2024-11-30
A substantial amount of the time when I try to talk to other lay Catholics about the abuse CRISIS in the Roman Catholic Church, here is what happens: They tell me they are not in a place in their spiritual life to hear these kinds of things. But then they ask something like this: is this just a situation where these victims can’t forgive?
So these people feel like even hearing about abuse would derail their faith. But people who lived through the actual abuse are blamed for not forgiving.
I am ashamed to admit ten years ago I also would have responded in the same way.
The problem with focusing on forgiveness is that it detracts from all the other issues which we routinely neglect, like protecting innocent people and not revictimizing previously abused people. I think many victims have found forgiveness for their original abuser but are currently being re-abused by the institutional church. So when we tell them to forgive, it is essentially telling them to simply put up with being abused. I also think many victims are in such debilitating pain they are just in survival mode. It is like asking a drowning person in the middle of a tumultuous ocean trying to locate the direction of the shore why they didn’t attend church on Sunday.
Where is Jesus? Jesus is in that ocean with those people trying not to drown. ‘Truly, I say to you, as you did it to one of the least of these my brothers, you did it to me.’” Matthew 25:40