in the name of Love for years. She had no power to refuse the seduction from Father XYZ; she grew up never knowing who her biological father was; she prayed regularly to “our Father in heaven...” and then there was the priest called “father.” These three incarnations became scrambled in her mind while she longed for and waited for her real (biological) father to come, the father to whom she would have given her soul. Instead she gave her body. She gave it to an Episcopal priest for nothing and she has never gotten it back. Of course she has her own sins that beg forgiveness. But to name her wound and its perpetrator was not one of her sins.

Making God into a parent, an exclusively male parent, may not be such a good idea. Jesus may have used this term of affection for his God. But today, metaphors like Father are no longer useful.

The sorrowful side of my face weeps for this woman and for so many others. I also weep for priests who are trapped in a system that is impotent in its structures and is too afraid to help them with their own wounds, too fearful in fact to truly forgive them!

My heart also weeps for Jesus and the gift he didn’t just teach but acted out in his life, the gift of forgiveness without condemnation but with a call to faith, to re-grounding in God, in community and in the best of the human self.

How? He suggested prayer and compassion. He suggested that God is the only being with heart-capacity enough to forgive.

It is not ongoing clergy sexual abuse that is the Church’s hidden wound; it is the hidden and unacknowledged abuses against forgiveness. Justice is made a mockery, yes, but that pales next to the abusive uses of forgiveness.

My rant is done. If anyone dares to forgive me for it I have stones.

* * * *

P.S. The letter by the defender of Father X was awarded “letter of the week” by the parish’s editorial staff.
The letter sent in response was not published.

One can only hope that such editorial decisions have not escaped Sophia’s notice and transformation has taken place.

Ashing up on Ash Wednesday

It’s Ash Wednesday, a holy day for Christians, a day when we go to church to get ashes smeared on our foreheads with the words “Remember that you are dust and to dust you shall return.”

Ash Wednesday signals the beginning of the season of Lent, a time for reflection and awareness, giving up excesses and/or taking on life-giving works of some kind. It’s not a bleak, dismal time to be miserable. Lent leads us up to Holy Week and the last days of Jesus’ life on earth, his crucifixion on Good Friday and Easter, fifty days to recognize resurrection, new life in flowers, births, healings and simple smiles where there were frowns.

For some of us it takes more than fifty days to digest the idea that there is a God who loves and cares about you and who brings life out of death of any kind.

Back in the eighties and nineties when I worked in Connecticut in a big city hospital and then in an alcohol/drug rehabilitation facility I used to take ashes to work with me just in case. . . Just in case? People came out of the woodwork, sought me out, spotted me walking down the hall, swarmed. They had a passion for ashes. I was swamped. I could easily have advertised a drive-by ashing station and accepted little donations for the chaplaincy program.

I was astounded and exhausted, turned into ash myself by the end of the day. Imagine such a day being popular! I thought it must have been the times. Back then the Church and its rituals were more in vogue. But a chaplain friend in the Boston area told me that the same thing was going on today. Ashes, ashes. She felt practically assaulted with the demand and her ash supply nearly ran out.

What’s it all about?

Ash Wednesday is a day in which we recognize and acknowledge our mortality, one of life’s few indisputable guaranteed facts. Human beings are vulnerable. We grow old and die. We have limitations, need a day to remember that we are not divine, not Godde.

That fact is a duh. But why is it so meaningful to remind ourselves of that fact? Why do people need those ashes, ashes from the burned palms of last year’s Palm Sunday, the day Jesus rode into Jerusalem full of life and vigor to preach his vision and ended up on his way to trial, condemnation and crucifixion.

I don’t know why this day above all others, this ritual above all the Church's one-day remembrances, commands such attention, such need. I wonder if it is because the secret at the heart of so many, at least in developed Western cultures, is that we really do harbor the illusion that we’re immortal, invulnerable, godlike and can do anything we want, as if the old hymn “How Great Thou Art” were written for and about us.

No one would ever tell such a secret for fear of being thought arrogant. But I wonder if in this culture the belief that we are great has, after years of therapy, affirmations, depression meds, and positive re-frames, finally replaced a former secret, we are unworthy?

Maybe during Lent we could reflect on the possibility of our own arrogance, our own successes and prides. Give up success for Lent. Not to put down or shame, just to put things in the right balance. Such a humble undertaking could be the beginning and the end of soul-gratitude— a deep bow, not a quick nod.

* * * *

Someone just asked me what giving up success for Lent would look like. I could only tell her what it means to me which is making a concerted effort and focus in my daily prayer/meditation time not to allow anxious thoughts about one day getting my memoir published to flood my heart and head and give me a virtual stroke.

I do this by copying how Jesus prayed in Gethsemane: praise and trust (Abba, for you all things are possible,) stating his own will and desire (remove this cup from me,) letting it go in trust to God (Yet not what I want but what you want.) An honest prayer. Jesus doesn't get what he wants; he dies anyway but Godde raises him up. His life lives on. His failure becomes success.

My issue is penny ante compared to Jesus' but I pray something like: Dear Godde I love you. You know more than I do.Here I am again. I want my memoir to get published and I want to stop worrying about it so I can write the thing well. Please help me. I'm trying to trust your greater deeper power in me. Is trying enough? I love you. AMEN.

My brain allows this to last about five minutes but it also allows me to reaffirm my intention and turn back to Godde—usually with a laugh instead of a tear or a guilt pang.

Godde's Valentines

Valentines come in many ways. But I remember being nervous when the day was honored in school. Did I get one for everyone? Should I stuff several extra ones in the boxes of favorite people. True loves? How many will I get? What if I don’t get at least the same number as the number of students in my class? Someone doesn’t love me? Do I have to give one to her?

Love can make you a nervous wreck. You can get heart trouble over it. That’s because you need love to live.

Godde’s valentines aren’t competitive; they are all over the place; they are available to anyone who can notice. You find them in the oddest places. They are the ones that say Love isn’t dead, neither am I. Notice and live.

I’m retiring, leaving. I’m sad because I will miss the love I have had here in work and play, people and landscape. I’m glad because I will have more time to write, have fun in the city, lunch long, read, actually have seated conversations with my husband, see kids and grandkids, get older and maybe nap. In fact I will be doing just what I do now only with more leisure and freedom.

Good byes mean loss of love to me. How many farewell discourses are attributed to Jesus in the New Testament? Full of reassurances and last minute brush-ups on the gospel message. The final I love yous. Is this the early church bolstering itself up, grieving, worrying about who will love them now? Mmmhmmm.

For almost every weighty good bye, one that has love in it, there is a proposed plan to “keep in touch” call and write, visit. We are sure we will keep our promises and usually we don’t. Not because we don’t want to but because we get captured by another phase of life and we keep moving.

Preparation for all this leaving makes me both vulnerable to love loss and extra sensitive to and appreciative of its presence. Just calling the phone company to terminate my office service I felt loved, cared for when a person called Claire spoke to me for real. “I’ll connect you with the disconnection department," she said. Immediately I was on hold, tortured by a most unappealing repertoire of music.
Love went away.

The disconnection department! A paradox of the day. Do we need to be disconnected electronically to realize how much we need to be connected in the flesh?

A man spoke to the officer in the bank. He had forgotten his PIN number. “I know it. I tried it a couple of times and the machine didn’t work.” The officer brought up his transactions on the computer. “Well, sir, it looks like you made a number of stabs at it.” She showed him, not a trace of sarcasm in her voice or eyes. He roared with laughter. “Must be twenty or more tries there!” They laughed. “I’ll reset the PIN and the machine for you, sir.”

A friend told me recently that he'd complained to his therapist that his wife asked him to do things in a critical way. It turned him off, made him resentful. The therapist said he understood completely. “When my wife speaks it’s like God to me. But sometimes I just don’t like the tone.”

National Grid has been installing new and safer gas pipes on our street. For weeks. Bulldozers sleep here. Sometimes we have to park up the road. “I’m so sorry about all this inconvenience,” the worker, covered with grease and looking exhausted, said with a smile.

I’m noticing such little divine Valentines all over the place. Simple easy reassurance that love is everywhere if you notice. It always connects you with truth, often brings laughter or tears. It makes you grow even if you’re only observing.

Okay, I’m needy and sentimental. So?

Happy Valentines Day.

Out of the Rolling Ocean the Crowd by Walt Whitman

Out of the Rolling Ocean the Crowd
by Walt Whitman

Out of the rolling ocean the crowd came a drop gently
to me,
Whispering, I love you, before long I die,
I have travell'd a long way merely to look on you to
touch you,
For I could not die till I once look'd on you,
For I fear'd I might afterward lose you.

Now we have met, we have look'd, we are safe,
Return in peace to the ocean my love,
I too am much of that ocean, my love, we are not so
much separated,
Behold the great rondure, the cohesion of all, how
perfect!
But as for me, for you, the irresistible sea is to separate
us,
As for an hour carrying us diverse, yet cannot carry us
diverse forever;
Be not impatient — a little space — know you I salute
the air, the ocean and the land,
Every day at sundown for your dear sake, my love.

A poem ahead of its time. An quantum image of interconnectiveness science has now proclaimed. An ancient idea that describes the boundaryless oceanic love of Divinity. A truth revered and expressed in many different ways in all religions and spiritualities.

Now is the time for all good people not to get hooked on what disconnects and separates us but to pay attention to what connects us. Things like love, fear, hope, grief, doubt, humor, ego, humanity, anger, sweet flesh and suffering flesh, and a sense of something greater and deeper, more powerful and able than we are.

A House Divided

It’s the morning after the election to fill the senate seat left vacant by the death of Senator Edward M. Kennedy, “Teddy.” All I can think of is the biblical phrase in the mouth of Jesus: "A house divided against itself cannot stand.: (Mark 3:25)

Is America that house?

In a heavily Democratic state (Massachusetts), devoted supposedly to progressive liberal politics and the common good for all, the likely candidate to win this election was Attorney General Martha Coakley. She lost to conservative Republican Scott Brown. Why?

I passed a station wagon yesterday with its rear door up and open to expose a sign propped against the seat on which was written in bold black letters: “The People Against the Machine.” I wondered if the subtext was “the people against the people.” Who/what/which the machine? Who/what/which the people?

Thirty plus years ago I changed my political party registration from Republican to Democrat. I snuck into the town hall furtively watching for my staunch Republican father around every corner. I switched my party allegiance because I thought the Democratic party platform more closely aligned to my Christian values, my biblical values. I thought Jesus would have voted to the left. Moses, the liberator, too.

Now I don’t know where and in whom those values live—values that trust in the elective process to elect government officials who will carve out policies that reduce the division between rich and poor, haves and have nots, a government willing to tax in order that those with wealth will provide some tax dollars for those who have less opportunity either by chance, bad luck, illness or even sloth, a government that really does represent a people who really do believe in and respect the dignity and worth of all human persons and the whole created universe.

I do not think either candidate in this election was particularly stellar (part of the problem), but I thought Coakley more qualified to continue the legacy of Teddy who, in a lifelong effort to make amends for a life run wild resulting in part in the death of Mary Jo Kopechne, worked steadfastly with both innocence and wiliness to shape U.S. government policies in favor of the common not the particular good.

I admire President Obama though I voted for Hillary Clinton. Obama came to Boston to rally support for Coakley. He stuck his political neck out. Many say it was a bad move, one that would hurt his reputation. Why did he do it? Lots of reasons, chief among them the need for a favorable vote on his stalled health care plan. But I think he did it because he’s a nice man, willing to risk his own beloved neck. To be in politics today you have to be nasty or at least more nasty than nice and you have to be tough-skinned and bloody. Not a nice climate. What's the difference between courage and brash disregard? Dangerous spirituality.

I fear this vote was a vote of no confidence against Obama. But is it no confidence or is it fear? If so fear of what? I fear the return of conservative and exclusivizing ways that compartmentalize people and create a climate in which hate crimes can thrive. Less government is one thing; no government is another.

Government is needed just as parents are needed to guide and with benevolence guard the civilization and its citizenry from themselves. I’ve seen the movie and read Goldings book, “The Lord of the Flies.” How much freedom is too much? Freedom can run wild.

Today I mourn for what seems like our reactive, get-even inflamed polis. People are voting for change, any change. Is there thought? Is there prayer? Is there informed reading? If it is ‘us vs. them,’ who are they? Do people vote like match on flint? I weep for Teddy whose devotion to justice with compassion for all marked his career. I weep for other heroes who lived the same: Ghandi, Martin Luther King, Deitrich Bonhoeffer, Jesus, Moses, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Catherine Macauley, the biblical prophet Deborah, Rosa Parks, and frankly, every woman, man and child willing to sacrifice and give a little something so more can have a little something.

In Jesus’ day there were many parties all of them lobbying for political/religions power and all of them hawking their own particular and limited view of Divinity. Jesus came on the scene hawking a particular view of humanity—that all are sacred and all are invited into the unimaginable, resilient, inexhaustible, everlasting grace of God. He wanted us to honor that grace in each other and behave accordingly. We killed him and others like him— and forgot.

I remember. I remember that, by the mysterious mix of divine grace and human good willingness, there are very nice people in this country and in the world.

I have no answers, just thoughts, feelings, pained questions—also another remembrance: that the long slow work of God through Spirit is just that— long and slow—always moving toward greater good by passing through periods of instability, including I suppose "divided houses."

What do you remember?

Boundaryhood and Brother/Sisterhood:Temple Tears

It was my oldest daughter’s birthday recently. She is forty-seven, beautiful, brilliant, political activist and feminist and mother of two daughters, thirteen and ten, who are equally winsome. I love them all.

I remember my nervousness about being a new mother, feeling scared of her infant power, adoring her with equal zeal. I remember wondering: Who is she? Who am I? Today I give thanks that most days I know who she is and who I am.

Boundary issues abound.

I also remember when a second daughter was born just 14 months later. I watched the intensity with which the sisters drew boundaries, staked claims and marked territories. They grew up and into a world of love, rivalry and boundaries—just as we all do.
It was also my oldest grandson’s birthday recently. He is seven, beautiful, sensitive, bright. I watch him and his little sister, four, do their boundary dance balancing war and peace with amazing grace.

Nations do no less than families and are still warring about territories and properties and who owns what. If you want someone else’s property you have to conquer it, or steal it. Just watch small children with their toys. Fierce.

In most churches, families and communities we teach and model compassion, sharing, brother and sisterhood more than any other values. We also teach the importance of having good boundaries so we can tell where we leave off and another begins and just how much personal space each needs for self and allows for the other. Life is demarcation and détente over and over.

Do we ever wonder about thinking, acting, living, loving outside the boundary?

In Hebrew legend there is a question: How did God choose the particular plot of land in Jerusalem where the Temple would be built? This parable is told.

There were two brothers who grew up together on the family farm. They lived there as adults, partners in the farming of one large field and sharing its produce. One brother we'll call A had a large family. The other brother we'll call Z had no family. A decided that Z had no family and should get more than half of the share of the resources from the field. So each night he went out after midnight to move the boundary of the field after the harvest so Z would have a bit more. Z, realizing he had no family responsibility had decided that A had so many responsibilities he should have more than half the crops, so he went out each night just before midnight to move the field's boundary so A would have more. This went on for a while but neither brother received more of the produce. They were puzzled at the mystery. One night A went out earlier and Z went out a little later so they arrived at the field to move the boundary at the same time. When they realized what had happened they fell weeping on each other's shoulders. The Temple was built on the spot where their tears fell because the essence of Temple is the ability to expand your boundary to include your wider self which includes everyone and everything else, and the width, breadth and depth of God. Tears wash away boundaries and therefore where Temple is built shows that all compassion and kindness are rooted in our radical interconnection.

Do you have a boundary you would like to move, seek to dissolve, strengthen? In yourself? With a neighbor or loved one? with Godde?

The Woman Who Named God by Charlotte Gordon

I recommend HIGHLY a book by Charlotte Gordon. The Woman Who Named God. It is biblical scholarship at its best and also story at its best—a rare combination.

Gordon blends exegesis ( biblical text analysis and interpretation,) narrative (just plain story and literary analysis,) and midrash ( a Jewish method of using creative imagination to plum a biblical story for its hidden meanings, its emotional nuances and its spiritual and theological significance, often buried in the words themselves.) The author weaves these three approaches together seamlessly with beauty and skill.

I love this book and plan to read it again. Of course the Bible is my thing. I love it for its wisdom and its story. The Old Testament is a particular favorite, not just because of my partial Jewish heritage, but because you’ll never find better more complex lusty stories than these. Probably every human experience ever visited on humanity is there and all of it is sacred.

The invitation to and definition of my professional pastoral counseling and spiritual direction practice is: “All Human Experience is Sacred.” The Bible tells me so. I give my heart to that truth and try as much as I’m able to live it as if I believed it.

Gordon’s vision and what she attempts to do, and I think does, is to make this book an instrument of peace. The book shows that there is no scriptural justification in the Hebrew texts for Jewish/Christian/Muslim animosity or warring. Quite a remarkable achievement I think.

Charlotte Gordon lives in Gloucester, MA. She grew up as an Episcopalian. Her dad was Jewish and converted. As an adult Charlotte became fascinated by the Jewish faith and converted. (See how we all are one!) Gordon learned Hebrew and Aramaic just to do this book. I'm impressed with her commitment, patience and zeal, to say nothing of her intelligence. She is also a lovely speaker, talking with wisdom and piercing clarity about her passion for the Bible and for religious peace.

The chapters and not long or ponderous and they are titled. Notes expand on certain texts for the nosey or diligent among us. The prose has an easy but not unsophisticated flow. There's even a chapter on Jesus coming for dinner in the desert! The book follows the ancient call and vocation of Abraham, no easy faith his. The woman who names God is Hagar. The Abrahamic family dynamic is the psychological lens through which scripture works out the nuances of overt animosity and comes to peace. God is a character in the story, an active player on the stage.

Gordon’s style is light, humorous, her prose not polemical or with "attitude." This book is clothed in compassion and has the potential to convert even the most stubbornly partisan to a more wholistic inclusive but spiritually grounded point of view.

Which reminds me of a quote I heard and know not from whence it comes. Something like, I know the voice of God in my head because it is the voice which is abundantly compassionate to everyone concerned. That is one way to describe this book.