Journeying with Jude: from Springfield to Springfield

I was baptised when I was 9 years old, about two or three years before my dad converted to Catholicism. Our family lived a fairly average Catholic existence – pious at church and fighting like cats and dogs back home – and I regularly attended catechism and Sunday Mass. I was confirmed by Archbishop Lawrence Henry on 24 November 1990. I chose Jude as my saint’s name, because I considered myself and my life to be a pretty hopeless case and I thought that if any saint could make themselves useful in my cause, Jude was the most likely candidate. I was so sure of this that I was even prepared to fight with the Holy Cross sister who was preparing us for our Confirmation when she suggested that it would be more ladylike to choose Mary or Therese: I wouldn’t budge, I wanted Jude and I got him, along with a free extra moniker thrown in for my trouble: “Little Miss Cheeky”.

Once I had my church leaving certificate in hand, I still attended Mass fairly regularly for a few years before deciding that everyone in the church was a big hypocrite – including myself – and that my time would be more honestly spent elsewhere. So during the day I worked in online publishing, where I spent far too many of my boss’s hours talking in chat rooms with a wide range of geeky boys who had no in-person social skills but a strong urge to find themselves an intelligent techie girlfriend: and purely because there were so few females who knew how to log on to the internet in those days, I had my pick of potential mates. In the evenings I dressed all in black and spent my time dancing as freakily as I could with whomever was the love interest of the month to angry Goth music at a dingy alternative nightclub called Springfield, which was housed in a converted old train carriage parked between Newlands station and the South African Breweries: wonderfully symbolic of the haze of transient and inebriated comings-and-goings that marked that period of my life.

It was a lonely and quite empty existence, because I had no faith in myself or anyone else. I didn’t see many people in my world being genuinely caring, kind or compassionate, and if I felt disrespected or betrayed, I could be vicious. Even so, I yearned for ‘safe’ relationships with people, where I would be accepted and loved just for being myself and not for what I could do for them, where other people would see something good in me, and give me a chance to grow into a better person than I knew I was. And I still had so many unanswered questions about God and the meaning of life! So I was ready to accept the invitation when it came, to attend an Alpha Course at the Church of the Resurrection.

The ten weeks of that Alpha Course in early 2000 were a time of amazing grace and incredible transformation for me. I suddenly understood that God loved me personally and wanted to restore my spiritual home to me, and give me a place in His family – even though I couldn’t imagine why he would do that for me! Loving kindness is a hard pill to swallow when you’ve been living on a diet of death and destruction – but slowly it begins to work its miracle cure.

The nine years since then have been full of opportunities for learning about God and growing in a personal relationship with Him. I’ve been learning to walk alongside Him, and to trust Him, and to be faithful to whatever He asks me to do. I’ve been surprised at how patient and gentle He is!

God also has a sense of humour: when I entered the Cabra Dominican pre-novitiate in April 2008 in order to begin to discern more clearly whether or not He is calling me to religious life, I was sent to live at Springfield Convent, surrounded by a good school and set in the most beautiful garden: wonderfully symbolic of how much I am learning about life and love, and how good it is to walk with God in the cool of the day, and to appreciate the world as his wonderful creation.

And it’s good to know I’ve still got Jude in my corner, pulling for me whenever I need it!

Lamentations and Tragic Reversals

Reflecting on Lamentations 4, for me, the most obvious tragic reversal in today’s world is the seeming fall of faith, and the rise of secularism and humanism – along with the vociferous anti-religion lobby that buoys up these increasingly popular ideologies. And while it’s tempting to point accusing fingers at people who demand tolerance from people all faiths and none while they themselves are less and less tolerant of other people’s beliefs, it’s also a source of deep sadness that some of the anti-religion arguments are based on fair enough observations of atrocities that have been committed by people who profess faith in a loving and just God, but at the same time hide behind the sometimes unjust protocols of their religious hierarchy instead of owning up to their mistakes and accepting the consequences of inappropriate behaviour.

A prime example of this is the clergy sex abuse scandals that have rocked the Catholic Church in Ireland and America in the past decade. Devout Catholics everywhere have been shocked and horrified: not only that the abuse happened, but that certain bishops and cardinals embarked on a cover-up that not only protected offenders from the consequences of their actions and robbed them of the chance of getting appropriate help, but contributed to many further instances of abuse that could – and should! – have been avoided. As a result of these scandals becoming public knowledge, many righteous clergy are now understandably but unfairly treated with suspicion and mistrust by the people to whom they have a vocation to minister – which in turn prevents them from being able to freely express the wholesome affection, care and concern that so many people need from a good spiritual leader.

Other tragic reversals are the significant drop in the number of practising Catholics, the near disappearance of altar boys in Ireland, the significant secularist changes that are being expected in schools whose ethos was previously unashamedly Catholic.

Lament for Bernie, Olan, Gary and too many others

How tarnished are the chalices,
how changed the noble patens;
How the sacred altar servers have scattered
like street walkers on a corner when the vice squad drives by!

God-Save-America’s precious sons,
treasures of Rome their counterpart,
Now worth no more than a packet of pork rinds
fried in a black kettle by a Boston Irish publican!

Even the wild dogs lie down
to protect their young;
Mother Church has become as cruel
as the praying mantis on the vine.

The tongue of the innocent cleaves
to the roof of its mouth in fear;
The unwilling soft touches cry for justice,
but there is no one to give it to them.

Those accustomed to seeing armies of altar boys in the sanctuary
now look in vain for young men attending Mass;
Those whose schools were once the envy of the civilised world
now face angry demands to have God obliterated from the curriculum.

The punishment of the Bride of Christ
is greater than the penalty of Sodom,
Which was overthrown in an instant
without the turning of a hand.

Brighter than snow were her priests and bishops,
whiter than a wedding garment,
More ruddy than cherubim cheeks,
more precious than an isle of emerald.

Now their appearance is blacker than soot,
they are avoided on the streets;
Their dog collars cling to their necks,
like stocks on awaiting-trial prisoners.

Better for those who perish as heathen
than for ordained clergy who corrupt the innocents,
Whose souls waste away, as though shot through,
lacking the fruits of the Spirit!

The hands of mantilla’d women
sent their sons to church,
To serve our offerings to a compassionate God
in the downfall of the Holy Roman empire!

Hidden Weaknesses, Friends and Enemies

In my view some of the hidden weaknesses in the clergy sex abuse scandals have been:

1. the inattention to extensive formation in personal development and appropriate self-care for clergy who are expected to shoulder incredibly heavy emotional and spiritual burdens for their parishioners, while they themselves have not always had a functional support system amongst their clergy brethren to help them cope with the demands of the job. Like everyone else, they are wounded healers and also need human care and concern if they are going to be able to live their vows and fulfil their many responsibilities;
2. the failure of some clergy to nurture their own spirituality or to recognise that they need help and to ask for it timeously, or to trust that God will forgive their trespasses and provide them with the help and restoration they so desperately need;
3. the inability or reluctance of the upper hierarchy to trust that God would help them deal compassionately but justly with the instances of abuse that were made known to them: their failure to seek justice, restoration and reconciliation for the victims as well as the abusers; and
4. the hierarchy’s refusal to listen to prophetic voices that brought them an unpopular message urging them to repent and take appropriate action.

Friends in the situation are:

1. the victims of abuse who were brave enough to speak out and tell somebody what had happened to them, in the hope of finding healing for themselves and saving others from being similarly abused, and to restore integrity and dignity to the Church;
2. any adult who believed a victim and took appropriate action, braving unpopularity to go and confront the perpetrators, or speak to the local bishop;
3. the press for telling the stories and bringing to light some very unpleasant truths about a church desperately in need of reform;
4. anyone who stood up and said “This is WRONG!” when they heard about what was happening;
5. the clergy and bishops who acted to pressure the hierarchy into promulgating non-negotiable protocols pertaining to the investigation of sexual abuse claims, and establishing protocol committees that would ensure that the protocols are adhered to in any case of reported or suspected abuse by clergy, religious or lay church workers; and
6. the psychologists and counsellors who offer appropriate support where it is needed.

Enemies in the situation are:

1. anyone who made an abuse victim feel shame, or who blamed the victim instead of the abuser for what happened;
2. anyone who thinks the perpetrators are any less the victims of the crimes they have committed, or who thinks the abusers don’t also deserve to get urgent help;
3. anyone who knew about what was happening but kept quiet about it themselves, or pressured others into keeping quiet – especially anyone who used emotional manipulation like “if you were a loyal Catholic you wouldn’t tell people about this because you wouldn’t want to make the church look bad”;
4. anyone in Church leadership who didn’t insist on getting appropriate help for a priest with a problem but instead knowingly moved the priest from one parish to another without giving serious consideration to the far-reaching consequences of that action; and
5. anyone in Church leadership today who tries to hide the protocol documents from laity who ask for access to them, or who doesn’t actively promote awareness of the existence of (and freely provide contact details for) their local diocesan protocol committee.