The Garden of Roses: Stories of Abuse and Healing

My television is hooked up to my Mac Mini as a computer monitor. I guess we could watch television if we really wanted to, but we'd have to disconnect some wires and reconnect others. So we don't watch television. And if we did have our television positioned to be able to watch it, I don't subscribe to cable. I have this thing about Comcast. I have an allergy to giving them money. I prefer to use my money spending quality time with my children and to giving support to survivors of abuse. Well, anyway, to get to the point, I was reading the Huffington Post online and their front page story was Jon Stewart's show on 911 First Responders and how congress voted down compensation for 911 responders who suffered health problems.  The article contained a link to Jon Stewart's show, and I watched Jon Stewart drop his humor and interview some first responders who have lost their health and how they felt about congress voting down benefits for them and others like th...

On Monday, December 6, 2010, Elizabeth Geoke, a survivor of an assault by a priest that foreshortened her career as a nun will do something she might have done if she had remained a nun.  She will lead an Icon Labyrinth Walk to begin the Advent season.  Elizabeth’s journey to this event has not been an easy one. In 2002, almost 40 years after leaving her religious life, Elizabeth returned to her former Mother House. Another former nun asked her, Of all the young nuns, I thought you were the most likely to remain a nun.  What happened?” “Well, that was the year I was stationed away from the Mother House,” Elizabeth replied thinking about the reasons she left her order and the Catholic Church, “And then there was the fact that I was abused by a priest.” On Christmas Eve that year when she was still a novice nun, not yet professed to her final vows, her confessor told her that he had a right to her body.  She fought him off but became bruised and bloodied in the process...

The conventional wisdom has been that survivors of Catholic clergy abuse could only rely on other survivors for support and belief, so we worried what would happen when we brought survivors together with other Catholics and members of the community for the screening of the film on clergy abuse, Hand of God, in September 2007.  We found that the conventional wisdom was wrong.  Not only could we come together without wounding each other, together we experienced spiritual healing and transformation. On that Saturday in late September 2007, we experienced the sanctity of the community.  We also experienced the sanctity of each individual present.  Each person who came, brought their own special gift. Paul Cultrera, the subject of Hand of God , and his brother Joe, who directed the film came to Portland just for the screening.  However when another guest cancelled, they agreed to fill in the gap in our schedule despite the fact that Paul Cultrera was exhausted....

I was baptized Catholic in 2001, by a dynamic priest who was removed 11 months later because he abused boys.  These events caused me to look closely at how the Catholic Church handled abuses inside the Church as well as to look closely at the abuses I experienced as a child and young adult.  I concluded that the Church needed to do more to care for survivors of clergy abuse.  After discovering that other Catholics were often unable to listen compassionately to the stories told by survivors, I learned the spiritual discipline of Compassionate Listening from The Compassionate Listening Project and Eryn Kalish of Workplace Solutions. The first time I brought other Catholics together to listen compassionately to a survivor of clergy abuse was the first Sunday of January 2007.  We met in my living room and listened to Elizabeth Goeke tell her story of being assaulted by a priest when she was a young nun.  Then she listened as we parishioners told our story of coping ...

by Elizabeth Goeke, co-founder Compassionate Gathering I write my story of abuse as a way of saying thank you to the many survivors of priest/church abuse who have shown me the path to my own truth by their bravery. For the past five years I have mentored others along the path to healing as an advocate for those abused. I have heard the stories of several dozen survivors. Each person who told me pieces of their story made it easier for me to face my own fragments of truth, deal with my psychic and spiritual wounds and weave those pieces of self together in a story of injury and journey into recovery of self.  Here is my attempt to tell a story that is still unfolding.  I tell my story, not as an expert, but as a traveler on a confusing and twisting journey. I tell my story with the hope that my sharing will create space for seeds of hope and glimmers of insight as we stumble along together through the valley of abuse by priest/church. In my telling, survivors will find them...

I think blogging is therapy for me.  I am feeling frustrated right now and find myself needing to write.  I've seen a blog that accused me of being a professional writer paid to blog or of being a front for a group of priests.  I wish my life were that easy.  No, it's just me writing this blog with occasional help from a friend. I am struggling to find my way between all the sides of this issue of clergy abuse. So there are some survivors who think I am a shill for the Church.  On the other hand, there are Catholics in my own group, compassionate caring Catholics who have heard many survivors share their stories,  heard their pain and anguish over their lack of support from the Church they grew up in and yet these loving people still think that if only survivors opened their hearts and minds, they would understand how much the Church is trying to do for them.  These lovely, sweet, caring, well meaning Catholics make feel like a mother trying to raise...

I am not clear on the details of what happened.  I've read different versions in different places.  So the Survivors' Voice survivors were not allowed into St. Peter's Square, but a Vatican official, Fr. Lombardi apparently did speak to two to several of the survivors privately, and he wrote a letter that was published online on John Allen's blog at The National Catholic Reporter. I despair, as a Catholic.  I am sure that Fr. Lombardi is a nice, well meaning man, but it seems that his efforts at outreach went over like a ...well they don't seem to be well received.  I suspect it is very hard for a priest who is used to being in a position of authority to find himself in a position of humility and to know what to do.  And yet this kind of humility is central to the teachings of Jesus.  There are so many stories of Jesus showing compassion to those rejected by everyone else in society.  I'd advise Fr. Lombardi to try to reach out as Jesus might -- with...