Commentary

We need to listen to abuse stories
Catholics must pick up broken pieces together after sex scandal, Rebecca Nappi says.

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.

Back to Top