Paradigm Shift: What Happens When Catholics Apologize With Epilogue -- mostly (except the epilogue)rerun from early 2010 with Ep

On the second Saturday of January 2008, at Ascesnion Catholic Church a parish staffed by Franciscan priests, Steve Fearing found support for healing and reconciliation from Compassionate Gathering, our mixed group of clergy abuse survivors and other Catholics.  Steve, a slight man with curly, gray hair, was abused during his early teens by a Franciscan priest.  Until he came to Compassionate Gathering, Steve struggled mostly alone to heal himself.

  

Gatherings are held almost every month and often included the Franciscan pastor of Ascension, Fr. Armando Lopez.  In January 2008, Gathering participants discussed the Sackcloth Penance Patch, a way ordinary Catholics can apologize to survivors of clergy abuse.  We composed a letter to send to other parishes to tell them about the Patch.  Everyone’s input was elicited.  Fr. Armando, who was present, acted as a co-equal with Steve and other survivors and parishioners.

On the second Saturday of February 2008, Steve returned to Ascension to share his story with Compassionate Gathering. 

After Steve finished speaking, Fr. Armando spoke, “Married couples come to me for counseling.  When they first come to my office, they say to each other, ‘I hate you; I want to kill you.’”

Fr. Armando held up his hands, his right hand facing his left, and cupped them in imitation of two people shouting at each other.

Fr. Armando went on, “I tell them to speak from the heart.  Within twenty minutes they say to each other, ‘I love you; I need you.’”

      

Then Fr. Armando turned towards Steve, “We priests have to humble ourselves and speak from the heart and apologize for the abuse.  I’m sorry.”

  

Fr. Armando and Steve rose from their chairs and stepped forward to hug each other.

      

Steve said, “Father, this is the first time I’ve hugged a priest or called anyone ‘Father’ other than my own father in a very long time.”

  

Other Catholics approached Steve and hugged him too.  Tears trickled down the cheeks of a white haired Catholic grandmother.

  

“This is so beautiful,” she said.

After Fr. Armando departed, Steve said, “I wish I had told him that I love him.”

  

Weeks later Fr. Armando confided, “It was wonderful to meet Steve and say ‘I’m sorry’ in the name of my Brother who abused him.  It was wonderful that Steve responded with a warm embrace.  That touched my heart.”

  

Until now the paradigm has been that clergy abuse survivors could only trust other survivors to believe and support them.  Compassionate Gathering changes that paradigm.  Elizabeth Goeke, a clergy abuse survivor, and I co-founded Compassionate Gathering.  We support survivors and bring them together with other Catholics for mutual healing and understanding using the discipline of Compassionate Listening as developed by The Compassionate Listening Project. Without this discipline, Catholics risk wounding survivors with critical comments. We dedicate each Gathering to listening to the story of one survivor.  Steve’s turn came in February.

 

Steve grew up in a devout Irish Catholic family.  His mother felt honored when her parish priest visited her son.  She trusted the priest and never checked to see what the two were doing.  She never questioned what happened when her son stayed over Saturday night with the priest before serving as an altar boy on Sunday morning.

  

Steve’s struggles were the usual ones--drug and alcohol abuse, broken marriages, difficulty trusting other men....

  

For years the priest wrote Steve letters begging to see him again.  Steve never dreamt there were others.  But when Steve’s daughter was twelve, the age at which the priest started abusing him, Steve met a childhood acquaintance in a bar.  The man revealed to Steve that he had been abused by that same priest. Steve knew the priest was still in ministry.

  

Steve started thinking, What if there are others?  What if the priest is still abusing?  How can I look into the faces of other parents and do nothing to keep their children safe?

  

So Steve came forward.  The local Catholic archdiocese paid for Steve to see a therapist.  Over time Steve came to trust his therapist.  After Steve was arrested for Driving While Intoxicated, his therapist advised him to seek drug and alcohol treatment.  Steve asked the archdiocese to pay for treatment too.  The archdiocese offered Steve a financial settlement instead.  Steve felt the need to make a point that the Church should do more to care for survivors, so he sued. The archdiocese fought Steve’s lawsuit for nine years.  Those years were painful.  A trip to the Middle East took Steve through Rome.  Despite the abuse and the lawsuit, fond feelings for the church of his childhood still stirred Steve’s heart.

  

He didn’t know when he would be in Rome again, so he visited the Vatican.  He wandered around looking at art and architecture and found himself in a room filled with confessionals.  There were confessionals for people who spoke Greek. There were confessionals for people who spoke Italian or French or Spanish or German.  And there were confessionals for people who spoke English.

  

Steve longed to tell his story to a priest, to be told that he was cared about and everything would be made right.  He longed for reconciliation with the Catholic Church.  So Steve stepped into a confessional to tell his story.

The priest asked Steve, “Are you receiving the sacraments at a Catholic Church right now?”

  

“No,” answered Steve.

  

“Then I can’t hear your confession.”

  

But Fr. Armando listened.  Our Compassionate Gathering of survivors and other Catholics listened.  I reflected back to Steve the facts of his story.

  

“Virginia, you tell my story better than I do,” Steve said.

Another Catholic parishioner said to Steve “I look at you as the Christ among us because you have suffered.”.

  

Steve replied, “You all have given me so much love.  I can take that love and give it to other people.”

  

Elizabeth Goeke started crying.

  

“We clergy abuse survivors have been told we are only welcome in the Catholic Church if we remain silent.  We are on Holy Ground here.  I am so honored to be a part of this.”

  

We ordinary Catholics find the anger and pain of survivors difficult to listen to.  We fear losing our churches and schools to clergy abuse lawsuits.  We can’t believe the priests we loved abused children.  We can’t believe the bishops who lead us covered up abuse, protected priests, and failed to care for survivors.  We can’t believe that such abuses continue today.

We think, Why can’t survivors forgive, forget and move on?

  

When we express these sentiments, we unwittingly silence survivors of clergy abuse and drive them away from us.  The resulting isolation survivors feel--the sense of being uncared for and disbelieved--wounds survivors even more deeply than the abuse itself.  But when we Catholics change the paradigm, when we listen compassionately to survivors, when we support survivors, when we apologize sincerely, survivors begin the journey to forgiveness and reconciliation.  And we Catholics find ourselves transformed and uplifted by the experience.

Virginia Pickles can be contacted at compassion500@gmail.com.

Epilogue from 2015:  The Catholic Church never embraced these efforts.  Nor did the lawyers for survivors or the advocacy groups for survivors.  I remember being told by Church and groups that they were waiting for the right person to come forward.  I don't know if they are still waiting.  I know how to bring survivors of clergy abuse together with other Catholics for mutual understanding and mutual healing, but neither side really wants that. There are good efforts going on here and there, but no organized effort of any scale exists anywhere that I know of.  I write this after a Syrian child has died on the shore after drowning on an unsafe passage as a refugee from strife in Syria.  People start wars, maybe for good reasons but this war evolved into senseless slaughter.  Abuse goes on in the Catholic Church.  What we are doing now does work to reduce abuse but it does not end it.  The only way to end it is to change hearts and minds.  You cannot do this through guns.  You cannot do that through verbal violence.  I met people in the Catholic Church who do bad things and make bad choices.  I met many good people who want to do good, but don't know what to do and are scared off by strong language and anger and pain.  Compassionate Listening as taught by The Compassionate Listening Project, Non-violent communication, and Dialectical Behavioral Therapy are all valuable tools for healing.  The heal relationships through calming the self and improving listening and speaking skills.  I left the Catholic Church.  I tried and tried and tried.  There were good priests, but in general the church leadership was more interested in sabotaging my efforts than in embracing them.  I still know a number of clergy abuse survivors.  I see good in their movement and wish them well.