Forgive Me Father, For I Have Sinned by George Merrill

I learned recently that 300 predatory priests in Pennsylvania were responsible for sexually violating more than 1000 children. The church was complicit in a systematic cover up of the violations. Burying the incidents, effectively institutionalized the sexual abuse. It left no path for healing, not only for victims, but for priests. In its wake there was only incredulity, moral outrage and wounded lives.

Having been involved in the vocational formation of clergy over the years I’ve had some thoughts about ways we may be able to stem the tide of violations by ordained clerics. I need to say that these violations are not unique to Catholic clergy but occur regularly among married protestant clergy. To point to celibacy as the cause misses the point. Child sexual abuse is more about power than unruly desires.

What complicates the violations making them even more tragic is that the offending priests did not always behave monstrously. Many were effective pastors, kind and helpful. They earned the affection of their congregations by compassion and service. The Jekyll and Hyde character of the behavior makes the breach of trust all the more shocking and heartbreaking.

A Jungian analyst, Adolf Guggenbuehl-Craig wrote a book called, Power in the Helping Professions. It became required reading for my staff and students.

Guggenbuehl-Craig was familiar with the phenomenon occurring between the analyst and his patient in which the patient, needy and vulnerable, sees the analyst as wise, powerful and omnipotent. It’s commonly called transference. What was not as well understood until Guggenbuehl-Craig identified it was the strong reaction that the analyst may have when his patient begins regarding him as powerful, wise and omnipotent. Guggenbuehl-Craig warns how this phenomenon is a common pitfall for anyone in the helping professions. The therapist seeing the adoration and awe of himself reflected in the eyes of his patient, or the minister seeing the deep gratitude and love revealed on the face of his parishioner, the helper can easily succumb to the illusion that this adoration is all about him. For the unaware cleric, it only feeds his narcissism make him feel powerful

Guggenbuehl-Craig wrote: “When the [parishioner, patient or pupil] turns the priest, teacher or minister into a figure of power – a rescuer, a magician, a judge or prophet, – a counter projection is nearly impossible to resist; and we members of the helping professions inevitably respond to the helplessness, childishness and longing for mentorship in our patients, students or parishioners.”

I think the problem begins in the formation process through which ministers and priests go. If the church covered the abuses up, it would suggest to me that in the seminaries and in other institutions involved in formation process the issue of child abuse was not being dealt with openly and aggressively while priests were in training.

Fifty-eight years of my professional life has been spent as a parish priest, a psychotherapist and a clinical supervisor of seminary students beginning ministry. Part of my work was helping seminarians be aware of their own interior lives while practicing pastoral ministry. Professional helpers are quickly idolized by those they serve. The adoration easily leads to boundary violations.

In my classes with seminarians I’d arranged talks by individuals who’d been abused, people who’d done jail time, recovering substance abusers, and people who themselves who’d been sexually abused as children. I do not recall arranging for “recovering abuser,” to speak to our students. I think the problem of predatory priests and ministers had yet to come out of the closet.

One way to begin addressing the problem would be to arrange seminars in which a cleric who has abused children and who has had to face his actions and be responsible for them can speak directly to seminarians about his own emotional struggles and the transgressions they led to.

Such a priest would be in a position to speak candidly about his transgressions; what owning his behavior taught him about his destructive desires and what he learned about managing them appropriately. It strikes me that this kind of transparency might serve also as a penitential act far more substantive than some perfunctory apologies or a ritual confession. It would surface the problem dramatically and bring it out into the open where it can’t be denied.

The rampant sexual abuse of women by male celebrities is epidemic today. It’s again the matter of men with power, one secular as is the case with media celebrities, and the other spiritual, as in the case of clergy. The difference is that effective ministry is based totally on trust. For as long as I’ve been in ministry, I’ve been aware of the almost superhuman status that people tend to attribute to clergy. After all, the protestant preacher speaks for God, is the bearer of his Word and in the sacramental system of Catholicism, the priest has been imparted the extraordinary power of changing bread and wine into the body and blood of Christ. For Catholics and Anglicans, another spiritual authority is also conferred on their priests: “whose sins thou dost forgive, they are forgiven and whose sins thou dost retain, they are retained.” This is heady stuff. If the seminarian understands he will be assuming such responsibilities, and is still in denial and hiding the workings of his own interior life, he’s a disaster in the making. He’ll mistake himself for God.

When I consider the spiritual power ordained ministry claims to confer on its men and women ministers, without arguing its legitimacy, it’s easier to understand how someone who is deeply insecure and who has unmet needs for status, affection and authority could be easily seduced by a perceived call to ministry. It’s a sure anodyne for unclaimed and unmet needs. For such, it becomes a vocation made in heaven.

Christianity is deeply conflicted about its own values regarding moral purity and human vulnerability. It has a long institutional history in covering for its own morally compromised and psychologically wounded leaders, as well as those with physical ailments.

It took the Vatican 12 years to acknowledge publicly that Pope John Paul II suffered Parkinson’s disease. Why? For “fear of damaging his image,” according the Dr. Buzzonetti, his personal physician. What image? To suffer disease is unchristian? Popes are above human vulnerability? Is Christianity promoting an image that priests are morally impeccable or that popes don’t suffer diseases the way the rest of us do? Imagine, by having openly acknowledged the reality of the pope’s condition, how millions of people worldwide would have felt less alone and been comforted; and how by being a transparent companion in common cause with other Parkinson’s victims, the pope could have dignified their suffering by openly sharing his. I hope we’re coming to the end of the era of the stained-glass saints and instead raising servant leaders.

Imagine if church leaders were encouraged to confront their own shame and pride and had summoned the moral courage to acknowledge the abuses as they occurred, how much suffering might have been avoided.

The core Christian message sounds grand from pulpits, is a lovely read in the Bible, but it’s hard to swallow, namely that we are first and foremost broken people. The basic challenge in composing a spiritual life is first acknowledging our brokenness. Then we have the hope for healing.

Columnist George Merrill is an Episcopal Church priest and pastoral psychotherapist.  A writer and photographer, he’s authored two books on spirituality: Reflections: Psychological and Spiritual Images of the Heart and The Bay of the Mother of God: A Yankee Discovers the Chesapeake Bay. He is a native New Yorker, previously directing counseling services in Hartford, Connecticut, and in Baltimore. George’s essays, some award winning, have appeared in regional magazines and are broadcast twice monthly on Delmarva Public Radio.