The Wounded Body of Christ -- A University of Dayton lecture series on the crisis of sexual abuse in the church

FINDING GOD AFTER ABUSE

My name is Pat & I am one of them. Years ago at a LinkUp conference in Chicago, I met many survivors of different faiths, listened to courageous stories & meditated on amazing works of art, art that documented endless pain. It was an amazing display of resiliency. An experience I’ll never forget. So when I was asked to witness today, to be a voice for the victims, my gut said yes. Yes, for all those who aren’t well enough to do so & may never be.

Hearing the victim’s truth clarifies the damage & aids the survivor’s healing. Please remember that. Silence & isolation multiply the pain. When the victims do speak, I hope you’ll believe & respect them. Their voices cast a wide net from the silent mistresses of “Thornburg” fame to the orphaned adult children with horrific memories of torture & abuse, to the current movie called The Madeline Sisters that exposes the enslaved girls of the Irish laundries. In my opinion, it wasn’t their unwed pregnancies or lives of prostitution that sentenced them, but rather their family’s shame. Besides thousands of survivors of clergy & nun abuse, another group is often forgotten, & that is the emotionally vulnerable adults exploited & abused by religious counselors. That’s where I fit. But trust me. I’ll keep the ulgies to a minimum so you can hear the lessons learned. For in the words of another survivor, “I’ve been to hell & back. Why on earth would I want to take you there?”

But before I begin, I want you to understand where I’m coming from. I need to speak my truth the way I know it, from a heart & soul that’s been incested by toxic religion. Words like CSA, clergy sexual abuse, exploitation & molestation minimize the damage. In all honesty I cannot use them. I must respect my own healing process & what it taught me. Quite frankly, what I experienced was religious incest. It’s the only term that speaks to the depth & the scope of the pain, let alone the imbalance of power. I cannot in truth spin my experience & water it down so it’s more palatable or politically correct. My gut will never let me change that for anyone.

My goals for speaking cover a wide spectrum. First and most importantly, I want to offer the victims hope that healing is possible. For some, this may seem like an impossible dream. But remember, there’s power in a dream. In some small way, I’d like to affect the death of the deadly cycle of shame. No human is born with it. Shame is acquired from the outside. What abusers actually do is rob their victim of all self-esteem & dump deadly shame in its place. Every suicidal tragedy sickens me to the core. All too common stories tell how the victim’s experiences became blindingly overwhelming & unbearable, shoving them into a dark pit where options cease to exist. So if you do nothing else, please pray for the victim survivors. We could at least include them in the Invocation of Prayers at our Masses.

I pray too that the Spirit will move you as a member of the Body of Christ to reclaim the spirituality of our Church. Have you wondered like me where have all the good Christians gone? Where is the outcry for the victims? The institutional church is acting like a highly dysfunctional family using silence to preserve their image, at all costs. But that only perpetuates the damage. As in an alcoholic or abusive family, the victims hold the key to healing. Let us be careful not to join the collusion. I for one want to make it very clear that the victims are not the enemy. Their lives ought to be celebrated as heroic gifts. Eventually, I hope the Faithful will accept that & embrace them with compassionate support. As I see it, victims are catalysts driving the spiritual rebirth of our Church. And that, I believe, is the real root of this crisis. Look at the model of Jesus. Recall how He said all power comes from above & none of us would have any if it weren’t first given to us by His Father. Let us, therefore, align our hearts & minds with Jesus. Then we’ll see the real damage & accept the truth for what it is. Only then will our dialogue bring forth the fruits of healing.

As for the clergy, I’m not here to condemn anyone. I’d rather leave the judgment of people’s lives to God! On the contrary, I owe the clergy an apology. I, like too many other Catholics, bought into the idolatry of the priesthood. We’ve put you on pedestals & turned you into golden calves to be worshiped. What a sin! In the early Church priests were seen as icons or windows to God. Nothing more. No live human being belongs on a pedestal. Coming down from such lofty heights is costly, sometimes to the point of total ruin. So I sincerely apologize for my share of false expectations. Dialogue could help us both. I believe many people of good will are struggling with truth & trying to discern how to respond to this crisis of addition. There’s an addiction to lying both in our culture & our church. They’re inseparable twins. They thrive & continue to grow in secrecy & collusion. Let us recognize that 12-step treatment programs work on the surface. They do not reach the core shame that created the addiction in the first place. Therefore, some clergy may be sincere in saying they didn’t understand the vicious cycle of addiction. That realization may open new doors of dialogue.

But in fairness to the victims, mistakes continue to be made, both deliberate & unintentional. Whatever you do, please do not ask the victims for forgiveness. That’s like rubbing salt in a dying wound. Instead, offer them your apology. In the words of a Boston survivor, “We don’t want a voice that dares to preach to us about forgiveness. Healing comes before forgiveness & truth before healing.” Another gross error is asking a victim to feel sorry for their abuser. You may be feeling that on behalf of a fellow priest, but that’s cruel to a victim. Best to read & listen first before offering solutions. I highly recommend the wonderful research done by Fr. Tom Doyle in the 60’s. It literally changed his life. Today he remains a true victims’ advocate, one who really gets it. Let him show you the way so you too can find the moral courage to reach out to victims. Once you do, I guarantee you they’ll bless you with inspiration, strength & courage.

As for my personal reasons, I believe I am a woman of blessings. To whom much is given, much is expected. Scripture makes that very clear. My husband, Darrell was the first to believe in me & has honored me with 35 years of fidelity & loving support. He has never once accused or condemned me. I’m very grateful for such love & companionship, as well as his outstanding devotion & commitment to our 4 children. (Darrell, would you please stand so people know who you are. I applaud your commitment & fidelity in a world that has no respect for either. . . . . Thanks!) My life is also enriched with a good son-in-law & 3 joyous grandkids. At age 60, life is very full. Besides my job, I enjoy the blessings of good health & friendship. Dancing is a special joy & camping a get-away adventure. Yes, I do believe I’ve been blessed to be a blessing for others. Notoriety, publicity and sympathy are not my agenda. However, I am part of the Church too & I’m not leaving! Furthermore, I’m part of those voices who have pushed to be heard for decades. If I can be a catalyst for effective change, then I thank God for using me to aid the healing of the Body of Christ, His Church.

So here’s my story, my truth as I experienced it. I grew up on a tenet farm with my parents & 3 other siblings. But not until my mid 40’s while researching a 5 generational geneogram for a college course, did I come to understand the real dysfunctionality of my family. I was frequently used as the scapegoat. My Mother once made a Freudian slip admitting she had been incested by her uncle. My Dad, who lost his father at age 9, grew up around uncles who physically & emotionally abused him. True to the laws of recyclability, these unsolved, parental problems festered & grew into incestuous behaviors that scared my body with permanent memories. It would take years of therapy before I understood how all of this set me up, making me a perfect target for repeated abuse.

By the time I was in middle grade school, I was a curly blonde girl with anger like my Dad. I was relentlessly teased & tormented by classmates. Lonely & isolated, I approvingly left with a neighbor for a ballgame on a Sunday afternoon. But that turned out to be a front for his abuse. After his brutal rape, he dropped me off at the end of our lane, called me a little slut & threw my underwear out the window behind me. That terror would threaten me again during my sophomore vacation.

Growing up feeling unlovable & unwanted, I thought there must be something terribly wrong with me. Why else were these horrible things happening. I couldn’t understand why I was alive, much less why God ever created me in the first place. If I wasn’t praying to die, I was asking God for new parents.

By age 14, I believed the convent was my only ticket to survival. So I made, what I thought to be at that time, a perfect escape to a convent preparatory high school, followed by 3 isolating years in the convent itself. I truly loved the Eucharist, the Gregorian Chant & Hours of Prayer. I felt like religious life was my new home. Singing in the novitiate choir & studying Moral Theology brought me a certain amount of comfort. But in spite of all that, my soul remained troubled. Spiritual meditation & bedtime remained difficult. When professional vows drew near, my superior prodded me to leave saying religious life was more my Mom’s dream than mine. Wow! That was a shock. But the greatest was still to come. The day I left, a rude awakening hit me. All of a sudden, I found myself in a world I didn’t understand. It was like being a foreigner in my own country, neither speaking the language nor understanding its culture.

That became even more evident when I enrolled at UD & moved into a college house with 4 other gals & a house mom. I knew I needed help. So I looked up Fr. Crenner, who had conducted a retreat for us novices the year before. Meeting him at Bergamo, I poured out my heart telling him how desperate I felt. I was emotionally & psychologically confused. I felt terribly isolated & alone in this new world. My body was 21 at the time but my psychic remained frozen at 13. I’d never before seen girls run around in their underwear, much less without a bra! I was used to wearing a religious habit for 3 years. Why, my silent, canonical year had been less than 15 months ago. Life was really weird. But others around me thought all I needed was a good date. Wrong! That ended in a panic-driven scream, shocking the heck out of the guy. Later Fr. told me, he would have gone all the way had I not screamed.

In my traumatic, stress disordered mind, I continued to see Fr. Crenner. He was the only person I trusted. I went so far as to tell him about my Mom’s incestuous behavior. My typical Catholic mentality saw absolutely no danger in trusting a man who wore a Roman collar, celebrated Mass & gave spiritual retreats. But within 3 months of leaving the novitiate, the unthinkable happened. Religious incest. My personal history was spun around to manipulate my defenses. His first attempt shocked me to the floor into unconsciousness, a shock so severe that my conscious mind blocked it out for many years. So of course, I continued to call & see Fr. Crenner. It all ended the day he came to my apartment, armed with money & condoms. I was numb & thoroughly confused. He whispered romantic words in my ear& smoothed my body with tender touch, all the while repeating how much he wanted to show me the beauty & wonder of sex. Instead, he raped me in every possible way. Then when I refused to run away & marry him, he pried my left hand open, slapped some money in it & ordered me to see the Franciscans for confession the very next day. Plans frustrated. Sentence committed. Desertion followed. It was as if God Himself had come down from heaven & raped me, labeled me a prostitute & then abandoned me to my own demise. 39 years later I’m still amazed that I actually did just as he told me. That’s tough to live with but proof of a 13 year-olds naiveté. The manipulation was as sharp & cruel as any cult. And today while I’m watching my pennies to make our retirement possible, he’s drawing full retirement from the Kalamazoo Diocese*. I see no justice in that.

In 1967 I met Darrell & married him the following spring. I will be forever grateful that I told him about the priest’s rape early on in our relationship. Although Darrell settled the shaking earth beneath my feet, the sacramental joys of sexual union eluded me. So when I got pregnant the first time, I was obviously terrified & Darrell was absolutely thrilled. Thanks in part to a wonderful, compassionate doctor; I delivered John in 7 hours. That was a huge risk for me. Doctor appointments alone resurrected my trauma. I trusted Darrell to a point but frequently pushed myself to override my feelings, feelings that shamed me straight to my core. Body issues were everywhere. It felt like they were even coming out of the woodwork. The struggle was difficult. Even the body of our newborn son was traumatizing. To cope, I leaned on Darrell’s common sense & understanding of children while I constantly pushed myself to do the right thing. Six months later, we moved to Maysville, KY. The following spring our daughter was born. Darrell was working most of the time then & without family or friends, my life was terribly lonely & difficult. The children were good, healthy & simply beautiful. But I was in pain & needed a surgical repair procedure. So 3 months later, I returned to the hospital alone while Darrell cared for our little ones at home. I was not prepared for what happened next. A nurse startled me from a deep sleep with intruding pre-op procedures. That trauma coupled with the anesthesia created months of nightmares. I would wake literally screaming for help & the only thing that calmed my tremors was Darrell’s arms wrapped around me. His caring support was indispensable.

As my struggles continued, so did my sister’s. Back in Ohio, Teresa was dying of cancer. She had told everyone close to her that she didn’t want people filing by her casket staring at her body. And so it was, not even my Dad, brother or myself got to see her for a final goodbye. Everything about the funeral was rigid. Immediately thereafter, my brother-in-law insisted on getting rid of all her personal things. It was a terrible tragedy! And another layer of nightmares ensued for at least 6 months.

Shortly thereafter, I got pregnant again. Physically & emotionally drained all I could do was sob. Darrell understood my unhappiness in KY & thought a move would help. So shortly after our 2nd daughter’s birth, we moved to Brown County OH. With 3 in diapers, I was nearing the edge. Valium helped but not nearly enough. One day Darrell returned home from work to find me very distraught & insisted I get help. My gut knew he was right. But that did nothing to calm my fears. Help for me had to be female, Catholic and psychologist. A previous experience in Dayton taught me a psychiatrist would never work. It was a priest I knew from Dayton that found her for me. I was seeing her regularly when I got pregnant with our second son. About the same time marriage issues were surfacing. Frightened & unsure of everything, I used the pregnancy to excuse myself from therapy. What a huge mistake. Our son was born in October of ’74 & our family was complete. I would never regret making a conscious decision to have our fourth child. But it wasn’t long before shame & guilt drove me back to therapy. My counselor’s first lesson was repeatedly explaining how & why therapy was the greatest gift I could ever give my family. Thank God she succeeded. This time I vowed to stay till all my issues were resolved. Little did I know it would consume more than 20 years of my life. The cost was enormous. Just like the Body of Christ, every member of our family carried his own portion of the pain, emotionally, physically and financially.

Those are the facts but explaining the endless list of losses is far more difficult. I struggled with words. I’d write & rewrite. Weeks passed into months & crunch time arrived. I knew the words had to come from my heart. Still nothing. Words seemed shallow, empty & oh so inadequate. How could I do this? Birthing such a talk turned out to be far more difficult than birthing our children. But I kept praying & trusting the Holy Spirit & asked others to pray too. God is faithful. He hears all of us & here’s the result.

The cost of religious incest is immeasurable. Worse yet, the effects never go away. Scars. Memories. Endless grief. You take it to the grave with you. Healing is always imperfect, you know. Some liken the psychological effects alone to soul murder or like having sex with Jesus. I relate to that. Your soul feels dead. Dead I tell you, because there’s no real life going on inside. It’s like being trapped in a deep, dark pit with no tools to climb out. Worst of all, it’s not your fault. You simply got there because your abuser dumped you there. It’s a hellish hole. I can’t actually tell you how I got out, only God can. He imparts His grace freely at will. No one can measure it, feel it or touch it. Grace is something we recognize through faith. Just as I’d feel a little progress, then weeks later I’d find myself back into the same old pit. Healing works that way. This process called therapy is a constant back & forth thing until you get it right. Can you see now why it’s so easy to give up?

Maybe my experience in ICU will help. Coming to from an overdose, my eyes met Darrell’s & immediately shame & guilt buried me. I simply couldn’t handle his love for me. I didn’t understand it & questioned it to be real. In my heart I felt damaged beyond repair. Totally hopeless. All I could see, think or feel was evil. I was a prisoner of shame. I was locked in & couldn’t get out. The torment had become unbearable. Only after years of soul searching, reading & study would I fully understand John Bradshaw’s statement. Shame, he says, is the master emotion that binds all others. It’s a lethal weapon. If not held in check, it becomes a killer. Shame has a driving power that projects itself either inwardly on the victim or outwardly on another victim. That’s important to remember. It’s the difference between a victim survivor & a victim perpetrator who, rather than fight for healing, dumps their shame on someone else. Now, take all of that & compare it to the psyche of a child. Then you’ll get some sense of what I’m talking about.

The litany of losses is endless. Compare the ordinary actions of daily living to the lives of victims & you’ll see a dramatic contrast. For instance, starting the day may be dangerous due to the body issues involved around showering & dressing for the day. Mirrors may present a painful reality of self-mutilation. Many cannot hold jobs unless they’ve buried their shame so deep that it eats away inside of them like a dying cancer. Physical ailments abound. And trusting a doctor is like trying to trust a priest again. Appointments are kept only out of desperation. There is no coming home, no place of comfort or peace when you are shame-based. What’s more, the victim’s shame is fertile ground for all kinds of addiction. Most victims spend all this time trying to survive long enough to reach some kind of healing. Living alone is often preferred to the risk of developing relationships. The spontaneity of fun & laughter are gone. Solace in the goodness of life is illusive. The losses go on, and on, and on. Worse yet, you can never go back in time to recover any of them. Not even one! Life as you once knew it, will never again be the same, not even for a well-adjusted survivor. The victims always pay a horrendous price.

One of the scariest things for me to deal with was the death of trust, or put another way, the absence of safety. Daily living is filled with trust & safety issues. But if the first person you give your confidence to betrays you to the core, it’s nearly impossible to discern who’s trustworthy & who’s not. You can’t even trust yourself. Any confidence you once had in your own intelligence is simply gone. I was in therapy for years & still had moments when I couldn’t speak. The emotions would overpower me, shutdown my voice & illicit uncontrollable sobs & tremors. It’s a real paralysis of soul. The risk is monumental. It’s like climbing Mt. Everest. Not everyone makes it. Safety is no different. I think one of the most frightening things of all for survivors is realizing how terribly vulnerable you are to repeated abuse. The mind is overloaded, trying desperately to cope & all you can access is confusion & a distorted sense of reality. Discernment & judgment are long gone. It’s terribly difficult to believe anyone will ever see you as a loveable, worthwhile human being again. Thank God this goes away with healing. But only after pealing away layers upon layers of shame & guilt. I think you can begin to see why a victim is so easily enslaved by fear & isolation. The loss of personal power is simply indescribable. It’s no wonder we end up pushing away the ones who really love us, the ones who can truly make a difference in our lives. Patience please. If you can hold on long enough, we’ll eventually get it. Now to the evolution of a new spirituality.

It seems to me when therapy & spirituality are woven together, powerful things happen. This whole process is deeply personal & so intangible but mysteriously sacramental. Dr. Bloomfield said it best in his book, MAKING PEACE WITH GOD. Each of us is a piece of God yearning for the peace of God. Layers of blame, shame & pain that block out God’s loving kindness. In the depths of my darkness I was able to experience the peace of God. Cannot run away from the pain; must learn to be with the pain to experience God’s healing love. Wow, that’s powerful. Rev. Dr. Schuller believes you can always find God in the midst of tragedy. And that’s exactly what happened. Back & forth, in & out of the black pit, books, tapes, music, people & events, all of it influenced my journey. Occasionally, something from somewhere would click & create an insightful blessing or a grace-filled encounter. Oh, and when it did, joy pushed through the clouds if only for a brief moment. These gifts were small at first but powerfully sacramental. They fed me & renewed my spirit to dig even deeper. Over time, they multiplied & I grew stronger. The more I searched, the more I received. Although my psychologist always encouraged this self-guided search, she also admitted no therapist heals anyone. That’s strictly between God & the individual. It was a long time before I realized what was happening. When I did, my soul rejoiced with thanksgiving. Healing was possible. It was happening to me. What a blessed gift. Therapy truly is a sacramental journey. One survivor described the experience this way: It made me realize the difference between church and God! I lost trust in the clerical collar. It hurt to my very core. I feel bruised, discarded, ignored, violated, angry. I lost, but also gained . . . my soul, my God.

So I read & listened & struggled to understand the concepts & weigh them against my experiences to clarify the truth. Identity was critical. Was I really a prostitute? The sense of being made a prostitute, worthless & degraded haunted me. If I was an innocent victim, why was I so ashamed & guilty? The catechism said I was made in the image of God. But I sure didn’t feel that way. Why didn’t Fr. talk about that? Is it true? Does God really love me? What about the parents He gave me? Why was it so hard for them to love me? It all led back to what’s wrong with me? If God really made me in His image, did He goof when He made me? No one around me seemed to agree with God that I was good. If He created me & saw me as good, why couldn’t others find that goodness? The questions went on & on & on, rumbling back & forth in my mind like the warring factions of a heated debate. It was obvious that I needed to reframe my story. I studied Scripture & found an amazing love image of a triune God. I listened to Schuller to reprogram my thinking with self-esteem theology. I read his books & watched The Hour of Power show. Nothing contradicted the principles I learned in Moral Theology. I bounced things around with my therapist & co-therapist, both devout Catholics. I came to a profound conclusion that what God had made in His own goodness & likeness was drastically different from the world’s image. As I read & peeled away the layers of garbage the world had dumped on me, I finally touched the real me, the me God created. Eventually, self-condemnation seemed mighty stupid. How dare anyone make me out to be a prostitute! That realization thrusts me forward into putting guilt & shame squarely on the shoulders of my abusers. I was now free to choose. I could move from being a victim without choices to a survivor with options. Then I could begin to claim equal respect & dignity for myself. Doing this was not instantaneous. It required me to label the demons of shame and honor what I did to survive. That meant reprogramming my self-talk. I learned how to do that from a small paperback entitled, WHAT TO SAY WHEN YOU TALK TO YOUR SELF by Shad Helmstetter. But there was still more. I also had to see the abuser’s manipulative set-up for what it was. It was all part of a process of owning my own pain & grieving my losses. Dr. Viscott’s THE LANGUAGE OF FEELINGS was also a great help. These processes continued to move back & forth till I was confident about who I was & who I was not. Then & only then could I begin to reclaim my own personal power.

For me, books were fast becoming a treasure chest of understanding & inspiration. When my mind got overloaded, I’d listen & nurture myself with Bette Rod’s survival songs. Many times I wanted to quit but something always brought me back. I simply can’t imagine therapy without the aid of books, tapes & music. Once I got a taste of healing, I was convinced to do whatever it took. I often used quiet time to ponder the issues. That’s so important because it’s very easy to get stuck in therapy. I didn’t realize it then, but I most certainly do now. Reading has become a morning ritual for me. It has enriched & expanded my soul many times & always just when I needed it. The latest example was the huge challenge of putting this witness together. It was crunch time. I was very tired & hungry for the fruits of the Holy Spirit. I picked up Madeleine L’Engle’ book entitled PENGUINS & GOLDEN CALVES & began to read as usual. Almost miraculously, these words popped out on the page, When you write, don’t think. Write. Think before you write your story but when you actually sit down to write, listen, don’t think. Listen. God and your story may surprise you. Wow! Exactly what I needed. I read it multiple times till it took root in me. Here I was struggling so hard because I was trying to tell my story vs. God’s story. Once I really got it, peace overtook my body, my mind, my soul. And it remained with me. I truly believe spiritual reading is a necessary ingredient of growth. How else are we to become adult Christians? Without it, we all get stuck or boxed into a narrow mind-set. I like to broaden my understanding of the world around me with material from a broad range of authors, especially other Christians. Edwina Gately, Rev. Dr. Schuller & Madeleine L’Engle all helped me break out of the box. I will be forever grateful for their works of inspiration & spiritual knowledge.

Back then, I wasn’t aware how needy I was to relearn how to pray. When I was a child, I bargained & pleaded like a child. When I was in a victim mode, I screamed & nearly demanded help. Now that I’m an adult Christian, prayer is first & foremost gratuitous & faith building. It’s a gift of grace & hope. It keeps me anchored & open to God’s dreams for my life. Rote & communal prayer keep us connected with the Body of Christ but personal, conversational prayer holds the seed of real transformation. Such prayer is very powerful. It could turn this crisis around, mend divisions & make our church stronger. Why you ask, because the very nature of conversational prayer demands the full attention of the body, the mind, & the soul. The person is fully engaged in connecting with God & listening to His Spirit. Pure grace. And it’s spiritual reading that moves the soul in that direction. So no matter where the tragedies of life take us, God is there in the midst of it all inviting us to knock & the door will be opened, to seek & you too will find. Ask He says & it shall be given to you in abundance, overflowing abundance. Pure gift. Gifts to empower others. That’s the power of witnessing, witnessing to God’s story in our lives.

Truth & understanding are inseparable in our search for moral clarity. I never found it in extremism or any other “ism” of our secular culture. I always remembered one thing from Moral Theology studies & that is, virtue & truth lie somewhere in the middle. I see extremism as a form of license that abuses our God-given free will. It divides & creates wars. So when I heard of things like “fundamental option” & relativism, I knew I had to dig deeper. Here’s some of my conclusions. Literalism misses the lesson of a story both in Scripture & in our lives. Relativism looks like another tool of justification to do what you want to do. Certainly it has brought about the death of right & wrong in our culture & got carried over into the institutional church. And legalism doesn’t speak to the model of Jesus. True authority rests in respect, not power. I think it was Bishop Gregory who said moral authority must be earned. How true. We must remember our leaders only have the power we give them. And even then, Jesus said no one has any power except that what is given them from above. That’s in direct opposition to our culture’s celebrity status of power. Schuller put it best: Jesus never became an intimate friend of men of power & influence. He had no ‘big connections,’ VIP’s did not seek Him out. Had He ever been asked for letters of character reference—whom could He list? No peer professors, famous authors, powerful politians, ranking generals, or lordly churchmen.’ In sharp contrast Jesus talked about His POWER . . . . He encouraged others to tap into His POWER . . . . .’ and He demonstrated it to those who were hurting. That’s the model of Jesus that works for me. Let us turn then to the source of all truth & understanding, leaving behind the power plays along with the culture of lies, spin & unaccountability. It has cost the church its soul.

As you can see, reclaiming my spirituality was a complicated task. Enormous in scope but the most satisfying thing I’ve ever done. Prayer was a huge factor in sorting through my issues. I began to realize my faith was truly rooted in a triune loving God, who gave us Jesus, His Word & His Eucharist. My spirit fed on it, not on tradition or any false sense of adoration with the hierarchy. I experienced God’s grace as being far more powerful than post traumatic stress disorder. There really is such a thing as mountain-moving faith. It gave me a real surgence of hope. Positive hope-filled prayers emerged. I started seeing miracles of grace in the lives of other people & eventually in my own. My faith became anchored in thanking God for what He’d already done in my life & for what He was about to do. I trusted Him more & more with the restoration of my soul. I’d found love at last, in the world around me & most especially in my God. Now that I could love myself, I was able to accept the love of others. It was a long time in coming but that’s how God’s love took away my shame & resurrected my soul. It’s simply awesome when I think about it. God’s love gave me the power to forgive myself. The more I understood, the more I could let go. That was a big deal. As long as I was connected to the abuser’s shame, I could not heal. Letting go freed me to build a whole new life.

Now, less I mislead you, I need to point out an important distinction between cheap grace and costly grace. Madeleine L’Engle defines it in THE ROCK THAT IS HIGHER. Costly grace is no bargain in a world offering us ‘bargains.’ But if we look for cheap grace we end up with nothing. As Bonhoeffer said, ‘Cheap grace is the preaching of forgiveness without requiring repentance, baptism without church discipline, communion without confession. Cheap grace is grace without discipleship, grace without the cross, grace without Jesus Christ, living & incarnate . . . . . Costly grace is the Gospel which must be sought again & again, the gift which must be asked for, the door at which [we] must knock. Such grace is costly because it calls us to follow, & it is grace because it calls us to follow Jesus Christ. It is costly because it costs [us] our lives, & it is grace because it gives [us] the only true life. It is costly because it condemns sin, & grace because it loves the sinner. We were bought with a price, & what has cost God so much cannot be cheap for us. And that goes for forgiveness too. I believe spiritual forgiveness is more God’s thing than mine. I will always be a survivor. It’s part of my identity. I can’t give something that I don’t have, but God can. I don’t profess to spiritually forgive Fr. Crenner but I can sincerely ask God to forgive him for me. That’s just where I am. If God can accept & love me in spite of that, than I must also.

But I don’t want that to be the last thing you remember about me. So I’d like to leave you with my vision of healing, first for the victims & their families & secondly, for our parish communities. Due to a conflict of interest in most dioceses, the victims have no representation. That needs to change. A victims advocacy program could correct that, one like the model in St. Paul-Minneapolis. Victims also need a safe & confidential place to go, like an ecumenical support group. Our parishes are hurting too. Besides an open listening session to address parishioners concerns, The Stephen Ministry program is great for individual support. The Small Faith Groups of Renew are being restructured to address the current needs of our parishes. Let us not wait too long before we implement at least some of these programs throughout our parishes. Without healing our church will die.

So in parting, I leave you with this blessing. I have lived through the storm to see God’s rainbow. I know His covenant. May you be graced to know the same.

*Fr. William Crenner died on 11-09-03.