Here In This Place

So, by now I'm sure everyone out there in cyberspace who cares about these things has heard the news about Ep. Lahey. I personally seem to be taking this rather hard because, for a variety of reasons, it hits close to home.

I think that what makes it worse is his role in the reconciliation process with survivors of child sexual abuse in his own diocese. It does take a great deal of courage to open up at all about such intimate issues -- not only what happened (though that is of course a part of it), but the ways in which it has affected and affects your life. What makes childhood abuse so difficult is that it does not really allow for a sense of the past...there is no real moment when you can look behind yourself and say 'it's over,' 'it's behind me.' Instead, it becomes an element of the present, of one's reality and lived experience of the world. It shapes everything around you so that it can never be left behind, not really. You carry it with you every day, in so many ways...a constant companion. These are the things it’s perhaps most difficult to talk about, because it involves opening up your private world, trying to express something that, at the end of the day, can't really be put into words. It involves the acknowledgment to another person of your vulnerability. It is very important that the people you choose to reveal these things to is able to listen, and to feel and express compassion, not so much for what has gone before but for the shape of your present, for the sheer challenge of trying to live a life where you've passed through it even while knowing that this passage can never be complete. It involves realizing that the journey itself is full of danger and that the constant evolution of your healing means you are never really in the same place more than once...that you may need to say it more than once, more than an hundred times, because each time you are not exactly the same person who is saying it, not saying exactly the same thing.

Because it takes a great amount of courage, trust is very important. A lot of the time, I think, it is not obvious why people choose to confide in those they do: a vague feeling, knowledge that the person has previous experience dealing with this sort of emotional fragility, sheer timing in that they're the only person around when it happens to explode out of you. In this case, it is fairly obvious why Ep. Lahey was chosen as someone to trust. His position in the Church makes him an ideal person, both because he represents the institution that allowed the harm to go on in the first place and because, well, we inherently trust our priests, do we not? We tell them our secrets, we come to them to find God, we entrust our children to them, because the lives they have chosen to lead reflect an undeniable goodness, service, and sanctity. It is a sad day when we can no longer look at our clergy without doubt, without concern, without a shadow of suspicion. Hopefully, that day will never come for most of us.

Trust is so important that it forms, I think, an integral part of the reconciliation process...reconciliation with yourself about the truth of your life, if nothing else. That trust makes it possible to see beyond, to hold onto the goodness of another person and know that you are not, after all, completely alone. The people involved in this particular case trusted Ep. Lahey and felt that his compassion and understanding played a crucial role in their ability to constructively confront their experiences. To not be alone in the public proclamation of it. To feel that, through all the shame, confusion, anger and hurt there was someone there whom they could trust and who might even, perhaps, help them to forgive.

So, obviously, finding out that the person you trust is involved at all in the same kind of hurt you’ve been entrusting them with is devastating. Because if the people who profess to care –- and even really do care -– do the same thing that they’ve listened to you talk about, who is there left? Who is there left to trust? I think it carves a new wound on top of an old one, making it even harder to really feel that you’re not alone. That’s what makes this case so particularly bad.

What should have happened is that Ep. Lahey never became involved in this case in the first place. What should have happened is something like this: Dear Holy Father, the diocese under my jurisdiction is about to enter into the process of reconciliation with child survivors of sexual abuse at the hands of our own priests. I request to be relieved of my Episcopal post immediately and to retire from the clerical profession. The grave reason necessitating this action is that, as it turns out, I have also been engaging in child sexual abuse. It would show a complete lack of regard for the souls entrusted to my care if I were to risk wounding them in such a horrible way. I am not requesting to be moved to another diocese not embroiled in a clerical sex-scandal; this would, of course, be terrible, repeating as it does the past sins of the institutional Church. Please accept my resignation immediately. Also, this event has spurred me to realize the implications and harm my actions can cause to other human beings. I’m thinking of turning myself over to the police, perhaps allowing them to catch more people involved in the trafficking of child pornography. Sincerely, your faithful servant.

But, of course, this didn’t happen. I sincerely hope that Ep. Lahey is able to find the courage to repent of what he has done. And it does, I think, take a great deal of courage to truly repent for one’s actions –- all the courage of your life. It means seeing, really seeing, what you have done for what it is, allowing yourself to feel all the deep pain of it, allowing the devastation to penetrate your soul, accepting the hurt and responsibility without any equivocation, any denial, any attempt at proving innocent. That willingness to suffer, that willingness to see yourself as you truly are, is the real measure of a life. And it’s something we all of us will have to face when we stand before God in judgment. I pray that we all find the courage to immerse ourselves in repentance so that we can all accept God’s forgiveness. God can forgive anything, but embracing that mercy means first accepting in all of its horror what we have done. We are all sinners, none of us more than another –- not really. None of us deserve or merit forgiveness. But, through God’s freely given grace, it is poured out upon all of us. The choice of our lives, I think, comes on the final day, and the task of our lives is to love and trust God enough that we can brave the horrible sorrow that accepting forgiveness will mean, trusting that God’s love for us will save us even from that, even from ourselves. So I pray for Ep. Lahey, just as much as for any of us, that he will find that courage and strength. Maybe facing the consequences of his actions in this life will help him to do that...though human justice can never look into the mystery of the human heart, it can help a person to see, to see as clearly as it’s possible to see in a dark glass, that they have sinned, and that they need forgiveness. So God can save them with a Mercy that knows no measure, and a Love that knows no end.

But I ramble.

The point is, I feel really, really sad and weepy and vulnerable about this, because I know what it’s like to have someone you’ve trusted with your most painful secrets break that trust by committing the same offense. To whom can I turn but God? But, of course, God is not all I need in this life –- God can’t really hug me or hand me Kleenexes. I need other people. Which is another reason I feel so bad. Because I, like the people of Antigonish, need to find the strength and courage to forgive, the strength and courage to trust again, to really put it aside and hand it over to God, and not live my life inside anger and vengeance and all that it means to not forgive. It is difficult, and I’m not sure that it can ever be fully accomplished until the end, when I come face to face with the true depth of my own sinfulness, which I can never fully appreciate behind the cloud of this life. Like everyone else, I need the final resurrection to be whole. But forgiveness now is necessary, as necessary as possible, because that too prepares you to accept the love of God, to understand the depth and meaning of mercy, that it is beyond anything that can be expected or comprehended or deserved. That only in God are all things possible.

We pray to the Lord: for the sake of your Son, have mercy Lord.
May everyone, all of us in need of your mercy to escape the darkness of hell, be lead into new light, and see your face.