Allow Them To Show You The Way
There is an important admonition missing in the rituals of the Ordination of Priests in our shared Catholic tradition:
“Trust the goodness of the People of God. God’s People – most of them - are good and – most of them - genuinely desire to love Him and all His Creation faithfully and well. They are growing. They are learning. They are a Pilgrimage People. Shepherd them. Listen to them. Serve and love them. And allow them to show you the Way.”
The admonition isn’t in the ritual of either of our Churches. In the exhortation to those being ordained, the bishop does not share this Faith-filled insight with the almost-priests.
Rather, it’s a lesson learned over time and through service.
It’s a lesson we’ve both had to learn. Repeatedly.
Days after ordination, I injured my elbow – nearly severing the nerve that causes all that tingling when you hit your not-so-funny bone.
The corrective surgery occurred while the American Roman Catholic bishops held their semiannual meeting in Baltimore and declared – almost as a matter of unimpeachable dogma – “There is no way American Roman Catholics are ready for or will ever accept Communion in the hand.”
Days later, celebrating a 7:00 a.m. Mass (are prayers even heard at that ungodly hour?) I approached the impossible moment: With my right hand and arm in a sling and clearly not ambidextrous, I was (according to the bishops) to one-handedly hold the ciborium – cup – filled with consecrated hosts and simultaneously place hosts on fifty separate tongues.
“Riddle me this, new priest,” God challenged.
“Good people,” I apologize. “As you can see, there is no way I can do more than hold the ciborium for those who wish to receive Communion. Please, if you would like, come forward and simply take a consecrated host from the ciborium and administer Communion to yourself.”
And they did. Every one of them.
_____
I thought I was more than slightly modern. Open. (We didn’t use “liberal” in those days, but I was maybe leaning-that-way.)
It’s not off-the-mark to say I’m a “cradle-to-the-grave Anglican Episcopalian Catholic.” From my family’s unofficial pew in Minneapolis’s St. Mark’s Episcopal Cathedral and Breck Episcopal Academy through Hobart College in Geneva, New York, one of four Episcopal colleges in the U.S., where I met Jan Root – my wife of forty-plus years and the mother of our two sons, my education was marked by the historic tumult of the 1960s and early 1970s. I entered the Episcopal Divinity School in Cambridge, in 1975.
Shock!
Actually, paralyzing, glue-you-to-the-pew shock!
In 1967, the General Convention of my Church opened the door to the ordination of women to the diaconate. Almost seven years later, three bishops, claiming that they were acting in “obedience to the Spirit,” ordained eleven women deacons to the priesthood.
It wasn’t until a year after I entered Cambridge that most Episcopal dioceses in the U.S. formally accepted the ordination of women and history has marched forward.
But I still remember the shock as Rev. Suzanne Hiatt presided at the first Mass I attended there at the Episcopal Divinity School, where she was an outstanding theology professor.
I wasn’t surprised or shocked.
I was paralyzed.
Unable, unhappily refusing, absolutely refusing to receive, to accept Communion from a woman, from a woman priest.
By God’s grace I came to see Suzanne Hiatt (1922-2003) not only as an outstanding theologian but as a woman of great Faith. A woman called to be a priest. Not a woman who wanted to be a priest. A woman called by God and by God’s People to be a priest.
She was my first teacher in the powerful lesson that was not included in the bishop’s exhortation at ordination:
“Trust the goodness of the People of God. God’s People – most of them - are good and – most of them - genuinely desire to love Him and all His Creation faithfully and well. They are growing. They are learning. They are a Pilgrimage People. Shepherd them. Listen to them. Serve and love them. And allow them to show you the Way.”
As a husband and father (and “Father”) still struggling “to figure just some of it out,” I was named Rector of the community of St. Stephen’s. On the eastern edge of Pittsburgh, St. Stephen’s is a small parish and a “graduate school for learning how to minister.” One of the most unique characteristics of the community was our closest neighbor – a special living facility for cognitively challenged men and women, all of whom were welcomed to our Sunday service. Not surprisingly, most of our neighbors joined in our hymns and prayers and some regularly came for Communion. And I shared it with them.
No problem.
Really, never a problem. Until…
One day, one of the matrons of the community approached, expressing her concern that I should not be giving them communion because they “do not understand.”
In a moment that can only be attributed to Divine Inspiration, I called Ernie. “What is it I give you when you come to Communion?” I asked, somewhat tremulously.
“My Jesus cookie.”
“Good enough!”
“Trust the goodness of the People of God. God’s People – most of them - are good and – most of them - genuinely desire to love Him and all His Creation faithfully and well. They are growing. They are learning. They are a Pilgrimage People. Shepherd them. Listen to them. Serve and love them. And allow them to show you the Way.”
____
Despite eight-to-twelve years of post-undergraduate studies in theology, it has been years of priesthood and counseling that have taught us “Trust the People of God. God’s People – most of them – are good….”
Our theology courses taught us that Old Testament priesthood incorporated three great roles: Cult or ministry in the Temple; Prophecy or reflecting on the signs and cultural/political situations of the times and then, after prayer and reflection, declaring to God’s People a message they often did not want to hear; and Healing – spiritual, physical (despite the primitive state of “medicine” at the time) and emotional.
In recent weeks and months, we’ve spent hours reflecting especially on the last – emotional hearing. While some may deny our experience until the Second Coming, we will prophetically proclaim what our Ministry of Healing has taught us: Sexual abuse – wounds the soul and, more often than not, victims do not disclose for years – often decades:
The thirty-something woman who called saying the Fire Rescue lieutenant who resuscitated her after an alcohol overdose gave her my name and number and said “Call this man.” Her first session was casual, chit-chatty, allowed me to obtain basic information and set a schedule for weekly meetings. She never missed. And, every Tuesday for six months sat, balled-up at the edge of the couch and never said a word. Then: “I can’t say it,” followed by more weeks of silence. Finally, “I can write it.” Over a year, the story came out: Every Sunday, beginning when she was about six-years-old, her church-going father raped her and concluded each assault with the accusation “See what you made me do?” Every Sunday! Until she was almost sixteen! And she never said a word to anyone before telling me.
The convict who reported – in excruciating and thorough details - being sexually assaulted by his parish priest when he was a child. In 1981 – twenty years before the excellent Boston Globe exposé, I wrote a multi-page letter to the Archdiocese of New York, providing details – the whens and wheres - and a history of the young man’s subsequent struggles with alcohol and drugs. Their response was essentially “The accused denied…” More than twenty years later, an Archdiocesan representative called: “We’ve recently reviewed your letter and you were right. The investigator was a friend of the accused and covered-up for his classmate. Charges against both have been forwarded to Rome and they are being expelled from priesthood. We will cover all costs of counseling for the young man.”
It’s not a technique taught in any graduate course in psychology/psychiatry/counseling. But, when time is of the essence – you have only a few weeks, not months or years to work with a male client, when trust has been well-established and you’re desperate to save a life, my instructions are simple: “Close your eyes. Without thinking about it, on the count of three, tell me the deepest, darkest secret of your life. One. Two. Three.” It’s almost always a history of sexual victimization – years earlier, that had never before been revealed. That had been covered-up and ignored – as if the impossible could somehow become possible with alcohol and drugs. Through our years of counseling practice, we’ve both learned that lives – physical, emotional and spiritual – are lost to guilt – the sense that “I have done something bad” – and shame - “I am bad.”
Over time and through many years, we’ve learned
“Trust the goodness of the People of God. God’s People – most of them - are good and – most of them - genuinely desire to love Him and all His Creation faithfully and well.”
We’ve also learned deep, profound respect for men and women with the courage to speak of being sexually abused – without regard to however long ago the abuse occurred.
Pastorally, we respectfully suggest a Faith-filled response the next time you hear someone say “Oh, he/she waited so long. They’re just looking for publicity or they want money now. Why did she/he wait so long?”
Ask their professional credentials; explore when and where they earned their advanced degrees in psychology/psychiatry/counseling and how many years they’ve been in practice and their experience with abuse victims. Ask if they understand the difference between guilt and shame and if they understand that most victims of abuse experience overwhelming shame – “I am bad” – and guilt – “I must have done something to make this happen, even if I was six or sixteen or thirty-six or forty-six.”
When the unbeliever stammers and stumbles and pooh-poohs you, follow the directive of Jesus: “Shake the dust off your feet as a testimony against them.” (Mark 6:11)