Wondering about my Wanderings

Back to the Drawing Board

I feel inundated with all manner of internal pressure. There is a caregiver who lets me know that there is such a thing as sexual abuse in the Catholic church and she will not be silenced. I am a man who has heard many of the stories that spew out of her mouth. The good old boy system of the church keeps change from happening and the list of victims grows exponentially.

I have seen my own share of sexual abuse in both Protestant and Catholic Churches. I have been told by a supervisor that all abuse is sexual abuse. I agree with that somewhat and yet the kind of abuse that Helen talks about takes a step further. There are people in the midst of development issues related to being healthy children. They go through stages of developing independence in the bathroom and over time they learn how to clean themselves and independently manage in a school setting to take care of their needs and their is an invasion that takes before they have any sexual interest at all.

Love has a whole new spin to it. Something happened and it is terrifying and at the same time powerful. A kid becomes an adult long before they are ready. They wonder what they did to deserve it, because that is how they think in younger years. They find themselves dissociating and at the same time torn between wanting attention and not wanting it, fearing for there lives. I could only listen. It was painful to hear knowing that I might soon answer the pastorate. God has many more ways of getting peoples attention than merely reading a word, through each of us the word becomes flesh. We are the living human document!!!