In 2002, a series of incidents and private e-mails from an alarmed parish staff led to my serving as a whistleblower when the pastor of the community where I’d been a member for 30 years embezzled hundreds of thousands of dollars. As in many of these cases, the extent of his transgressions was never made public for a number of reasons. That’s someone else’s story to tell.
Yet, I did learn what happens when you bring forth an uncomfortable truth about a well liked leader:
Letters to the editor. (Who IS this woman? I have know Fr. ________for years and he is a good, caring man).
Phone calls from the press who have little concern for a traumatized parish. (Why won’t you agree to on-camera? Don’t you care about the truth?)
People on the sidelines who want to make you Joan of Arc. (You go, Leslie. Bring down the corruption of the Catholic Church). People from other religions believing Catholicism is the problem and all I need do is try out their church and their god.
People who go out of their way to avoid you in the grocery store and at Mass. (I hate going to church, my daughter would say. I feel like everyone is looking at us).
People who call out of the blue to see how you are doing and do you need some advice on how to deal with the press and who try to see the complexity of the unfolding story without splitting the players into caricatures of good and evil.
Church leaders protecting their own. (You are on an extraordinarily unchristian crusade, wrote a Jesuit I’d deeply respected in a scathing e-mail). It hardly felt like a crusade. I felt like my insides were being ripped out and I left the parish broken, disillusioned and in a spiritual dark night.
Thanks to spiritual direction, therapy, supportive people and work I love, I found my way through one of the most painful times of my life. The Penn State story brings it back. The truth is, I understand the desire to stay silent and hope it goes away. The cost is enormous for telling the truth. Families are hurt. Friendships are torn apart. Children and grownups are disillusioned and innocence is lost. The accused fall ill under the stress.
My son gets angry with me when I question whether I did the right thing. As a Penn State grad, he sees “a campus full of people that are deluded” and that devotion to the sport trumped child rape. As a former Catholic, he believes religion can do the same thing.
Groupmind is powerful and will blind decent people when devotion, faith, loyalty and sense of sacrifice to something higher than themselves feels threatened. One need look no further than the Penn State riots to see what happens when a beloved icon turns out to be a fallible god. I facilitate groups and have heard from more people than I care to count who are the collateral damage of this groupmind. Sexual abuse and rape is rampant in families, churches, spiritual communities, the military and in sports and it continues because of the conspiracy of silence and allegiance to the institution and its icons. It boggles my mind.
I can’t seem to shake the images of the 10 year old, the young coach and the senior coach. I wonder if Sandusky was a survivor of abuse himself because if we know nothing else, we know that perpetrators were often young victims. Other images and stories I’ve been told flash through my mind and I consider the long, painful road of trauma, healing (maybe), forgiveness and redemption.
I consider my experience and know it is comparably mild. I do know that anyone who has ever had to decide whether to speak out or stay silent when faced with abuse or injustice has had a face-to-face encounter with the darker impulses of their own humanity. Looking inside they may ferret out a desire for self-preservation, group acceptance, hidden agendas, loyalty to flawed gods and religions, comfort and material security. When combined with groupmind the ability to rationalize heightens.
The hopeful part of myself wonders if more of us will take a long, hard look in the mirror and ask ourselves how love of the team, the religion, the spouse, the guru or the country compromise our ability to do the right thing. Self-deception is dicey stuff. No one’s exempt.
Last Thursday, I slid into the back of a church with about 20 other people. I belong to no parish, but occasionally stop in for these tiny morning Masses in the university chapel far from my neighborhood. During the petitions, a thirtysomething man prayed for healing and forgiveness for everyone involved at Penn State. His sincerity moved me. My self-imposed exile from organized religion has me missing the company of some really decent people.
Yet, I know my place is outside of these walls where I can see with more clarity. These days, I’m not much into pledging allegiance to any group or guru for it muddles my mind and I’ve a hard time finding my way to the truth.
At the risk of sounding simplistic, I’ve found love works better than most anything else for although it hurts like hell, it holds a space for screw ups, accountability, responsibility, idiocy, selfishness, abuse, suffering, betrayal, forgiveness and redemption.
