I have waited for several days to post on this, as I wanted to enjoy the holiday break with my family and allow a little time to get my bearings on this issue in order to speak to it without using raw emotion as my only motivation.
There are two open letters recently published which speak on a very personal level to the issue of abuse of power within the Church hierarchy. The first, posted here provides the first person point of view of a father of children abused by Rev. Donald McGuire, SJ. The second, is a letter to the editor of the Chicago Sun Times published here. (scroll down to letter titled "Church needs to search soul")
The letter to the editor uses only 3 sentences to perfectly identify where the entire Church community is on the continuum between hurt and healed. My friends, this 2007 Thanksgiving was not celebrated in an era where systemic institutional corruption within the Church is a thing of the past. It thrives and continues to enable the kind of events that horrified us in the past.
I attended Mass at St. Rose in Perrysburg with fellow parishioners from United Parishes 2 years ago, and the pastor filling in for Fr. Leyland that day implored those of us wearing the yellow "Together We Can" buttons to look at this as a time for healing when talking about these events that are a blight on Church's record.
I am not a priest, and cannot speak as one. I am a father though, and can speak as one of those. Priests are not fathers (not paternally anyway) by design, and therefore can tell a father of a child who has been abused by a cleric that this is "a time for healing" without comprehending what he is instructing.
Such instruction is tantamount to the conductor of a wrecking train telling passengers and bystanders that this is "a time for healing" while the train is still wrecking; AND while there is another train coming down the tracks unaware of what is unfolding in front of it.
It would go a long way if the Church personally understood from experience that the moment a man becomes a father, or a woman becomes a mother, that they are tasked with 1 absolute responsibility for which failure is not an option:
- Protect their child from any form of harm.
That means any or all of the following and plenty more:
- illness
- falls
- burns
- electric shock
- kidnap
- online predators
- cuts
- bruises
- rye's syndrome
- head lice
- traffic
- bullies
- graphic violence and sexuality in movies and television
- unhealthy food
- lead paint
- rashes
- pink eye
- aresenic in playground equipment
- contaminated drinking water
- contaminated air
- pollution in general
- lead paint again
- lead paint yet again
- and just when you thought there was no more lead paint, lead paint yet again
- toys with parts that can cause choking or stop breathing
- lead paint
- inadequate insurance for healthcare needs which may arise for any number of reasons including but not limited to exposure to lead paint
- drunk drivers
- distracted drivers
- flu
- allergies
- bee stings
- mean dogs
- I could go on but hopefully you get my drift by this point
The point is, a parent must always be one step ahead of whatever danger is out there. For this reason, all parents decide where there is potential risk, and where there is safety from that risk. When the danger embeds itself within the boundaries of safety and disguises itself as a protector, a parent is most vulnerable.
If a parent is ever concerned that they may have failed in their 1 task above, there is nothing like condescension and platitudes to make this situation worse than it already is. Can a celibate hierarchy understand this? If they could, would the ones who tell us it is "time to heal" be able to look us in the eye when they say it?
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