Sexual Abuse and Healing
May 19/2002

The more I hear of the sexual abuse scandal within the Church, the more I have to trust in the Lord’s love for us. Left to human beings alone, I think we will all be disappointed. The holiness of the Church is the holiness of Jesus, not the holiness of the members of the Church nor the holiness of the Church’s leaders. We need to recapture the sense that holiness is a gift, not something we earn by our merits.

Recently I saw a small brochure from a church in Kenosha which advertised that “These miracles follow those who believe…” and went on to print testimonies of six people: a woman who was healed of depression, a man whose knee pains were taken away, a divorced couple whose marriage was restored, a woman whose asthma was taken away, and a man who was healed of a drug addiction. Many times in the past I have wondered about claims such as these, sometimes even doubting them. Yet, my own experience tells me that these things happen. We have celebrated Masses during which we anointed people and found out later that they were, in fact, healed. Some people have written me letters sharing what happened to them. So I have, and so has our parish, experienced the truth that “these miracle follow those who believe…” right in our midst.
It is with this knowledge that I believe we have the power of God that can heal all things, including the effects of sexual abuse by clergy. This is how our holiness must become more evident—precisely in the midst of suffering and fear. Since perfect love casts out fear, we must, as a Church, love those around us who have been abused. We have to become part of the healing process, not an obstacle to healing. We cannot run away from the reality that surrounds us.

Who are those who need this healing in our parish? It would be a mistake to think that only priests have sexually abused children. Once, after a meeting, a woman came to me to share the fact that she had been abused by a family friend, that her father wouldn’t believe her, and that the pain lasted for many years. I suspect that by turning the spotlight on priests we will light up many other places in our lives which have been shrouded in darkness for many years. Is this person unusual? Not at all. In their landmark study in 1994, The Social Organization of Sexuality, Laumann and others published the results of interviews they had with 3,432 American adults. They showed that child sexual abuse is disturbingly common.

The main result of their study was this: 17 percent of women and 12 percent of men reported that they had been abused by an adolescent or an adult before they reached puberty. The majority said that the abuse happened repeatedly. Girls reported that there were most often abused by adolescent males and adult males, while boys reported more situations where they were abused by adolescent girls, than by adolescent boys or men. Look around our church on a Sunday and realize that one out of six women were assaulted as were one out of nine men!

One common element that applied to boys and girls who were abused was that they were abused by someone known to them. Only 7 percent were abused by strangers, while 52 percent were abused by relatives and 29 percent by a family friend. In the cases of the priests who have abused, I know of none that involved strangers. This is something that causes great damage because the priest is supposed to be a friend of all families. Priests are not supposed to be strangers to families. Most of the non-priests that I have known to abuse are people that families care about: parents, siblings, babysitters. This gets scary because these people are all members of, or close to, our families. The breach of trust that is involved is very serious. As that person who talked to me put it, the pain doesn’t leave.

I remember very well another person who was abused by her relativess. After she told me about the abuse she endured as well as a pregnancy that ended in a miscarriage from one such instance, I wanted to share with her something of God’s love for her. I knew that any physical sign of care such as a hug, might be misunderstood. So I kept my distance until she said that she wanted to give me a hug. I did and felt like I was being crushed! I suspect that I was the first male with whom she felt comfortable enough to be close to without fearing my intentions. At any rate, she used this experience to write a graduate paper on sexual abuse for which she received an A+. She has gone through a long healing process during which she had to gain the courage to share what happened and then be open to receiving God’s love in her life. She also has been a wonderful helper to women who have been abused.

My role in this process was simply to listen. This is where healing starts. The persons mentioned in the brochure above had to face the reality of their lives before the healing could begin. Once that was faced and shared with at least one other person, they were able to open themselves to the love of God. The apostles faced their own worst fears after the death and Resurrection of the Lord. They had to face their infidelity. Yet, they realized they were called. So they stayed together in the Upper Room until Pentecost Sunday. When the Holy Spirit came down upon them they were healed of their fear and were able to proclaim the holiness of God even though they had been fearful. I see no difference between them and us. We must accept the Spirit in our lives so that we can be the healers, which the world, and our Church, need so much.

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