Survivors' Voices: Faith, Part 2
As a practicing Catholic, I am in the midst of Holy Week, a time when my faith finds expression in solemn remembrance and beautiful liturgy. It’s one of my favorite times of the liturgical year.
However, I am also well aware that Holy Week and Easter can be quite painful and triggering for some abuse survivors - and others who have experienced harm within the Church.
When you read the reflections below, you may have some small sense of the complicated thoughts and emotions that these survivors might be experiencing this week. If you are a Christian who will be walking this journey of Holy Week, I invite you to carry these men and women in your hearts and think of them as you pray.
Faith was a touchy word for me for decades after I left the Catholic Church at the age of 17. Ten years of rapes left me with an aversion to religion in any form. I felt abandoned by God and ultimately began to question his very existence. This left a painfully gaping hole in my soul, yet I didn’t have any clue how to reclaim any form of trust or faith in a Higher Being, or the comfort that used to give me. I began to dabble in a spiritual path after a massive breakdown at the age of 45, but my inability to have any faith or trust in the Universe created an incredible resistance. Once my clergy abuse memories began to surface in my 60s, I began to realize a deep rage inside of me, at the Church, and even towards whatever Higher Beings might exist, for allowing such atrocities to happen to me. It was only after I worked through that rage, through years of intensive therapy, that I began to revisit that spiritual hole and to develop faith in any form. I have since been able to reconstruct a personal spiritual and soul-based path. Religious dogma, relics and even the Bible remain intensely triggering for me, so I have closed the door on that path. I turn 70 in a couple of months and am just now developing faith in the Universe in a way that gives me comfort, and the sense that I have the protection of a loving existence, and for that I am truly grateful!
For years, I would have said that my abuse had no impact on my faith. And in a sense that is true, but it is not completely true. I have great faith in the Spirit of God and her actions within all of humanity, myself included. Where I see the impact is the sensitivity I have developed toward any kind of abusive behavior, especially on the part of the Church. It extends far beyond sexual abuse. There are so many ingrained aggressions and abuses within the institution and the mindset of a portion of the clergy. It's institutional sin - abuse is so much a part of the day-to-day workings that it cannot be seen for what it is. Examples include the abuse of power and status, misogyny, homophobia and transphobia, racism, and aligning with the rich instead of standing with the poor. I am Catholic in my heart and soul, but I find myself only able to participate in liturgical services on occasion. I'm not angry, but I have no desire to align myself with the institution that I see as constitutively abusive. And I see no real way to change it.
God’s gift to me has been a strong faith in Him and a strong belief in the Real Presence of Jesus in the Eucharist. I have lost almost all faith in the hierarchy of the church. It was one matter to be abused by a priest. It was another to be abused verbally and psychologically in the process of bringing my story to the church authorities. I had to bring my story to a Papal Nuncio and to the Monsignor within the diocese I was abused since “my priest” is now an Archbishop.
My faith life was destroyed by what happened to me. It had to be rebuilt from the ground up. At this point I believe in Jesus and the grace He gives us in the sacraments, but I have no confidence in the institutional Church. There are some good people, but I think the hierarchy is almost entirely corrupt. Nevertheless I still have hope and I feel called to continue, more so now than ever. The biggest signal of grace I received was when I prayed, "Lord, can't I have a break? There are people in the middle of Wyoming who can't go to mass regularly. Those people are still good Catholics. Can't I have a break too?" A few weeks later we went into a two-month shut down due to the pandemic. God is merciful and He answers prayers. It's important to be specific when praying.
After my first experience of priest abuse at age 19 I did lose my complete confidence and trust in the Church and those who served it, but even though my faith was damaged I still remained a Catholic for a few years. Then maybe it was my age or a gradual disillusionment, as I became more feminist, but by my mid 20s, I was an atheist. When I became a single mother at age 30, I approached the church again and was treated terribly, again sexually abused. But I suppose it was my childhood religious inculcation that kept turning me towards faith. At age 40 I gave the Church my best effort again. I learned to pray, meditate and was able to say God again, but the trust was not there and there were too many triggers, so I left and converted to Judaism 27 years ago and faith and confidence returned. My religion and spirituality are very central to my life.
I have learned that my "faith" needs to be disconnected from the Catholic Church in which I grew up. In general, I'm not seeing priests acting in the role of shepherd which they were given. When they are ordained they are given the title "father.” But so many of them are behaving in ways that are anything but father-like. As a result of the abuse I have endured at the hands of priests, I absolutely refuse to call any priest "father.” Since priests are the ONLY ones who can anoint and call down the Holy Spirit to transform a host into the Body of Christ, I cannot be part of the liturgy. With priests being representatives of Christ, it's hard not to think of Christ as having contributed to the abuse. This has destroyed my ability to relate to God as Father, or even to Jesus, as well. Consequently, I am struggling with prayer because everything I've been taught has viewed God in a male perspective. And even praying any of the Catholic prayers that I was taught as a little girl are major triggers. I'm now in the process of trying to "find" my faith again. My faith is not in the Catholic Church or in her representatives; it can only be in God. However, at this time on my journey, I'm trying to find that as well.
I believe that it is only by the grace and mercy of God that I am still here. A couple of years after I was abused as a child, I was drawn to one of the windows in my parish church. It was of Jesus being lost in the temple. That image resonated with me for many years. Here Jesus was a child and lost, and he was eventually found. I just knew that there was hope for me. Jesus became my hope, and my faith truly has been all that I have had to hang onto throughout the years. I am truly blessed.
Thank you for listening. I will be taking a break next week after Easter, but I’ll see you again later this month.
~ Sara
PS: Are you looking for another way to listen to survivors this Holy Week? Please consider praying with the recording of Awake’s Walking the Way of the Cross with Survivors. This powerful prayer service combines personal reflections from abuse survivors with the traditional stations of the cross devotion and would be perfect for prayer on Good Friday.
Thank you to all of the survivors who spoke on their faith. Their words so resonate with me and my struggle with faith right now.