Friday, January 17, 2014

Sexual abuse 1 - by clergy the tip of the iceberg

My purpose in these posts is to bring a variety of Christian and other writers in a desire to share significant writings that in my estimation contribute to the common good and directly or indirectly give glory to God and extend the Lord's work of salvation to all of humanity. G.S.

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Sexual abuse is a crime against humanity

The sexual exploitation and abuse of one human being by another is a crime against humanity because it is a violation of who that person is in their very identity as a sexual human being. Our sexuality is an integral facet of who we are in our distinctiveness as human beings. We are living beings with a capacity to not only relate to others and to care for them but also to do so in a great variety of distinct ways, with degrees of intimacy and expression appropriate to our age, gender, the nature of the relationship, what it is that we want to express or give, all of which is deeply tied into our freedom as individuals and our capacity for meaning and responsibility.

Sexual and other forms of abuse are particularly heinous when committed against children and other vulnerable, fragile, or innocent beings. They become doubly tragic when those perpetrating the abuse are themselves the distorted product of having in their turn suffered sexual or other forms of abuse, often at an early and deeply impressionable age. 

One benefit, admittedly an incalculably costly one, of the current scandal of sexual abuse of children and other innocent and vulnerable people and by virtue of the actions that have been courageously taken by victims, those who support them, and those individuals and agencies who represent them, but also by virtue of church leaders who have made manifest their willingness to receive complaints, is that social taboos are shattering and it is becoming more possible to talk of these things openly and therefore to begin to work together towards solutions and better safeguards.

The complex nature of the human person and sexuality 

The fundamental and horrible truth of the matter is that human nature, including our sexuality, has been weakened, damaged, tainted since the dawn of human history. The abominable practices and the pain and suffering engendered by misuse of human sexuality is primarily what has caused - almost across the board worldwide - religious leaders to condemn sexual infidelity and all forms of unusual sexual practices as evil or at least to be avoided if not condemned.

Human history, literature, and culture chronicles the many ways in which human beings cause others to suffer whenever they use their sexuality as a way of taking pleasure, often at the expense of others. While men and women differ by design in their naturally occurring genders - with males more intrusive and females more inclusive - sexual predators can and do exist among members of both genders, even if they admittedly can appear and operate very differently with different degrees of destructiveness in the consequences and aftermath of their sexual activity.

Particularly in our day there is an increasingly universal acceptance that sexual expression and even experimentation are acceptable providing they take place among consenting adults. Yet, increasingly there are those bold and aggressive enough to contend that such sexual activity and experimentation is even acceptable by adults to children and youth. These opinions and ideological positions do not take into account the human developmental process nor the subsidiary process of eroticization.

If we are ever to understand what is going on, how the trends in human thought, feeling, conviction, and practice are constantly evolving - and often in ways that bode ill for the common good - we need to have a closer look at the nature of the human person and of our sexual dimension in a dynamic way that makes provision for and takes into account our developmental process.

If sex were not pleasurable, then there would be little need for this dialogue because few if any human beings would engage in sexual activity. It is precisely because of the pleasure that sex can and does afford that the human impulse to engage in it is so strong. The pleasure principle in general and in sex in particular is of itself ambivalent at worst - neither good nor bad - at best high and noble, and in the middle with the average view that sex is simply good, when it is not great.

Sex is good, yes, but not in every instance

Even reluctant or prudish religious authorities have traditionally granted that sex was good with the belief that it was designed and created by God, if only for the transmission of life and the survival of the species. Those with a more objective, realistic, and appreciative eye go further in acknowledging that human sexuality also has benefits for human couples when engaged in by one woman with one man for life; in that the power of sex binds them together, allows them to mutually give pleasure and comfort, and over time can evolve and grow with them and their relationship so as to intensify their mutual attachment, fidelity, and solicitude, that is, their disposition and motivation to look out for the other and to deliberately put the other's interests first, ahead of their own.

Pope John Paul II, the Bishop of Rome from October 16, 1978 to April 2, 2005 was of this view and went much further and deeper in his development of thought on what he called the "theology of the body", which emerged over time from the philosophical reflection he engaged in from his youth on human meaning, freedom, love, and "the acting person". He was of the view that human beings give meaning to their lives by their deliberate choices and that the highest meaning comes in the freedom to make of oneself a total gift to the other. He called this the "law of the gift". His work continues to be promoted all over the world for the common good.

 Why do people pervert sex into violence?

Because human sexuality is so deeply tied into the integrity of the human person, our freedom, our capacity for giving meaning to our life, and our capacity to be open to and care for the other, sexual abuse is particularly bad for the pain it inflicts, the deep damage it causes, and the lasting harm it does as a violent act, and it is increasingly evil the more grievous its effects on the victim, the one whose freedom, integrity, meaning, caring, and openness have been violated.

Why do people then perpetrate such violence one upon another? The answer can only be found in the toxic mixture of the beauty, goodness, attractiveness, power, high purpose, and desirability of sexual expression on the one hand, and the distorted nature of the humanity of the perpetrator on the other hand. By analogy we understand that a hammer in the hand of a sculptor like Michelangelo can be instrumental in creating such inspiring sculpture as the Pieta, but in the hand of a vandal can destroy a thing of beauty, or wound or kill living things and even people.

The beauty and power of human sexuality 

So it is with our human sexuality, which can be seen as a capacity for tenderness. Human beings don't simply have sexuality, but we are sexual beings. Our sexuality informs, colors, and is informed by our whole being at every level. Comforting a child engages our human sexuality, our capacity for tenderness, but in a healthy person does not generally engage one's genitals or erotic stimuli or responses. These tend not to activate without specific stimulation, unlike our other functions which operate automatically.

Our sexuality can be considered healthy when we have effective safeguards allowing us to distinguish different types of relationships giving us freedom to express a wide range of tenderness - actively in giving and passively in receiving - without any confusion from sexual arousal in ways appropriate to the nature of each relationship, time, circumstance, and the meaning we wish to express. Sexuality can be considered most noble when it seeks and effectively accomplishes the good of the other.

Genital sexuality adds to the expression of tenderness other meanings related to the union of a man and a woman and the outcome of their sexual fertility in the procreation of children, the transmission of life itself. Sexual activity outside of a woman / man couple with a mutual commitment for life sets aside the procreative function, the stability of a life commitment, or other dimensions which all have repercussions on those engaging in sexual expression and those affected by it, such as the offspring.

Human sexual development requires mentoring

However, it is easily observable that human beings don't just fall into a perfect experience and sexual life stance, but that this requires careful upbringing, learning, mentoring, and living. We also need to learn to seek and give forgiveness when our expressions of tenderness and sexual union are clumsy or selfish and manipulate, take, and hurt rather than give and care. When our sexuality and capacity for tenderness are poorly formed, mistakenly informed, or incompletely matured, all kinds of harm can be done in the abominations that occur.

We can see this in every generation and just about in every life. Married couples must invest selfless effort to develop their sexuality so that it becomes a mutual venture that enhances their union and bears good fruit for others around them beginning with their family. The more selflessly parents live their sexuality as a couple, the more benefits there are for their children who develop a more healthy sexual outlook from the mentoring they receive.

Wandering away from the original design

Other forms of human couple have the additional struggle of not having the differentiation and complementarity inherent in the basic man-woman couple, or the permanence and stability of being committed to each other for life, or the deepening of their relationship that comes from long term fidelity and exclusivity, or the deeper freedom that comes from sharing a deep personal relationship with their Creator God as the true and existential source of their love, fidelity, and fertility. When fertility is regarded as a curse or medicated as a disease might, it is easy to understand how sexuality can become an arena of disagreement and unpleasantness if not of selfish manipulation and abuse.

When children are brought into the world in a family where at its center the parent couple do not live their sexuality with the purest of motives and the clarity and freedom of unselfish love, one can begin to understand how all kinds of misunderstandings, manipulation, hurts, and deviations can occur. It is the tragic truth that it is most often and primarily in the family that children are abused in various ways including sexually, where parents or other adults abuse children precisely because they cannot assert themselves and are in their innocence most vulnerable and easy to manipulate and exploit.

Once sexuality is in this way perverted in the young, they struggle for their whole lives to live a more wholesome sexuality in accord with our fundamental design for happiness and togetherness. Those who are fortunate are able to gradually sanitize or make healthier their sexuality, but others become inclined to reproduce in their own lives the abuse and perversions of sexual tenderness that marked them in their innocent years. It is much like the children of alcoholics who tend to gravitate towards another alcoholic when they are seeking out a spouse or life partner simply because that is the type of human personality with which they became familiar while growing up.

Exquisitely sensitive spouses or dangerous rapists

It is the very same raw material of human sexual personality that begins at conception and develops through gestation, birth, infancy, childhood, youth, and adulthood. Why, then, do some become exquisitely sensitive and loving spouses, some struggle with clumsy attempts to please, others have trouble setting aside their own desires and come across as "taking" rather than "giving", and still others become manipulators, violators, rapists, pedophiles, ephebophiles, in short, dangerous offenders and monsters?

It is impossible to understand these differences outside of a "developmental model" of the human person as a sexual human being as opposed to a human being who simply happens to have sexual organs. A human being is a single living entity, and all of its experiences interact with all the others throughout its developmental stages and then continuing throughout its entire life cycle. You cannot examine or understand a person's sexuality without striving to understand the entire person, because everything within them is interrelated. You "pull" on one aspect and the whole fabric is pulled along.

Human development is a long and complicated process

Before the advent of discoveries and advancement in our understanding of the human person, it was generally thought - and many people have not caught up with the social sciences and still think - that a person is "born that way", the way they are, and that they cannot change. Advances in scientific observation, analysis, theorizing, and experimentation have revealed that the living entity called a human being as a physical and psychic organism has a wide and complex range of emotive experience as well as expression, and in addition has a more mysterious spiritual dimension that is more difficult to observe and quantify.

The human being begins its development with the genetic material it "receives" from its mother and father and from the moment of conception also absorbs untold billions of "impressions" from both the mother and the father during gestation in the womb and then continues to take in untold quantities of "impressions" from its parents, other people, other living thinks, and everything else that exists all around it, as well as its own inner processes, which in turn are also very complex.

Each individual has received from its genetic material certain "predispositions" to a variety of conditions, inclinations, sensitivities, and sensibilities. As time passes and as it takes in quantities of sensations and experiences, the individual undergoes the ongoing cumulative effect of all that it is taking in, its ongoing growth, and a developing and constantly operating process of "updating" or "rebooting" for understanding and interpretation, judgement and orientation, responsibility and freedom. Sensations, perceptions, emotions, thoughts, interpretations, awareness, feelings, moral judgements, free choices, the acceptance of responsibility and responsibilities, freedom to change, deliberate commitments, ongoing learning, admission of fault, and efforts to improve are only some of the multiple facets and operations taking place more or less simultaneously that taken together are in a continuous way formative of the human person.

Human development - becoming a person

In the social sciences it is now generally accepted that the human being is a dependent entity from the moment of its conception until it reaches maturity. One becomes a mature adult, with at least the essential elements and abilities of an adult, after having experienced 8 developmental stages between conception and the early twenties. These stages are: fetus, body identity, identity of the doer, individual identity, psychosexual identity, psychosocial identity, identity of the self, and early adult.

We more easily recognize them as gestation, infancy (0-1), toddler (1-2 1/2), budding individual (2 1/2 - 3), Oedipus Complex or nightmare stage (3-6), the "flocking" by gender stage (6-12), teenage (12-18), and "getting a life" (18-22). Along the way, each person develops "preferences" of sensation, outlook, expression, reaction, and action. During the first year of life after birth, some become more "captative", active, or outreaching, while others prefer to become more "receptive", passive, or wait expectantly. During the "potty training" stage, some become more "retentive" and hold things in, hold onto things; while others become more "eliminative" and release things, let them go more easily. This generalizes to every aspect of life from personal hygiene to money to generosity of time and spirit.

From the stage where children "fall in love" with their opposite gender parent (3-6), some males befriend their "intrusive" mode (generally experienced as wanting to be like Daddy) - which is inscribed in the very design of their body - and let it become their natural way of being manly in the world; while some - either because they have been harmed by extreme forms of male intrusiveness or simply lacked an available model - prefer the female "inclusive" mode (they prefer to be like Mommy or like a very inclusive father; with the result that being intrusive takes more effort and energy every time they need to employ that mode, particularly if the mother was intrusive in a way that felt angry or controlling or threatening.

During that same stage when little girls "fall in love" with their Daddy, some females befriend their "inclusive" mode (generally experienced as wanting to be like Mommy) - which is inscribed in the very design of their body and let it become their natural way of being womanly in the world; while some - either because they have been harmed by extreme forms of female inclusiveness or simply lacked an available model - prefer the male "intrusive" mode (they prefer to be like Daddy or like a very intrusive mother; with the result that being inclusive takes more effort and energy every time they need to employ that mode, particularly if the father was inclusive in a way that seemed weak or withdrawing, or humiliating.

In their teenage years, boys and girls try out their newly discovered personal preferences and abilities and find that they are energized when they are with others and may become increasingly extroverted, or they may find that being with others is more draining than energizing, so that they may become more introverted. These dispositions may also tend to vary in accord with the size of the group and their familiarity with the others and degree of acceptance by the others. Some will be more inclined to be leaders and others followers and still others, either role depending on the circumstances and the others involved.

Most of us have some "wrinkles" in our development

Social scientists, philosophers, theologians, varied other professionals, and people in other walks of life will define what is a human person from a variety of viewpoints and a wide range of parameters. What does it take to become fully human? If an individual gets stuck in the first stage of life, infancy, when it was the center of the universe and the mother was still felt to be part of its own body, then as an apparent adult, this individual turns out to behave so selfishly with such little conscience that we call them sociopath - without awareness of others as having a life of their own - or psychopaths - so intent on using others for their own ends that they are actually dangerous to life and limb.This is the case of those who in the face of the prospect of being abandoned will kill their spouse, children, and finally themselves, because they suffocate emotionally at the very thought of being abandoned.

Those who get "stuck" at the potty training stage may appear as extremely retentive or miserly or up tight, on the one hand, or on the other hand eliminative or spendthrift or irresponsibly carefree. Such an individual may be developmentally incapable of caring for others - unable to put out what it takes to care for others or unable to conserve what resources or time or energy that caring for others takes.

Those who get stuck at stage four - 2 1/2 to 3 - may never have become an "individual" in their own right, either because they became so merged with a needy parent or parents that, discouraged from paying attention to their own feelings and needs, they became incompetent as an individual human. Such an individual, perennially deprived of individuality or personal identity, would be hard pressed to properly care for others, being ever depleted for lack of self care. If they manage to heroically care for others, it would then be at extreme cost to themselves, being unable to distinguish differences in priority among the needs and wants of others and their own needs and wants, unable to reconcile those of others and their own.

Those who experience difficulties in befriending their own gender come to such difficulties from any number of factors: the degree or lack of masculinity of their father, absence of a father, frightening or humiliating distortion of a father figure, or unsteady, unstable character of their father; the degree or lack of femininity of their mother, absence of a mother, frightening or humiliating distortion of a mother figure, or volatile, unreliable character of their mother; which factors can be exacerbated by one or several occurrences of one or more forms of abuse: emotional, physical, psychological, sexual; or deprivations that are normally associated with social instability, poverty, and violence such as war, unemployment, racial or other forms of negative discrimination, religious or other forms of persecution, and so on.

Healthy, impoverished, or damaged development at any of these earlier life stages has cumulative effects when the individual enters into the subsequent more social stages of human development, which in turn can accentuate or open up delays in development of various facets of the emerging human person. Childhood and teenage bullying, social pressures to conform and even to perform anti-social or criminal acts, neglect or abandonment by significant adults, extreme social upheaval and countless other factors can enhance, hold back, or demolish an individual's human development up to that point in their young lives.

The initial result when the individual "comes of age" and is recognized as "an adult" will be a human individual that is capable of a minimum of self care, awareness of others as independent individuals with their own value and right to exist, ability to live and act in the world and society, and ability to assume the rights and duties of a citizen and member of society. For many, this initial plateau or goal is delayed until later as they struggle to survive, to help their family or basic group to survive, all the while trying to welcome the challenges and events of life as opportunities to continue to grow and to develop into fully functional human persons.

The role of "eroticization" in becoming a human person



Distorted human beings - undeveloped or "petrified" persons



to be continued....

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My purpose in these posts is to help spread the contributions of a variety of Christian and other writers in a desire to share significant writings that in my estimation contribute to the common good and directly or indirectly give glory to God and extend the Lord's work of salvation to all of humanity. G.S.

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© 2004-2021 All rights reserved Fr. Gilles Surprenant, Associate Priest of Madonna House Apostolate & Poustinik, Montreal  QC
© 2004-2021 Tous droits réservés Abbé Gilles Surprenant, Prêtre Associé de Madonna House Apostolate & Poustinik, Montréal QC
 

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Thursday, January 16, 2014

The Case Against the Pope - the Church is taking responsibility for those who have been abused by clergy.

My purpose in these posts is to bring a variety of Christian and other writers in a desire to share significant writings that in my estimation contribute to the common good and directly or indirectly give glory to God and extend the Lord's work of salvation to all of humanity. G.S.

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I was profoundly moved by the "Culture Project" presentation recently in New York of "The Case Against the Pope" on the Internet after being directed to it yesterday by the "Center for Constitutional Rights". The panel consisted of Gerard Mannix Flynn who wrote and performs "James X' spoke to "How James X Came About", a play that came to him in which he expresses the suffering inflicted on a person by sexual and other forms of abuse and in particular by trusted authority figures such as priests and their struggle to emerge from that dark place into the light; Pam Spees who spoke to "CCR Involvement in James X"; Gabriel Byrne who spoke of his "Motivation for Directing James X"; and Mary Valier-Kaplan who spoke on "How Art Confronts Society".

Each of them also gave personal testimony in the course of addressing their involvement with this 75 minute theater play "James X" which runs without intermission. I was quite taken up by them and found that each panelist came across as entirely authentic, particularly as they confided their personal testimony, and an honest and deeply motivated desire to seek human progress in putting a stop to the abuse, torment, and torture of innocent children at the hands of adults, especially those who are in positions of public trust and for that reason particularly dangerous as predators.

I could not find fault with anything each of them said about the sad realities of abuse and what untold suffering it causes the victims and all those related to them; nor would I want to find fault given that a person's personal experience is of inestimable value. The challenge then for all those who seek to help and intervene in any way and work collaboratively for progress in this troubled area of human existence is to establish the objective truth in both the facts of each case as well as the person's subjective experience of those facts, on the one hand, and on the other hand, to better understand all the players involved, in both their nature and intentions, from the plaintiffs and those representing them to representatives at all levels of the Roman Catholic Church.

I found the experience of listening to this panel very compelling and stimulating in part because they addressed something that deeply distresses not only me but I think most if not all of us alive today on this planet who have any degree at all of sensitivity to the suffering of others, especially vulnerable and innocent children of any generation, whether it be decades ago or only this week. There seem to be many complications around these issues given the time it is taking to achieve workable solutions to the essential problems - both the rescue of and caring for victims of abuse and establishing clear protections for children and other vulnerable people in the present and for the future.

As I listened to the panelists' passionate pleas for progress on these issues - the key motivation in the CCR's action to put the issue to the Vatican officials named at the World Court in The Hague - I came to understand something for the first time: the rampant human emotion of fear on the part of all parties involved in these issues and their attempts to resolve them.

Plaintiffs, those who care for them, and those who seek to represent them, are afraid of the apparent power wielded by the sheer number of individuals and institutions comprising the entity called the Roman Catholic Church - including the "secular arm" called the Vatican City State and the "Holy See" designating the Pope's own ministry and that of all those individuals and groups and services that assist him - and fear for past, present, and future generations of children and other vulnerable people who may risk abuse at the hands of some elements of that authority and power. They fear, and I think rightly so as fear goes, that the harm done may not be redressed and that further harm may be done, and that we may continue to be helpless to stop it. These are legitimate fears that are crying out for our considered attention and timely and concerted action I think.

What was new to my awareness as I listened to the panelists' eloquent pleas for progress in these urgent matters was that fear may also be present and exerting undue influence within the ranks of the Church's own authorities, and servants, and within its numerous international and national primary and subsidiary institutions. Understandably, there may be some fear of being overwhelmed by the sheer number and gravity of the complaints, and some of those fears could likely be assuaged by proper formation and procedures and protocols for attending to the complaints as to both the victims and the alleged perpetrators. Further fears would be generated by concerns for the welfare of the victims of whom many have lost faith in the Church itself, generating a sense of helplessness in those who would be most apt and motivated to offer help. Thirdly, and these fears I think are the ones most likely to obstruct a proper meeting and dialogue with civil entities representing victims and their interests, which fears I would categorize under the impression of a general threat to the very existence of the institution of the RC Church itself.

There exist unquantifiably massive amounts of verifiable evidence and testimony in support of the Roman Catholic Church as an institution bringing untold benefit to humanity - in response to daily human needs as well as to spiritual needs - in just about every nation on Earth, and that in a consistent if progressive way over the past two millennia. When suits are brought to court at various levels by plaintiffs and those representing them, it seems apparent that all too often those suits are brought with such force and in such a way as to trivialize, ignore, or even deny the value of the Church as an institution - as though it were entirely criminal in a totally indiscriminate way or that the fact of the crimes of abuse of themselves could cancel the existence of the entire institution and all of its actors and members - such that one can be justified in taking from these suits and actions and the manner in which they are brought forth the impression that the desired intent or effect, directly or indirectly, intentional or unintentional, of such suit and action would be the destruction of the Church itself.

So on the one hand we have the plaintiffs - the victims - those sympathetic to them and representing them, for the most part afraid of the danger that certain elements of the Church - disturbed and unbalanced clergy or religious or responsible laity - have in the past and continue in the present to represent. On the other hand, we have members and servants of the Church who are afraid that the suits in their lack of discrimination will in effect bring about the destruction of the Church.

Consider those dioceses where the bishops have shown great openness to receive the complaints, to accept responsibility for them, to express appropriate and sincere regret for them, and to accept to fulfill the court's requirement of compensation. Many of them were brought to the brink, if not actually over the brink, of bankruptcy. After all, what is the Church, really? Unlike multinational corporations whose purpose is the amassing of assets, profits, and dividends to shareholders, officers, and employees, the Church's purpose is public service. The vast majority of dioceses have few if any investments, and generally these are to offset obligations of services, often social services, and their only other assets are buildings with their accessories, and people, both employees and members, many of whom are volunteers.

Granted, some church buildings are more lavish than others, but they are generally recognized to contain and represent cultural artifacts of lasting and historical value to the whole human race, not only to those who happen to be using and responsible to maintain them. Then there is the vast range of other assets established for the purpose of public service: hospitals, schools, orphanages, soup kitchens and shelters, to name only a few. Compare the benefits to officers of multinational corporations and you will find that bishops, priests, and religious are working and living as relatively "poor cousins". Some enjoy more benefits than others, but the vast majority of priests and religious live poorly and are horrified by the crimes committed by abusers.

From a civil law point of view, local churches or dioceses are incorporated in the person of whoever holds the office of bishop. The bishop is the corporation, not him personally, but him the officer. It does happen that, human nature being the damaged thing that it is, that on occasion a bishop may not properly fulfill his obligations. In countries where a member of the tribe who succeeds in life is then expected to come to the support and aid of his whole tribe or clan, some ethnic bishops have wrongly used diocesan funds to support their tribesmen. We westerners are shocked by such actions, but it is difficult to judge impartially from the outside of a particular social reality. I'm not condoning such misbehavior but just saying that I understand how it happens that people can do such things.

The point that I am trying to make here is that if the Church has any assets anywhere, those assets are the property of the faithful, the ordinary Catholics - the vast majority of whom are poor - and not the property of the clergy who are alleged to be and when proven to be guilty are in reality the abusers of their long suffering victims. Financial compensation of victims comes about by taking from those ordinary Catholics, making new victims of them, as it were, though certainly not in their persons, but still, in a true way, in their investment in their church. When a suit alleges that one or more bishops failed to take proper action to rescue the victims, prevent further abuse, and to attend to the victims' needs, there again, financial compensation takes from Peter to give to Paul or Pauline.

As long as the whole apparatus of action to seek redress for the victims of sexual and other forms of abuse bases its actions and its legal suits on a misunderstanding of what the Church is as an entity that exists in society for service to that same society, then those suits can be expected to continue to generate fear within the institution, fear among its officials, its members, its servants, and its many subsidiary institutions at every level: neighborhood, municipal, diocesan, provincial, national, and international. We all need to become far more astute in our mutual understanding if we are ever to attain a more open and effective dialogue and subsequently achieve together actions and safeguards that will bring both comfort to the afflicted and safeguard to the vulnerable.

As a Roman Catholic man, Christian, and priest myself, I could see here and there in panelists' words some further lack of understanding of the full nature of the RC Church and how it works. Unlike multinational corporations where directives are sent out from the top to all degrees and levels of the company and its subsidiaries with the practical expectation that they will be carried out, the Church does not and cannot function like that. Employees and officers of a company who do not follow directives are disciplined or fired or transferred, and one way or another, no failure to carry them out is tolerated. People earn a salary and are expected to "tow the line". The CEO and their officers have direct authority over employees at every level of the company.

Not so with the Roman Catholic Church, at least, not entirely. While it is true that the Roman Pontiff or his officers do follow up on some outstanding issues or roles carried out by certain individuals such as bishops, priests, Catholic professors, this tends to be in response to complaints that regular authorities have tried and failed to obtain redress. The Vatican in that sense is a kind of ombudsman. The Pope or any other officer of the Vatican - whether the City State or the Holy See - have no authority whatsoever over any bishop or priest's salary, not directly. It is true that a bishop or priest can be disciplined with varying degrees of severity and that these sanctions would then have some practical effects. However, this authority is only morally binding and not legal with civil force.

When a company fires someone, that employee generally has little recourse if the firing was handled astutely and properly in accord with the law. A guilty priest or bishop could be suspended and even excommunicated, but such severe sanctions have rarely until now been employed to stop abusers in their tracks and for understandable reasons. We enjoy in our day unprecedented progress in how we understand the human person and the functioning of all our faculties. Until some decades ago, sexual misconduct was seen entirely as a spiritual problem, one that required confession, penance, and repentance. The fact that sexual abuse by its nature tends to remain hidden and difficult to prove if not difficult to believe in great part led Church leaders to take the part of the accused.

Progress in psychotherapy and counseling has brought to light the experience of the victim and has also brought to light the different kinds of profiles of abusers, the most dangerous being pedophiles - those who abuse prepubescent children - who typically are living in total and unconscious denial. It is even impossible for experienced therapists to help them because they are clinically unaware that they have done anything wrong. Unlike them, those who abuse teens or adults are generally completely aware they have done wrong and generally deeply guilty and repentant, though still in need of help. All this to say that the time has come to assure that authority figures at all levels of the Church are brought "up to speed" on these issues and that proper protocols are put in place and proper formation given on a continual basis, because the Church is an institution in constant transition of personnel as well as of members. People age, become experienced, grow old, die, and are replaced. Those who die bring their wisdom with them and the task must begin ever anew.

The reality also is that each diocese throughout the world - there are currently some 2,846 diocese or local churches worldwide - is autonomous and independently responsible for its normal and ongoing operations. It would be literally impossible for the Pope or the Vatican offices to "micromanage" these dioceses which offer services to the world's 1.2 billion Catholics. Nor would it be in accord with Jesus' will that the bishops be controlled by a central autocrat or autocracy. It has always been understood by Catholics that Jesus gave his authority in name to Peter so that it be exercised by all 12 apostles under the leadership of Peter at the service of all. Peter himself was wrong when he denied Jesus and later when he was corrected by Paul, and it is understood that Jesus' guidance continues until today and will continue until the end when the apostles act as one under Peter. It is Catholic understanding that Jesus continues to unfailingly guide his Church and that this can be seen in the unity of the bishops with the Bishop of Rome and the faith of all the faithful.

So what do people do in the face of sexual and other forms of abuse with complaints against priests in particular? How can we understand how the various instances of the RC Church have handled such complaints in the past and how they are handling them today, and what redress can we seek when the response of Church authorities is deemed to be insufficient or even non-existent? I believe that we will make significant progress on these urgent matters only when both parties - the complainants and the representatives of the Church - manifestly show their agreement on the value of the Church as this value is already manifest worldwide and on the timeliness and need of their concerted collaboration on the healing of the abused, the protection of the vulnerable, the strengthening of the innocent, and the prompt and effective containment, treatment, and sanctioning of abusers.

These thoughts are offered in the interest of advancing the cause for the benefit of all parties and of humanity as a whole. Peace to you, reader, and to one and all. Please feel free to comment here or on my Facebook account.

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My purpose in these posts is to help spread the contributions of a variety of Christian and other writers in a desire to share significant writings that in my estimation contribute to the common good and directly or indirectly give glory to God and extend the Lord's work of salvation to all of humanity. G.S.

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© 2004-2021 All rights reserved Fr. Gilles Surprenant, Associate Priest of Madonna House Apostolate & Poustinik, Montreal  QC
© 2004-2021 Tous droits réservés Abbé Gilles Surprenant, Prêtre Associé de Madonna House Apostolate & Poustinik, Montréal QC
 

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Thursday, December 26, 2013

The Wondrous God Who Became Human for Us

My purpose in these posts is to bring a variety of Christian and other writers in a desire to share significant writings that in my estimation contribute to the common good and directly or indirectly give glory to God and extend the Lord's work of salvation to all of humanity. G.S.

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O what a wondrous night Christmas Eve is... yes, magical, but not of the Harry Potter kind, nor of the Hollywood kind, but rather what happens to us, within us, with us, and all around us when we take note that God is present....

God is ever present, since this single, unique, divine being alone existed before the universe, or anything else that might exist other than God, came to exist. The "magic" happens when we take note that God is indeed present, ever speaking, and ever acting....

He got our attention in a clever and oh so authentic way on this night all those centuries ago when the Son of God, who had humbly accepted to be carried by Mary in her womb for some 9 months, was finally delivered by her into our world to be made manifest, visible, put on display, for our benefit.

Jesus was born not only to get our attention, but to open up for us the possibility of noticing and actually loving God. After all, how hard can it be even for the most hardened human being to love a new-born infant?

Peace to you, my friends, to your colleagues, family, and friends, to your clients and associates, and yes, even to your enemies, if you have any... as Jesus Himself suggested, no, commanded us to do....

Yes, these 12 Christmas Days are indeed magical, powerful, because God offers to change us, to transform us, not to make us someone we're not, but to bring us into being more completely the person we are meant to become, the one we most deeply desire to be, the person who realizes that our very life itself is flowing into us moment by moment from the Source which is God.... This is my Christmas wish and prayer for you and all those you love and care for....

Feel free to share the Advent / Christmas prayer in English or French.... If any of you translate it into Italian or any other language, please send me a copy. Thanks....

“Were not our hearts burning within us as He talked to us on the road and explained the Scriptures to us

Merry Christmas !   May you and all those you care for experience the

Presence of Jesus in the ordinary and special moments of life….

Happy, Healthy, and Holy New Year 2014 !

            May the peace and joy of Christmas abide with you at every moment

throughout the year, when you’re alone and when you are with others….

Fr. Gilles     Come Holy Spirit….

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My purpose in these posts is to help spread the contributions of a variety of Christian and other writers in a desire to share significant writings that in my estimation contribute to the common good and directly or indirectly give glory to God and extend the Lord's work of salvation to all of humanity. G.S.

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© 2004-2021 All rights reserved Fr. Gilles Surprenant, Associate Priest of Madonna House Apostolate & Poustinik, Montreal  QC
© 2004-2021 Tous droits réservés Abbé Gilles Surprenant, Prêtre Associé de Madonna House Apostolate & Poustinik, Montréal QC
 

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Friday, November 29, 2013

Agony and Ecstasy both lift us up to God

My purpose in these posts is to bring a variety of Christian and other writers in a desire to share significant writings that in my estimation contribute to the common good and directly or indirectly give glory to God and extend the Lord's work of salvation to all of humanity. G.S.

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Dear Fellow Christian, or if not a Christian, Dear Fellow Traveler on the road of life....

As it often happens to us moderns, or people living at the beginning of the third millennium, we run the risk of defining or valuing ourselves a lot by our "doing"... and when you go through a "valley" in life, dark shadows of suffering, pain, isolation, loneliness, loss of employment or recognition, or of downright persecution, harassment, exploitation, or abuse; then you could say that you are feeling as though you are "in crisis mode" and unable to do as you normally do.... Well, one could say "So far so good" in the sense that what you are feeling under such circumstances is entirely human and normal for a human being that is still alive.

For the Christian as a disciple of Jesus, as also for the Jew or Jewess as a son or daughter of God, this is a time of grace. For the Muslim, it depends on what kind of faith they have come to experience, since many dominant movements or trends in Islam are all about controlling and engineering society and the behavior of others - much as the Catholic Church, which I dearly love and to which I am very devoted, has done in many places at various times - whereas the Word that God addresses to both Jews and Christians and all people of good will is that the Lord is offering us human beings during times of trial a "spiritual package of grace" that under normal circumstances He is not able to offer us because we would not notice or if we did notice we would not recognize the value and would simply pass over it. God not only wants to advance his divine work in the world of human beings, but He also wants to give human beings growth towards the eternal life He offers and which begins already here and now on Earth....

When our ability to "do" is diminished, the reduction of "noise", of "racing thoughts", of "impulsive activity", and of so many other dynamics begins to "clear the air" within our soul; so that we could say that "the dust begins to settle" and "the smoke begins to clear" and our soul's "eyes" can begin to notice a divine presence and activity it may never have seen before....

To the mind, it appears as an interior "light" that clears up many thoughts and dismisses many thoughts as useless shadows and makes room for the thoughts that are in the "mind" of Christ.... Jesus can begin more easily to "think his thoughts" in our mind and guide us along and further, deeper into the "mind" of God.... Call it wisdom, and it opens up before our mind many doors through which we can enter into all the vitality and possibilities generated within the Holy Trinity. In simple terms, God can help us step back and take a "big picture" view of our life, activity, and experience.

To the heart, it appears as an inclination to relax, to trust, to rest in God and let Him take care of things for a change, and stop worrying, stop thinking that everything is up to me, and a greater, easier willingness to let God do his part. In this heavenly light, all things suddenly become much more clearly as in God's hands, that the Holy Trinity are and always will be "Master of life and existence" in the universe and in the heavenly realms.... Our heart suddenly remembers it is only a creature and not a god, that this corporeal existence began a short time ago in our mother's womb and will shortly leave this earthly realm and be clothed with immortality in preparation for entry into the heart of the Holy Trinity to enjoy unending life for all eternity, and it will be anything but boring....

To the soul, the divine presence and activity becomes slowly more perceptible as something that is so real that it is more real than I am, than the world is, than life itself. The soul begins to grasp the magnitude of the divine being - the Father, the Son - Jesus, Risen from the dead and Master of all - and the Holy Spirit; who have existed for all eternity... we are incapable of grasping there having been no beginning to God, intellectually that is... but the soul slowly accepts to "walk on the water" like Peter and simply accept the eternity of God and that He is offering us the incomparable gift of entering into that eternity.

We may have had a beginning but we too, in God, will have no ending, because our soul is immortal, incapable of dying. All that is asked of us is to enter into God and in this way avoid the "second death", the death of the soul, which is what happens to souls that refuse to trust in God or to become like Him.... The good news is that even now the Holy Trinity breathe into the soul that opens up in trust the very breathing that is happening in the Holy Trinity... so that deep within us our soul can accept to let the Holy Spirit take care of the breathing of our soul... breathing with the very love and trust that are in the Father and the Son... the Holy Spirit living within us now, and this happens so deep within, so imperceptibly, that the soul is only conscious of being loved and wanting to love back, and beginning to do so by letting go... letting God....

In the body, the divine presence and activity is perceived in a variety of ways and in each of them the scenario is similar... the body senses its own struggle and then also perceives from God an invitation to let go, to trust, to surrender, to make room, to open up and welcome that divine presence and action. This results in the body then softening up, opening, relaxing, letting go, trusting, warming up or cooling down in a way that is coming closer to what would be "normal" and good....

This experience of God happens in a wide variety of circumstances, from ecstasy to agony.... When a soul feels physically the beauty and goodness of God, the love of God, it experiences the kinds of feelings we could associate with allowing oneself to be "seduced" or "won over" by a beloved person. Someone we trust and admire loves us and we are so taken up by trust, gratitude, and a burning desire to return that love that we surrender, we give in, we want to turn our whole life over to the beloved.

When a soul suffers agony - the physical pain caused by disease, medical procedures, torture, accidental injury, or physical degeneration, or any other cause - the body is pushed beyond the limits of comfort, of acceptance, and even of ability to endure. It is ironic that similarly to ecstasy where joy lifts us up and out of ourselves in a pleasant way, agony also lifts us up and out of ourselves, but in an unpleasant way. Still, the lasting benefit for the body is the same or similar. When we accept to be lifted up and out of ourselves - whether by ecstasy or by agony - we are in a position to accept from God a great grace: that of indifference to our own fleshly existence, of such freedom regarding our existence in the flesh that this freedom gives us a new capacity to value God, to acknowledge the importance, value, and extravagant love of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit.

This is why God allows human suffering and eventually death, because his grace opens up for us through these experiences so many opportunities for spiritual growth that also prepare us for greater and greater vitality and enjoyment in eternity. Our time on Earth is so short that God wants to seize every opportunity to help us prepare for the much greater gifts that are yet to come....

Of course, in the meantime, it is right for us to value the life we have now, since it is the only life we know - not just the physical, earthly existence, but also the spiritual and supernatural one as daughters and sons of God. We become more fully and more mature sons and daughters as we take to heart the "things of our Father" and become eager that He be known and loved in Jesus his Son and that more and more people come to this personal knowledge and experience in the Holy Trinity and surrender to God's advances and welcome his love, only to become fruitful in turn and a blessing to all those around us, especially those who have not yet been touched and transformed by the life-giving love of God....

Peace to you Dear Reader and to your family, and if you will allow me to formulate a very Christian wish and prayer of blessing for you and your loved ones, during these days of trial, may you allow the Holy Spirit to lift you up to the heavenly realms within you, as Jesus and Mary walk with you moment by moment, and day by day....

With all my love and respect....

Fr. Gilles

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My purpose in these posts is to help spread the contributions of a variety of Christian and other writers in a desire to share significant writings that in my estimation contribute to the common good and directly or indirectly give glory to God and extend the Lord's work of salvation to all of humanity. G.S.

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© 2004-2021 All rights reserved Fr. Gilles Surprenant, Associate Priest of Madonna House Apostolate & Poustinik, Montreal  QC
© 2004-2021 Tous droits réservés Abbé Gilles Surprenant, Prêtre Associé de Madonna House Apostolate & Poustinik, Montréal QC
 

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Friday, October 25, 2013

Blessed be God who gives his children Kingdom eyes

My purpose in these posts is to bring a variety of Christian and other writers in a desire to share significant writings that in my estimation contribute to the common good and directly or indirectly give glory to God and extend the Lord's work of salvation to all of humanity. G.S.

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LOVE LETTER TO YOUNG COUPLES STRUGGLING UNDER THE W
EIGHT OF DYSFUNCTIONAL FAMILY HISTORIES

It's so good and healthy and actually spiritual that young marrieds open their hearts and minds and spirits to each other and are finding words and images to express what they are feeling and going through as they bear the brunt of the misery of their dysfunctional relatives, near and far....

Much of what we have experienced of family over the years leaves a bad taste in our mouth, and sooner or later we are having the impression that our life tastes like misery, isolation, anger, and divorce, that all paths seem to be leading us there, and we don't see any other way.... By the way, dear Reader, feel free to share both your thoughts and my reflection with your spouse, partner, close friend, trusted relative; since as you may already be blessed to be able to say you and this other person are so trusting and open with one another, which by the way, is the way of love... it is God's way, not the world's way....

You may not know this or you may already know so well by now that the Holy Trinity have given us, those who wish to cultivate and use them, Kingdom eyes which in the light of the Holy Trinity allow us to see clearly the truth about God, about creation, about ourselves, about others, and about the world.

Remember in the Old Testament how God said to Israel that their sins linger on to the 3rd and 4th generation but that in the just his love endures for a thousand generations? Isn't it true... see how, though he was a sinner, because he was repentant and really did love God, David let God bring forth good fruit in his life, fruit that is enduring even today because among his offspring came Jesus....

All the cranky, miserable, nasty, hateful, jealous, malicious, angry, vengeful, wicked... words, looks, manipulations, judgements, actions, behaviors... and more that you have endured from your family and your spouse's or significant other's family - that both of you and perhaps also your children have endured - are in the category of the sins of ancestors that linger to the 3rd and 4th generation....

We all are defiled by such things - kind of like a mom or dad who in attending to their muddy little children who've had a lovely time playing in the mud become all muddy themselves, but it's not their mud, it's the children's mud - so too we are besmirched by people who are defiled by their ancestry and remain caught in it due to their own sin and failure to walk in God's grace or inability or lack of energy, desire, or resolve to extricate themselves. So they are miserable and their misery vomits forth onto anyone and everyone within range.... It's a real bitch, but what can you do?

That things are this way is no reason to give up on life, Marriage, God, joy, laughter, grace, struggle, work, and fruitful living. Just because some people live a bankrupt existence doesn't mean we should give it all up and go naked and homeless like them, figuratively speaking, and literally sometimes....

So just maybe what you're up against is too big, all-pervasive, dark, strong, grasping, clutching, suffocating for you to expect to fix any of it or for you to expect relief from each other, you and your counterpart. Only the Savior can bring you relief, and first and always, He brings you relief by walking with you along the road, like the disciples Cleopas and Simeon on he way to Emmaus, with the comfort of knowing that our Lord Jesus Christ cut through all that entangled jungle with the huge machete of his merciful love and sharp Word of life, making a path in which we can find some footing moment by moment.

That is why our Opus Dei brothers and sisters and fathers and all those firmly committed to walking in the steps of Jesus focus so much on the little things that keep us in constant communion with the Lord Jesus in the company of Mother Mary and Saint Joseph and in the dynamic heart of the divine vitality of the Holy Trinity. It's a real bugger that we can't fix any of it ourselves... our original sin infected spirit keeps wanting to pridefully fix things and people, but we can't even fix ourselves, let alone others, and it's just as well. In fact it is an act of divine providence that we can't save ourselves, because if we could, we would crash in a rapid spiral of focusing in on our own self and become inextricably isolated. No, it's much better that we need a Savior every moment of every day, because our desperate need continually drives us into the arms of Christ and into the heart of the Holy Trinity....

The dispensation of the Divine Mercy is to leave the darnel grow among the wheat; so that the weeds provoke us to reach out to God all the more for breath and life and sun and light and hope and love and faith.... It's on the taught string of the sharp arrow against the bow that the bow sings... it's in the friction of flesh on flesh, heart on heart, bone on bone, spirit on spirit that a married couple make divine music together, allowing the Holy Trinity to restore them, their children, and all those who accept the blessing, to Christ....

Only in Christ do we truly breath fire and light and living water as children of the Most High, only in the tension of the dance can the music lift up our spirits and draw others into the eternal dance of the Holy Trinity....

So, my dear Reader, do I think you and your counterpart, your soul mate, your other half, your dear friend are headed for separate ways, for isolation, for divorce? Of course not... but I do think that chances are - when you are intensively under fire on all sides - that in the heat of such battle how you feel, both of you, is a warning of divine providence to allow the Holy Spirit to wash you anew with living water and blow away all the dust and cobwebs of the worldly ways of those who are lost that threaten to engulf us.

As Satan discovered when he tempted Jesus, He has already been vanquished... he can scream and scheme and threaten and send minions and stir up the lost people and raise up armies against us, but we are already victors in Jesus who has already won the definitive victory. All that remains is for us to endure the struggle as Jesus extends his victory into all the dark corners of our lives and the lives of all the tormented lost souls in this world....

The only difference between us and them is that the Lord is giving us the blessed grace of Kingdom eyes to see what's really going on, to know the score, to discern the path, and to walk in it....

Peace to you both and your children if you have any, and be docile to the graces the Holy Spirit is giving you these troubled days to lean on the Lord and to touch his tender mercies in each other... If you are merely friends, don't forget the grace of friendship, of seeking first the good of the other. If you are married, then don't forget the grace of Marriage, of the blessed union of two souls bent on the other's well being, pleasure, joy, and consolation....
“Were not our hearts burning within us as He talked to us on the road and explained the Scriptures to us

Come Holy Spirit…. Viens Esprit Saint…. 

      L’abbé / Fr. Gilles     

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My purpose in these posts is to help spread the contributions of a variety of Christian and other writers in a desire to share significant writings that in my estimation contribute to the common good and directly or indirectly give glory to God and extend the Lord's work of salvation to all of humanity. G.S.

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© 2004-2021 All rights reserved Fr. Gilles Surprenant, Associate Priest of Madonna House Apostolate & Poustinik, Montreal  QC
© 2004-2021 Tous droits réservés Abbé Gilles Surprenant, Prêtre Associé de Madonna House Apostolate & Poustinik, Montréal QC
 

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