| [Let me preface this by saying I
don't have any kind of training or experience in counseling. What I offer
here are simply the thoughts of an observer, and any corrections from those
wiser than myself will, as always, be welcome.]
Two weeks into December, there are many things
that the people of Boston would like to be celebrating. Boston is a great
sports town, and the New England Patriots, the Boston Celtics, and the
Boston Bruins are all either alone in first place or tied for first place
in their respective divisions. The Christmas and Hanukkah seasons are also
upon us, and between church and synagogue activities, shopping trips, and
travel plans, lives are full and busied with the celebrations of the season.
But all of this has taken a back seat to the
resignation this weekend of Cardinal Bernard Law as the bishop of the Boston
Archdiocese, and instead of talking about celebration, people are talking
about healing.
Few places in the country are as in need of
healing right now as the Boston area. The priest sex abuse scandal has
taken its toll on so many in the Boston Archdiocese. The failures of the
Church's leadership has injured both the victims of the abuse and, to a
lesser extent, the faithful Catholics who found that they could no longer
trust the shepherds appointed over them.
The resignation of Cardinal Law was described
by James E. Post, president of Voice of the Faithful as " a sad, but necessary,
step in the healing process," and others have expressed similar sentiments.
-
Joyce Strom of the Massachusetts Society for the Prevention
of Cruelty to Children said that the "healing for the innocent victims
of the horrific clergy sex abuse scandal would not begin until those responsible
for inflicting, covering up and in many instances lying about, the actions
that caused their pain and trauma were removed from positions of power."
-
The Most. Rev. Daniel P. Reilly, bishop of Worcester
said, "I hope and pray that Cardinal Law's decision to resign as Archbishop
of Boston will be the catalyst for the healing that so many are searching
for."
-
Bishop William S. Skylstad, vice president of the US
Conference of Catholic Bishops agreed that, "This resignation represents
a significant step forward in the healing process, for abuse victims not
only in the Boston diocese, but in dioceses across the country."
-
Barbara Blaine, founder and president of Survivors Network
of those Abused by Priests (SNAP), while acknowleding that "none of those
events, in and of itself, cause or guarantee real healing", also asserted
that, "for a victim, a number of steps can help a victim move toward recovery:
-- the removal or death of his/her perpeetrator, -- the criminal indictment,
arrest, conviction of her/his perpetrator, -- the filing or resolution
of a civil lawsuit against his/her perpetrator."
What I found myself wondering as I read these quotes
is just what kind of healing they were talking about. In her statement,
Ms. Blaine went on to say that, "The crimes and cover ups have gone on
for decades and the recovery from these horrors will also go on for years
and years. Boston Catholics and survivors have repeatedly and deeply been
betrayed. They must brace themselves for more awful disclosures and for
a lengthy and rocky road to recovery," which suggests to me a different
kind of healing than the one I would think is most needed.
Suppose, for example, a person walks up to
you and swings a crowbar at your shins, breaking your leg. That person
could be removed from any kind of position of power. They could be convicted
in criminal court or face a judgment against them in civil court. They
could even die. In the end, though, none of these things would bring about
healing to the broken leg.
I think there are a couple of reasons why hope
for healing need to be pinned on something else.
First, while the resignation might, at least
to a small degree, bring a sense of justice being served, it takes more
than that to heal a person's heart and spirit. For the victims whose innocence
and childhood were taken from them, will the Cardinal's resignation restore
it? There are those who have "learned" through the experience that their
value is limited to their availability for sexual activity. Will the resignation
enable them to believe once again that they have instrinsic worth? Will
anybody whose faith in God been destroyed by His ambassadors now believe
in God again? I don't think the cure for these wounds will simply be found
in the change in leadership of the Boston Archdiocese.
Secondly, by pinning their healing to an external
act by someone else, the victims give up control over their wholeness to
that person. Regardless of what happens to any priest or cardinal, an abuse
victim needs to find healing. Some find it spiritually. Some find it with
a trained counselor. Many find it with a combination of the two. However,
if we depend on what happens to someone else to find our healing, we take
our focus off the wound that needs to be healed, and that would seem to
place an unnecessary obstacle on the path to wholeness.
Part of the message of Christmas is a message
of healing. Christ came to heal our wounds by adressing those wounds directly,
and it is a healing that depends only on our response to Him. Perhaps that
is a model to be remembered, in Boston and beyond. |
