Two years ago, I sat with a group of former Church workers, swapping war stories. If you have been employed by or worked closely with the Church, you have probably been in one of these conversations before, where people take turns one-upping each other over how poorly they were treated by the Church. It can be a very cathartic experience.
But during this particular powwow, one person stepped in and said: “You know, despite all of this, I am thankful for the time I spent serving the Church. I wouldn’t take it back. I still love the Church.”
It struck me because this was not the attitude I had at the time. The wounds were still very fresh, so it was not something I could hear. But over time, his words have rung true. I have since come to share his perspective.
Of course, there are many former Church workers who have not reached this peace when it comes to “lower-case” abuse. This is distinct from the physical abuse some suffer. It is the spiritual or emotional dysfunction, manipulation, lectures, ostracism and passive aggression that often occur when working for the Church. It is not criminal, but it is no less wounding.
Many never reach that place of peace; they remain in a place of bitterness.
There is a path that everyone takes in new jobs, new relationships, new projects and workouts. One begins in a place of uninformed optimism, where he naively believes that everything will work out well and considers only the good things that can happen. Many people begin their careers in Church work in this way. They are going to pray with their co-workers every day; they are excited to work in an entirely Catholic office; and they are excited about the mission, the people they are going to reach and all the conversions.
Then the reality of the situation sinks in. There are people who work in his office who are not committed Catholics or who seem hostile to the Gospel. They actively oppose his mission and the mission of the Church. There are people in the Church who abuse the vulnerable. There are people who have been hurt by the Church whom he cannot help.
As the reality starts to sink in, he becomes an informed pessimist. He becomes the polar opposite of the uninformed optimist. The optimist can see only the good things, while the pessimist can see only the bad things.
When I meet informed pessimists, they think themselves mature. They see themselves – perhaps rightly – as having matured beyond the uninformed optimist. But if this descent continues, our Church worker will end up in what is called the valley of despair, where pessimism overcomes him completely.
The informed pessimist is a sophomore – a wise fool. He has matured enough to recognise the immaturity of people further back on the chart, but is not yet wise enough to recognise his own immaturity.
If you find yourself in the position of an informed pessimist, two paths lie before you. You can descend further into despair or climb back up to informed optimism.
Informed optimism is the next, more mature step in the cycle. It is where you recognise and are aware of the downsides of Church ministry, and even of engaging with the Church at all through your parish or other institutions. You are aware of the failings but have the mental, emotional and spiritual fortitude to withstand them. You withstand them because the benefits outweigh the costs.
Don’t get me wrong: it is really hard to reach informed optimism. Many well-intentioned people who work in the Church never get there. But for those of you who want to, I would like to offer some things for reflection.
In 1 Corinthians 13, St Paul tells us that love “does not brood over injury”. It is very easy in marriage, friendship, parenthood and Church work to brood over injury. There are priests who made my life very hard years ago whom I still struggle to forgive. There are parish employees, parents and even some people to whom I ministered who hurt me, and it has taken time to forgive them.
But real Christian love does not brood over injury or hold a grudge. This is the kind of forgiveness that can come only through grace. St Maria Goretti, for example, immediately forgave her attacker and was more concerned with the salvation of his soul than with her own life. This kind of heroic sainthood is impossible for many to imagine. But it is what we are all called to.
This is not the kind of advice you can give to someone immediately after they have experienced abuse, or even years later. But it is the kind of advice I feel comfortable giving to those who can hear it.
If you cannot hear this advice right now, that is all right, and I ask you to move on from this piece. But if you are in a place where you can begin to forgive, you have to do it. Holding on will only continue to hurt you. The vitriol and anger that you feel towards the Church will not make the Church better. They will only make you worse.
The Church is an imperfect mother. Often, she feels less like a mother and more like a machine. Sometimes the institutional Church reminds me of Are You My Mother?, in which the bird encounters an excavator.
Despite the bird’s terror and the cold, polluting smoke of the “snort”, it still lifts her up to her nest. Despite her occasional coldness, the institutional Church is still the mechanism through which Christ has decided to make himself present to the world. She still has the power to sanctify us.
This is why forgiving the Church is so important. We simply do not have time; we are closer to the end of time than we were when we first believed. We are closer to the end of our lives. There are souls that need the sacraments, and they can receive them only through the ministry of the Church. So we have to keep working. We have to push through the injury, through the Church hurt. We have to take up our cross and follow Him.
It is a saying so common that it sounds like a cliché, but this is what Christ meant. The pain you feel is real, but so was the wood of the Cross. Christ promised that His yoke would be easy, not because suffering is easy, but because He is suffering with you.
I recognise that these words are going to be hard for people to hear, and many may mistake my meaning. I write this only because I want you to be a saint and not to allow the sins of someone who may genuinely be evil to drag you down. I do not want them to take you with them. I want Christ to take you with Him.
For anyone who has suffered abuse at the hands of someone who was supposed to represent Christ’s Church, I want to offer my apologies on behalf of our Church and offer my prayer and fasting for you.
My hope is that you heal, and that one day we will rejoice in our wounds with Christ and His Wounds.
