Sacred Listening

I'm reprinting here my column from The Spokesman-Review, April 28, 2004. Read the online version.

The Sacred Listening session brought together survivors and church members in a setting with fairly radical rules of listening. Silence followed each survivor's story. And listeners were told only to talk about their experience of listening. No questions, no add-on comments, no judgments.

It is one of the keys to church healing, of this I am convinced. I'm hoping parishes throughout the world will adopt the model. If you read this and are interested in knowing more, e-mail me at rebeccan@spokesman.com and I'll put you in touch with those in Spokane who organized our Sacred Listening sessions. They are tranformative.

Here's the column:

Rebecca Nappi
The Spokesman-Review

On Monday evening, 100 Roman Catholics gathered in the Knights of Columbus meeting hall in north Spokane to listen to stories told by sex-abuse survivors. I noticed the men and women listening cried the way you do when it is safe to do so. They didn't struggle to hold back tears. Instead, the tears formed in the corners of the eyes and then were matter-of-factly wiped away.

It is difficult to convey to non-Catholics what the past two years have been like for Catholics. What it feels like to remain in a church torn by public scandal. One survivor says picture a glass globe. Place in it all the beliefs you hold dear and then throw that globe on the floor and watch it shatter.

Monday, at the "Sacred Listening" session, I felt the first real hope that the church will heal, and perhaps emerge even stronger, from this sex-abuse crisis.

At the behest of the Spokane Diocese, the session was organized by a committee of abuse survivors and diocese-wide parishioners headed by Don Weber of St. Aloysius Parish in Spokane. Kent Hoffman, a Spokane psychotherapist, facilitated.

Some Catholics have responded to the sex-abuse revelations by downplaying the stories. They wonder: What is the big deal about being 13 and having your genitals touched by a grown man? Others feel that some of the teen boys and girls were old enough to consent to sex, so it wasn't so awful after all. Some say, "The victims were screwed up to begin with and now they have an excuse for it." Some vilify SNAP, the survivors group. For a while those who advocated for victims -- such as members of Voice of the Faithful -- were marginalized. But this is changing.

The rules of the listening session were simple, yet radical. Participants were asked to commit to staying the entire session, from 7 to 9:30 p.m. Instead of commenting on the stories heard, silence was requested after each story. People were asked to refrain from making add-on comments or offering solutions.

Three of the 20 survivors who attended told their stories to the entire group. Then those three survivors and the others sat down at tables with listeners. They told their stories and then the listeners talked about their own experience of listening. Several priests sat at the tables as listeners, a reminder that 96 percent of priests were not involved with this scandal. They wept, too.

The rules of Sacred Listening run counter to the way we usually listen. In our culture, people flee from the "gravitas" of people's lives. We respond to tragedy with cliches. We say "A silver lining hides in every cloud." Or we counter with tales of our own suffering. Or we bombard with questions as a distancing mechanism.

It was such a relief to listen to the gravitas of the stories and not have to solve anything then and there. My mind wandered to South Africa and its Truth and Reconciliation Commission set up after the end of apartheid. More than 20,000 people told their stories -- victims and perpetrators of the violence. It helped to begin the healing of a still-struggling country.

As I listened Monday, I also felt compassion for the bishops and priests and lawyers who have listened to the stories of the victims. In different circumstances, yes, but they have listened just the same. It is not easy. I heard words that I did not want to hear and closed my eyes and saw that glass globe of Catholic beliefs shatter upon the floor.

More Sacred Listening sessions are planned. This is good and necessary. There are more than 70,000 Catholics in the Spokane Diocese. Only 100 of them attended the session Monday night; 75 attended a similar session a month ago. I hope more Catholics experience this opportunity to pick up some of the broken pieces together.

Hoffman ended the evening by sharing a poem by Naomi Shihab Nye. It reads, in part:

Before you know kindness as the deepest thing inside,

you must know sorrow as the other deepest thing.

You must wake up with sorrow.

You must speak to it till your voice catches the thread of all sorrows

and you see the size of the cloth.

Then it is only kindness that makes sense anymore.

The sorrow of abuse that has plagued the church for centuries is out in the open now. Sacred Listening offers hope that kindness of the deepest sort will follow.

Crackdown on Liturgical Abuses

When news broke that the Vatican had come out with a number of requirements designed to crack down on so-called liturgical abuses, I worried that it might be one more example of Rome tightening the screws to the laity in response to a sense that the Vatican is losing in the power struggle. Hey, there are a lot more of us than them!

It could be some of that, but whenever I'm confused about how to think about this stuff, I turn to John Allen, the National Catholic Reporter Rome columnist. I think he has a great handle on this stuff. His conclusion? "The document was rumored to bring a Roman hammer down on a number of practices that have become common in various parts of the world: inter-communion with Protestants, for example, or liturgical dance, or altar girls. In the end, the hammer was something of a rubber mallet."

Allen highlighted the major requirements.
• A ban on the use of unapproved texts and rites
• The absolute necessity of an ordained priest for the celebration of the liturgy
• Use of appropriate vessels and vestments
• A ban on lay people giving homilies
• An insistence on using lay ministers of the Eucharist only when there is an insufficient number of priests to distribute communion
• Laity may not hand one another consecrated hosts or the chalice
• The Mass may not be divided, with different parts celebrated at different times
• Priests always have the right to celebrate the Mass in Latin, but according to the post-Vatican II rite
• The obligation of Sunday Mass cannot be satisfied with ecumenical services
• Insistence that communion must not be given to non-Catholics and non-Christians in violation of church rules.

Allen quoted Jesuit Fr. Keith Pecklers, who teaches liturgy at Rome’s Gregorian University. “It’s obviously a further attempt at tightening the reins, but it’s much less offensive or restrictive than had been rumored," Pecklers said.

It will be interesting to see how this plays out in Catholic press and in churches. I'll keep tracking it.

See Allen's article.

More from Dr. Steinfels

One of Peter Steinfels most interesting points, I thought, was that in order for the church to survive, our children must embrace it. Yet methods for passing on the faith have proven difficult. Nothing concrete has really replaced the Baltimore Catechism of old. Nor the strong parochial schools, run by priests and nuns and supported by parishes.

After Vatican II, "The search for an effective approach to passing on the faith has lurched forward, stalled, swerved this way and that."

This is part of the current crisis. As adult Catholics debate with each other, and the heirarchy, about church teachings (such as birth control) our Catholic young people know less and less about the Catholic tradition. Many can't even name the seven sacraments, for instance.

"Both the heirarchy and Catholic theological scholars must rethink how doctrinal development can proceed with dignity in a radically different environment."

Adult Education with Dr. Steinfels

Peter Steinfels, author of A People Adrift : The Crisis of the Roman Catholic Church in America spoke at Gonzaga University last night. He was excellent. His speech, and his book, give the most thorough outline of the issues that have been brewing in the church for decades. The issues are key ones. They have divided Catholics.

These are the issues I believe will have to be resolved if and when there is a Vatican III. So over the next few days in this blog, I'm going to take the issues one by one, as explained by Steinfels.

Issue No. 1: Leadership by priests and nuns is giving way to leadership by the laity. This is creating tension among all. Who has the authority? Who has the power?

Steinfels, in his book and talk, said: "Before the 1960s, priests staffed parishes. Sisters ran the schools...By 1997, the numbers of lay ministers in parishes surpassed the number of parish priests. Half feel they have received a call from God...More than 80 percent of the lay parish ministers are women. Questions and tensions about women's role in the church are clearly not going to subside."

Steinfels doesn't offer a solution, but he knows this: "American Catholicism needs priest leaders for a church of lay leaders. Without effective priestly leadership, parishes can survive, but it is unlikely that they will remain vital."

Mark Your Calendar

A week from now, on Monday April 19, Peter Steinfels, former religion writer for the New York Times and author of A People Adrift: The Crisis of the Roman Catholic Church in America will be in Spokane giving a talk.

It's free and open to the public. It starts at 7:30 p.m. in the new Globe room of the Cataldo dining hall on the Gonzaga campus (its across the courtyard from St. Al's Church.)

See you there!

Good Friday, Happy Easter

In grade school at St. Charles in Spokane, the nuns used to tell us to always watch the weather on Good Friday. It will be nice in the morning and then, around noon, it will rain or storm, they'd tell us. It does so because this is when Jesus died. And they'd tell us that on Easter, if the sun shines in the windows in the morning, it means you had a good Lent.

It's Friday afternoon. The sun is shining. And I am always disappointed when it does on Good Friday. I'm hoping for sun on Easter morning.

These calendars and holy days are part of our collective history as Catholics. They keep us in this struggling and flawed church. All part of a good Lent.

Welcome Women to the Backward Church

I'm hopping mad this morning. Archbishop John Donoghue of Atlanta has banned women from participating in the feet-washing ritual of Holy Thursday. See story.

This ritual symbolizes Jesus washing the feet of the apostles his last hours on Earth. It's a metaphor for the importance of servant leadership and humility.

Catholic women of Atlanta, do not be humble in the face of this latest insult. Since your archbishop does not believe you belong on the altar, show him what would happen if you didn't show up anywhere else, either.

For women who work in parishes -- as staff or volunteers -- how about a one-day (or one-week) strike? Churches cannot function without women, period. This would be the perfect opportunity to make this point. And the whole world is watching! You go, women!

Atlanta Catholics are apparently divided on this. See article. But even some priests there are angry. Don't blame them.

The archbishops views on women are so last century or even earlier. See for yourself in a 1996 talk he gave about women.

Life Support: An aging pope's view

Seems Pope John Paul II has made some confusing remarks about end-of-life issues and what health care providers are morally obligated to provide.

Read it here.

The Energizer Pope

Roman Catholic services during Holy Week are long, long, long. It starts this this Sunday, Palm Sunday, with the gospel that tells the entire story of the passion of Christ. It's so long that it's one of the few times we're asked to sit down during the gospel reading.

Then there's Holy Thursday, Good Friday and Saturday services that can go on for three hours! They are all very moving in their own way, but long, long, long.

Pope John Paul II plans to do them all. Or so says a report on catholic.net
Here's the article.

Cultural Culprits Behind Sex Abuse Crisis

Liberals and conservative Catholics have very different theories as to what factors in church culture contributed to the sex-abuse scandal.

Peter Steinfels, author of A People Adrift, wrote a great article about it in Commonweal. Here's an excerpt, but be sure to read the whole thing.

Steinfels writes: "Many conservatives have blamed the scandal on a postconciliar “silly season” along with a “culture of dissent.” Liberals have emphasized, on the contrary, a repressive culture of denial, silence, and secrecy, again focusing on sex, which marked preconciliar Catholicism and the seminaries in particular. Both decry the continuing force of these tendencies in today’s church. The John Jay data show that substantiated allegations of abuse did indeed “surge” from some point in the 1960s, peak in the 1970s, and later decline, eventually sharply, in the 1990s. But the data also show that the majority of abusing priests were ordained before the council ended and over two-thirds by 1970. On the other hand, the cohorts of priests ordained in 1970 and in 1973–75 contained the highest percentages of abusers.

"These findings suggest that neither the culture of dissent nor the culture of repression may have been as combustible as the convergence of both."