Sunday, March 08, 2020
Incalculable Pain Held In Hands of Calculable Size
As a theologian, J.H. Yoder has taught me a lot, so he's really important to me. Just last week, I finished reading a 75 page story on J.H. Yoder's sexual abuse scandal at his University and in his church (link HERE).
For those who don't know, Jean Vanier is the founder of the L'Arche community, a highly successful alternative to institutionalization for the disabled. Able bodied live in community with and in deference to the "lesser" among them. The most disabled are the most highly honored. These communities are a beautiful picture of the kingdom of God, and Vanier and his writings had been an inspiration to many. News of his sexual abuse was heartbreaking. John Howard Yoder was an Anabaptist and Mennonite theologian whose writings rendered non-violence something other than completely swept under the rug in the larger Christian discourse. He at least gave it a voice. In fact, he influenced Martin Luther King, to an extent. As for me, he helped give me an imagination for what it means for the church to be a community in and under the reign of Christ rather than, as our modern vision would have it, a collection of voluntary, free individuals. And, yet, for years, he was known to have engaged in definitively illicit and at least potentially abusive sexual behaviors with many women in his community. Many say that the pain and trauma he caused was never adequately addressed.
The two stories - sexual abuse by Catholic authorities and of J.H. Yoder - have a lot in common. Everything that describes one story also describes the other.
Everyone either knew what was going on or had a sense that SOMETHING was going on. Everyone knew either that they could be the next victim or could have been one in the past. If not that, then everyone knew someone, or knew that they might know someone they cared about who was or could be directly effected. People - BOTH victims and authority figures - had a hard time wrapping their heads around what was happening because of either the GOOD ACTUALLY done by the perpetrators in the community OR our image as authorities and images of the good and its meaning (this is idolatry, btw). One of the lines with staying power from "Spotlight" is, “It takes a village to raise a child. It takes a village to abuse one.”
Yoder's victims found themselves not so much denouncing him as asking each other why he was touching their breasts. The Cardinal over the archdiocese of Boston (Cardinal Law) was told ahead of time that The Boston Globe was going to be running a story about the sexual abuse among the local Catholic church. He responded by echoing the voice of many in the community when he said, with a distant smile, "We've done a lot of good in this community."
Many people in positions to do so made choices along the way that, in the end, served to continue the crushing of the victims of abuse in between the gears and under the spinning wheels of power in local communities. Because everyone had at least "heard stories" - if they were not directly effected or didn't know someone who was - but at the same time had a hard time reconciling said stories to their image of their selves and the world, these people with any level of authority in their communities didn't have ill will. They weren't even trying to be deceptive. They simply made choices that came very natural to them. They were actually trying to do what they thought was right at the time.
Of course, in every instance, these people in authority making choices that came natural to them were white males.
One of the dynamics Spotlight highlights is that lawyers, editors, investigative journalists, administrators, and faculty members involved were NOT ACTIVELY TRYING to suppress the truth. The reason the truth remained buried - besides our above noted idolatrous COMMUNAL image of the good and of authority that we simply took for granted - was because of SHAME. People were often, at a very local level of contingent events, simply doing what was asked of them.
The fellow members of the boys club that ran these communities were often (though not always) less overtly or selfishly uncaring about the victims and more incapable of addressing and facing the dark underbelly both of what they knew could have happened to them (if it actually didn't). Our own violent, coercive, abusive, domineering urges are repeatedly on display when we - when faced with the choice to reveal the truth - end up manipulating others into what ends up amounting to taking a ride along on the ongoing momentum of the status quo. And we don't realize that we're doing this!
So, another memorable and important line from "Spotlight" is this: “Sometimes we need to question a little more when we are part of an insider group...To listen to the outsiders.”
James 5: 16 says, "[C]onfess your sins to one another, and pray for one another, that you may be healed." The church was established by the Lord of Mercy and Grace as a reconciling and healing presence in precisely these communities ruled by idolatry and shame.
In the stories of both Spotlight's illumination of Catholic priests and the Mennonite communities to which Yoder belonged, we ended up seeing victims breaking down as they recounted traumatic memories in which their very selves - not to mention their false images of the world and its goods that the rest of us have the luxury and illusion of maintaining - were ripped to pieces as blood sacrifices to our communal false images of the good. Priests and professors are not Jesus.
Repeatedly, it is journalists who sit across a table or stand facing eye to eye with victims who bear their blood drenched souls to them, either in search of healing from our shame or in tears that hold traces of the pain from which they've been on a long term journey of healing. In every instance, the victim has to make sure the journalist consents to hearing their story. The victim knows that, in the end, they will implicitly plead for mercy and grace from the one who will now hold in their hands a truth that shatters illusions and bears incalculable pain. They want to make sure the journalist is capable of holding something that big in hands of calculable size.
1 Peter 2 says: "Come to him, to that living stone, rejected by men but in God’s sight chosen and precious; 5 and like living stones be yourselves built into a spiritual house, to be a holy priesthood, to offer spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ...you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s own people,[a] that you may declare the wonderful deeds of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light. 10 Once you were no people but now you are God’s people; once you had not received mercy but now you have received mercy."
This repeated pattern of moments when journalists become the priests who the priests fail to be, these are the moments that broke me. The final scene of Spotlight occurs on the morning this story breaks in The Boston Globe. One of those male authority figures who could have made a different choice earlier but didn't now stands in awestruck silence, mouth agape and eyes wide open, as literally thousands of victims flood the phone lines of his office to come to him (and his team of investigative journalists) to confess their shame, disillusionment, and the ongoing brokenness of their lives born in needle marks in their arms. This is the moment of the photo above. It is my moment.
I posted a quote from J.H. Yoder a while back. "[W]hat Jesus renounced is not first of all violence, but rather the compulsiveness of purpose that leads the strong to violate the dignity of others." His words are poignant. A friend close to that story and with history in the Mennonite community came and suggested I not grant Yoder the kind of authority that would quote him, to leave him behind, and to lend my ear to others (perhaps not white male rapists). I basically responded by asking her if she imagined I was aligning myself with oppressive forces. Whether I continue to read and quote Yoder or not, I did not respond by first submitting to her voice and leaning into her pain.
That was not a singular choice. That was all I was capable of, because it was my entire life to this point. I am this male figure who previously could have made a different choice but didn't. I am the priest who, in my illusions, failed as a priest to hear the pain that begs for healing and restoration. These journalists were teaching me both the healing to which I'm called, and my failure in that. They were teaching me who I am. “Sometimes we need to question a little more when we are part of an insider group...To listen to the outsiders.”
Last night, I was faced with my deafness. I listened, and I wept.
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