Vatican ambassador to U.S. talks of coming papal trip

All the talking in the world by all the "important" people can never make the hurt go away. The victim has only two choices: 1)grovel in his misery 2)Realize that now he has suffered as Christ himself suffered at the hands of those who should have loved him.
Forgetting is impossible; the only course left is forgiveness. Forgiveness is the opposite of groveling.

And, of course, donje, we just witnessed a third way. One "important" person actually addressed the hurt directly...and it started to go away...

The 'groveling in misery' also involved over twenty years of advocacy--self and group and legal--to bring attention to the need for a public acknowledgement by an important person of an institution gone wrong in its protection of itself. What a relief this actual new beginning has been, and hurrah for those who did the work to bring it to this point. That includes, of course, NCR, which broke the story so long ago and has shown the most courage and perseverance that I've ever seen in media to help bring this day about.

Now let the rest of the work begin again where it needs to and be strengthened where it has been continuing. Praise God.

My only real hope for mankind comes from Christ and Christ's suffering and I do not see your connection. Would Christ have endured his suffering for us if there was no ultimate justice - no not that the perpetrators would go to hell or whatever - but that the beloved would ultimately repent, be healed and united with Him in creation's return to the Father. Until the sources of the misery relate to the hurting as the father responded to the prodigal son - adequately and appropriately and beyond, there will not be healing.

Here's a thought I've been meditating on this weekend, given to me by a comment to something I had written about the incarnation on my blog. Christ didn't come to save us from God's anger, but to save us from OUR own anger. Forgiveness cannot come from a place of anger, nor can compassion, nor can love. We can however, learn to use compassion and then love to overcome anger and find the peace of forgiveness. Sometimes it's a long road, but then Christ did describe Himself as a process, a Way.

colkoch.blogtoolkit.com

"Forgiveness cannot come from a place of anger, nor can compassion, nor can love. We can however, learn to use compassion and then love to overcome anger and find the peace of forgiveness. Sometimes it's a long road, but then Christ did describe Himself as a process, a Way."

You got it Col. Look up Abelard's position on the Atonement of Love vs. Blood which was Jerome's position in the Catholic Advent encyclopedia. It was about the 1400's I believe. If Abelard's position won out over Jerome's Or actually if Jerome adopted ALL of Abelard's position, HT and AnneD would be agreeing with you instead of arguing with you because Abelard's position of Christ's Love for us and showing us how to overcome Sin by following his way, would have become the crystallized Dogma they follow.

God Bless and guide us all.

The more we discover how much we are Loved by God, the more we want to do God's Will

YOur mistake is to list the "only two choices," a mistake common to those of either/or thinking. There are other choices, and there are rarely just two in this life of ours. Another choice is to experience the pain authentically--often in the presence of someone of the healing professions or clergy--and to come to understand its source, its consequences, and its boundaries. This is also a part of the healing that involves forgiveness. Some people make a decision to forgive and go through the emotional processes at the same time or later; some do it in reverse; some say they forgive but never go through the healing; etc. etc. etc. There are many possibilities. God is with us as we struggle through such pain.

I think your examples are the results of making what Donje indicates as the second choice.

WEll, it's always difficult when we try to read someone else's mind, but since he(?) is unlikely to respond, I'll say that I don't think that's what he means. People with "either/or" thinking tend to put the work of healing into the category of 'groveling,' which seems to be the point of this post. This problem seems to be particularly one for men, who seem to have much more difficulty understanding the emotional work needed for much healing.

And there is no God-appointed directionality involved in 'emotional work' first or a 'decision to forgive' first. Sometimes one thing works better than another, but this is not a direction writ by the hand of God.

Probably most men consider emotional work to be wallowing in one's pain. Though I am not a man, I tend to agree.

I was brought up in a household where the adults had all been through ordeals as Europeans during World War II--spending time in prison camps, losing home and property, witnessing or experiencing atrocities, losing family members--and had found their way to the United States where they had no choice but to pull themselves together despite emotional wounds. Life in the US was focused on other things, and to focus on one's miserty would mean being left out.

There was no tolerance in our household for self-pity. Whatever wrongs one experienced, one was expected to ignore them and focus on achieving something positive. People often express to me that, if whatever immediate wrong they witnessed me experiencing had happened to them, they would not take it so lightly. I have found, though, that taking note of the wrong gives it and the wrong-doer a level of control over my life that I do not want to give it, him, or her.

It really is a luxury for people to spend a lot of time in self-analysis and the pursuit of healing, while just carrying on often brings its own healing. It is the work of God, through the Holy Spirit, perhaps.

Marie, I’ve been pondering what you wrote above in light of the re-opening of the question of the abuse crisis by Benedict on his visit to the U.S. I'm especially troubled by the following statement: "Whatever wrongs one experienced, one was expected to ignore them and focus on achieving something positive."

I could hear quite a few Catholics saying this to many of us who are now alienated from the church, due to dismal failures on the part of its pastors. I could (and have) heard Catholics saying something of this sort to survivors of clerical sexual abuse.

I honor your intent to find your own spiritual path, in which you claim self-worth by refusing to permit others to have power over you. I understand your claim that complaining of the harm others have done to you can be a way of giving those others power over you. I think it is important that you root your reflections in your family’s experience during World War II.

Nevertheless, something in your approach troubles me, if your approach is applied as a rule of thumb for how all others who have experienced injustice ought to behave. I’ve just finished reading Bishop Geoffrey Robinson’s powerful new book "Confronting Power and Sex in the Catholic Church" (Dublin: Columba, 2007). It speaks clearly and compassionately to those who have experienced abuse by pastors and church authorities—-in particular, those who have experienced clerical sexual abuse.

Robinson notes that that he himself was abused as a boy—-though not by a priest or a family member; rather, a stranger molested him. So he speaks out of personal experience, to a certain extent.

I find what Robinson says illuminating. He notes that those who have experienced abuse by clerics and who speak out are often told immediately to forgive. Robinson notes a number of problems with this attempt to move survivors to a forgiveness that is precipitous (pp. 220-221). He notes that there is such a thing as a forgiveness given too early, which bandages and hides a wound that is not yet healed and will continue to fester (p. 222).

Robinson places his reflections in the context of an anthropology that sees human beings as meaning-makers. As he notes, human beings build up fragile systems of meaning composed “of the many tiny fragments of their lived experience, the many loves, small and great, of their lives” (p. 217).

Abuse by a pastoral authority figure disrupts a human being’s sense of meaning (and thus her sense of self-worth, her very sense of personhood) at a deep level, because it reaches into the very heart of the meaning system out of which a person lives: “Sexual abuse is a bulldozer gouging a road through this fragile ecosystem of love and meaning that a person has been painfully constructing” (p. 217).

Robinson notes that, because everyone in a church community is involved in a similar quest to create meaning systems, an abuser who speaks out and tells the story of his abuse can be resented and even targeted by other members of the Christian community. At worst, other church members tell the whistle-blower either overtly or in other more subtle ways to get lost, to disappear, to stop speaking out and raising a ruckus. When church authorities appear to echo the same message, it can seem to the survivor as if she is being expelled by the entire Christian community.

Paths to healing differ from individual to individual (pp. 219-220). Speaking from his pastoral experience, Robinson argues that no one should dictate how a particular person’s healing should occur, or tell a person not to feel pain and anger or to speak of these emotions.

Robinson notes that anger plays a positive role in the experience of the abused: “To think of the abuse and not feel angry is simply not an option. When memory of sexual abuse comes to mind, the anger that is spontaneously felt is in fact positively good and contributes to a sense of meaning because it is part of the loving of oneself. The anger is a defensive reaction, an affirmation of oneself and one’s own dignity, an instinctive statement that what happened was wrong, that I (the victim) am worth more than that” (p. 221).

Finally, Robinson makes a brilliant point about survivors of abuse who muster the courage to speak out, knowing that they risk the probability of being vilified by the church community within which their abuse took place. Robinson notes, that in speaking out courageously at the risk of being vilified and further excluded, survivors offer the church a precious gift.

He states, “There is another forgiveness that is essential. Communities must forgive, in the literal sense of ‘give themselves for’, victims who have disturbed their comfort and meaning-making by speaking out about their abuse. Within the Catholic Church I must accept that, if no victims had come forward, nothing would have changed. We must learn to be positively grateful to victims for disturbing us. If we feel that we have lost some meaning, it was a false meaning, and their revelation has opened the way to a fuller and more rewarding meaning” (p. 225).

Robinson says that listening to victims of clerical sexual abuse is the most profound spiritual gift he has received in the last 25 years. He concludes, “If a better church one day emerges from this crisis, it is they alone who must take the credit for creating it” (p. 225).

This approach seems to me entirely consistent with Benedict's choice to meet with survivors of clerical sexual abuse. The healing needed in the abuse situation is not merely the healing of individual lives (though God knows that is needed, and no one should consider it a luxury).

It's also the healing of a whole institution. And that won't take place if we tell those who have experienced abuse to suck it up, stiffen their spines, and adopt good old American can-do stoicism. Nobody can better tell the church how to find healing than those who have been pushed to the margins by clerical abuse. Their voices are gifts to all of us. We need to acknowledge the very serious suffering of those who have been abused by pastoral authority figures, and who have had the abuse compounded by brothers and sisters in Christ who then blame them for beginning their healing process by speaking out.

William D. Lindsey

As with Annie below, I don't disagree with you. It was important that Benedict acknowledge the victims by meeting with some of them. It was important to all of us, more so than to the individuals. I'm sure everyone realizes that the pope's meeting each individual is not necessary to each individual's healing.

Saying that a victim has only two options does not appear to be oversimplifying the situation in which the victim finds him or herself, though. It isn't the same thing as telling the victim to forgive. Getting over it includes seeking out help, rather than repressing the horror of the experience. The distinction between the two options has to do with which direction the victim wishes to choose--toward healing or not.

I think we may be reacting to the idea of the victim having only two choices by interpreting this to mean that we should all sweep it under rug, which I don't think is a good idea. On the other hand, are we allowing the victim to choose healing if we always react to him or her as primarily a victim? It really could happen to any or all of us, and I wonder if we would want people's unrelenting pity and guilt dominating our relationships with them.

Most of us, though, are responding to the victims in the abstract when we are having these discussions. We are not dealing with a specific individual who has been violated, but rather with the principles that have been violated. By meeting with the few victims in the semi-public way that Benedict did, he is acknowledging the latter violation more than the former.

Yes, I hear this basic sentiment--up from my emotional bootstraps--in a number of people's posts on here. I understand where the feeling comes from, and I am glad when it signifies a successsful strategy for people for themselves. Having worked with people in deep pain, however, they sometimes are actually very afraid of the emotional challenge they are faced with if they want deep healing, and sometimes it is mostly the fear of the unknown that keeps them from emotional honesty and responsibility of doing therapeutic work, men especially because they've been so taught that they are to put emotions aside. What's the point of it? Well, for one thing, people can resolve their own issues in such a way as to not or not any longer take them out on other people, including those they love. For men in therapeutic work, especially, they often need enough education to understand the connections between emotions and thoughts and actions. The 'up from the bootstraps" approach, in other words, helps shield some people from honesty and responsibility, while they set themselves above those who actually are acting more honestly and responsibly.

I am fine if you or anyone believes that they have their own strategy that works better for them. But that is not an appropriate reason to judge others' needs in healing, and the healing professions have valuable knowledge and skills for addressing many issues. Being responsible to take on that level of emotional work to address a problem is not self-pity--that's exactly what I am addressing in words used such as "groveling in their misery." Frequently, people carry those scars--skin pulled tight over them--but the unaddressed consequences come out in ways harmful to themselves and others. Sexual abuse is one of those areas where just carrying on is usually not the best answer.

All this is not meant as any reflection on anyone here, until it is used to judge what other people need to heal. At the very least, a person needs to understand therapeutic strategies to assess them, and without that understanding they are simply talking on a personal or anecdotal level. There is no question that the Holy Spirit heals some people as they "carry on". Your assumption seems to be that the Holy Spirit has somehow chosen not to heal some people as they step up to the challenge of doing the emotional work--a very strange and false assumption.

A luxury? Perhaps. And certainly to many people in their world. So much the shame of our choices in health care. And perhaps one of the unintended consequences of voting by those who have strong bootstraps--the luxury of denying care to others who would benefit.

A gift to oneself and to others? Clearly. And the Holy Spirit resides in those gifts of love we give to ourselves and to others.

The only thing I would dispute in your response here is that I am assuming that the Holy Spirit has chosen not to heal some people. From my perspective, people often choose not to accept the Holy Spirit's healing. This may be for several reasons, one of which might be that once one is no longer devastated, or at least crippled, by what has been done by someone who could and should have trustworthy, one lets the perpetrator off the hook.

I think that a lot of people need to do some work to come to the realization that they are rejecting healing, and I agree that wounded people do go around inflicting wounds on others and that they need to become aware of this fact so they can stop doing it. However, potential victims of wounded people, which could be any of us, also need to be wary that we do not perpetuate whatever wrongs are inflicted upon us. We should make a habit of offering them up to God instead.

I think you may be wrongly assuming that those who encourage people to "get over it" do so thinking that no help should be given. It has been my experience that in some regions of this country, people really thrive on seeing themselves as victims and exacting a certain revenge on the rest of the population when the world would be better off if they held God to account. I think these people are the people at whom the advice to pull themselves together and carry on is most directed. I don't think anyone wants to dismiss the gravity of the offense against those who were sexually abused.

After a few reads, I'm not sure I understand what we're talking about anymore, so I went back to the Original Post by Donje. And my comments still stand, since his (?) were clearly posing only two alternatives and excluding the importance of one such as the pope getting involved, probably based on an assumption that the pope would not get so directly involved since JPII had chosen not to become so directly involved.

Since the Original Post by Donje, the pope has dramatically taken a stance different than one advocated by donje and has spoken to those who were injured, and the situation began to change as a result of that action. The original donje might have to (1) praise the pope for taking this action, or (2) go to a bar and sulk because the pope took this action...

...oh wait, there ARE some other alternatives, perhaps? THAT is my point. There are rarely, if ever, only 2 alternatives in this life. And they should probably not be posed so dramatically at opposite ends of some made-up polarity: groveling vs. offering up. Particularly when it's hard to tell where some other normal and even human and healthy approach to something is going to fall in the Amazing Polarity Game.

One shouldn't leave out the efforts of the French Jesuits who came to this continent not long afterwards and left us the seeds of cities such as Detroit, St. Louis, and New Orleans.

colkoch.blogtoolkit.com

Sambi said Benedict's trip is not an occasion for him to be "instrumentalized." He's not here to do "our thing," or to carry out our agenda. As Sambi said, too many people want to be pope. So, let Benedict do his thing, which will be under the guidance of the Holy Spirit.

I hardly think that Fr. Juan's post suggested a desire to be pope! We are allowed our hopes and expectations, and his is worth noting. As is Col's. We have much to be grateful for as people in this nation!

I think we will know far more than we do now as scholarship moves more outside the boundaries of church control, pushed by church discipline itself. Even difficult times for those such as theologians can become the source of future growth and understanding.

Come on, [women], get off it. If they ordained you you'd be just like the rest of them, at best. There're bigger fish to fry. Love you anyway.

The Church does not rely on Sola Scriptura, and neither does its Biblical scholarship. For forty years the mainstream of biblical scholars have largely ignored the testimony of the early Church fathers. (which would answer your questions as to priestess in the early church).

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I don't know that biblical scholars have ignored the early Church fathers. I suspect what the Church may not like is scholars have been asking questions about how much what the early Church fathers wrote is based objectively in the earliest gospel traditions, as opposed to how much was a product of the times in which they found themselves. I think there are legitimate reasons to wonder if the gospels as we have them, are not to some extent products of cultural redaction or biased translations.

colkoch.blogtoolkit.com

Ah, but this is not what mlou was asserting! The implication is that we cannot know whether women were ever validly ordained, despite clear evidence from early fathers (as in 200 AD) that they were not. This follows an assertion about poor biblical scholarship the led me to believe that the supposed state of biblical scholarship was the support for assertion.

As to whether or not is whas due to their culture, I again point out that the Jews were unique in not having priestesses, and Jesus could have easily changed that by appointing even one female Apostle.

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The gnostic gospels, more so than the canonical gospels, paint a picture of Mary Magdelene as a sort of super apostle who was given more private teachings from Jesus than any other apostle. Even some of the early church fathers referred to her as 'the apostle to the apostles' and all four canonical gospels place her at the foot of the cross and the first witness to the resurrection. She may not have been one of the twelve, but she does appear to have had some sort of unique place amongst them. In fact so much so that Peter is quite jealous of her.

By the way, I don't buy the Davinci Code bs about a marriage between Jesus and Mary Magdalene. I think she was a very gifted visionary and Jesus knew that in that particular talent she was head and shoulders above the other Apostles. It wouldn't surprise me in the least if she was the recipient of private teachings that the other Apostles didn't get precisely because the others couldn't get the teachings.

Maybe Jesus really envisioned spiritually gifted teachers around whom communities would form, and not our current system of ordained ministry. The great commission is about TEACHING all nations, and does not imply an ordained priesthood common to the Jews or Pagan cults. In this context Pentecost, when the Spirit indwelled many disciples, male and female, may be the actual origin of priesthood/teachers.

colkoch.blogtoolkit.com

I think your point about Mary Magdalene having a different relationship with Jesus than the male apostles did is an important one, col. In my own experience, men tell women very different things than what they tell men, and much more of their heart and emotions are given to women who know how to receive them. In my own experience, priests tell women very different things than what they tell men, and much more of their heart and emotions are given to women who know how to receive them. I too find nothing odd about Mary's reflections of his life and language and heart being so different in tone and even substance from the men apostles.