2nd Sunday of Easter B - Homily 3

Homily 3 - 2012

I was quite shocked during the week when I heard that upwards of forty young men who had been sexually abused by a small number of priests and Christian brothers had since committed suicide. I knew that there had been some suicides. I knew that the experience of being abused usually destroyed the quality of life in different ways of nearly all those abused; but to learn that upwards of forty had killed themselves over the years has been quite shocking.

I don’t know how you feel. I would like to say from the start that it is quite appropriate to feel not only hurt, but decidedly angry.

We have some chance of dealing constructively with those feelings which we are aware of and in touch with. The energies associated with anger are important energies, and can move us to seek and to work for change. Unrecognised and unowned, however, they can be dangerous and destructive to us and to others. Of itself, the word anger is too generic a term.

There are many shades and many degrees of anger, and often a collection of other feelings along with it.

It is helpful to sit with whatever you feel and allow yourself to notice it, and give it the opportunity to take shape and to be identified. It is also important to work out whom you are angry with: the perpetrators, their superiors, the parents who did not believe their abused children, the press, the victims themselves who have chosen to speak out, their lawyers, your workmates who make fun of you and of the Church.

Notice your feelings. Then decide what you might do with all the energy associated with them. You might judge yourselves powerless to do anything. You might think carefully and responsibly seeking to understand better the complexities. You might support initiatives of various kinds set in motion by others.

The past cannot be undone, but it can be learnt from. Victims can be respected, understood, supported and compensated somehow, where possible. We cannot relive the past, but we can plan for the future – to ensure as safe an environment as possible for young people today and tomorrow. We can try to discover the causes for the offences in the first place, and for the inadequate way they have been dealt with.

Obviously, abuse did not happen only in the Church – but it did happen there, despite all that the Church stands for.

Personally, I have done a fair bit of reading, and thinking and self-examination around the issue of the clerical culture of which I am a part – and, in order to understand that culture in context, I have looked at the broader issue of how all institutions tend to operate.

Over recent weeks we have reflected on the Passion of Jesus. How come that decent people, good people, thoroughly religious people – just like us – could be so deaf to the message of Jesus, so unresponsive, and ultimately so hostile and violent as to deliberately bring about his death?

Blindness, and the inability to respond appropriately to whatever challenges the status quo. I am inclined to think that we shall always be blind and deaf to what we unconsciously do not want to see and hear.

There is only one thing that will set us free from that blindness, I believe, and that is the deeper knowledge, surprisingly, that we are all loved and forgiven, unconditionally, by God. To the uninvolved observer, the possibility of unconditional forgiveness can seem recklessly dangerous.

But to the one who truly believes it, and who has experienced it, it is the key to self-knowledge, to self-acceptance, to true self respect and to genuine growth.

Over time, it cures blindness; and it empowers true and purposeful repentance and change of direction.

We heard in today's Gospel Jesus' unconditional offer Peace be with you to those disciples guilty of betrayal, denial and abject abandonment in his moment of need. It was his way, the only way, of saving the world.

And each week, as we present ourselves for the celebration of Eucharist, just as we are, sometimes confused, sometimes angry, sometimes guilty, always in need, he says again to each of us: Peace be with you. And we know we are slowly changed.