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By Root 1498 0

songs, and hymns was a godsend. Joe Fortuna, the priest who had taught her master’s level class in liturgy, had recently become pastor at Church of the Ascension—the parish where, years earlier, the predators Bruening and Berthiaume shared the rectory. Fortuna and the pastoral associate, Laurel Jurecki, helped Stephen and Sister Chris shape the prayer service called Liturgy of Lament for the Broken Body of Christ. Two hundred people, including many survivors and therapists, attended on October 14, 2002.54

Father Fortuna began:

We have come here tonight from many places …

We come together for one thing only: To raise our hearts and voices and very bodies to God,

In the hope that in the very act of raising them in lament yet in faith,

They may be touched in their brokenness

And know the transforming and surpassing power of God’s love.

Then the choir rolled out “Were You There,” a Negro spiritual.

Were you there when they crucified my Lord?

Oh, sometimes it causes me to tremble, tremble, tremble.

Were you there when they crucified my Lord?

Fortuna, Schenk, and other men and women in robes lay down on the altar, an act of obeisance to God, and a ritual expression of repentance to the abuse survivors. Sister Christine took the podium. “Why would a supposedly good God allow such a terrible thing to happen to one so innocent—you as a child?” she began. “Why did God allow you to lose your childhood so early? How could this grievous betrayal happen at the hand of one from whom you had every right to expect nurture, respect, and wisdom about the ways of God? Instead, you learned fear, self-hatred, and numbing confusion about yourself and about God.”

Everyone present was stunned at the galloping pace of the scandal. “Many of us here tonight,” she said, “never experienced childhood sexual abuse or clergy sexual abuse, but we feel wounded and betrayed by church leaders who made decisions more protective of institutions than of persons. We want to say in some way that we are sorry. Perhaps we are like the women of Jerusalem in the gospel who witness Jesus’s crucifixion and death. Watching from a distance, we come to offer what comfort we can in our presence, our sorrow, our lament, our mourning over what our institution has done to individuals.”

She paid tribute to Stephen and other survivors present for affirming

that yes, there is a God who is good and able to heal even the horrible wound of childhood sex abuse. You, more than any here, know what it is to be an earthen vessel carrying within your body the death of Jesus. And you know as well the wondrous gift of carrying within your body the life of Jesus … You witness that yes, there is a balm in Gilead as the old hymn says.

Believers know that Jesus’ suffering did not end in death but in resurrection—in new life. A dear friend once told me to never look at the cross without seeing the resurrection. When we venerate the cross we are acknowledging the reality of evil and death but even more so venerating God’s power to save. This is the life journey of every believer, not only those who have been touched by the evil of clerical sexual abuse, or by the grievous structural evil which allowed such abuse to continue. All of us are journeying to a deeper, richer life as we slowly, slowly loose the power that evil holds through our belief in Christ.

Matthew tells us that after crying out on the cross, Jesus “yielded up his Spirit … and the veil of the temple was torn in two.” I wonder if we are not in that place now as a church. The veil of our sacred structure has been torn and we see it for what it is—a flawed human institution. But since we want our church structures to reflect the goodness of the God we serve, we must cry out for repentance, renewal and rebirth. We trust this Spirit to make all things new. And we claim our Church and our wounded persons once again for Christ.

The priests and female pastoral ministers in robes lay hands on the congregants in a prayer for healing.

A DIOCESE RUN AMOK

Three weeks before Christmas 2003, the county grand jury