Pilgrims Walk with Shadow of Church Abuse

By Ailsa Piper
Eureka Street
August 6, 2013

http://www.eurekastreet.com.au/article.aspx?aeid=36772#.UgEQG5KTgTZ


I grew up in outback WA, where there was no church, or neighbour, within easy driving distance. Stories were what we had, and they were sacred.

Some were poems — 'The Owl and the Pussycat' may be responsible for my wanderlust, forever seeking that land of bong-trees. Some were from the Yamiji people — they instilled reverence for this land over which we stomp. Some were Bible stories — angels, miracles, water to wine and dead men walking. Those stories helped form my wish to live an honourable life. To 'do unto others'.

Later, at convent school, while I resented not being allowed to serve on the altar, I did love the rituals and the rosary's mantra. I also loved one Q and A from catechism:

Q: What is God?

A: God is love.

As I grew, I reassessed. My mother insisted I make my own choices on morality, faith and ethics. I was not to parrot inherited stances, but to form opinions based on experience and listening.

I've always had a pull toward the numinous, and felt a wish to serve, but through my teen years discord grew between those yearnings and the Catholic Church. It said it welcomed everyone equally, and yet treated me differently to my brother. Why, I wondered, were women not able to be priests, or take leadership positions in Catholic hierarchy? Why were gay friends not welcomed fully? Why was it that men who wanted to serve as priests couldn't have partners or families if they wished?

So much seemed punishing. Unequal.

By my 20s, I felt that my moral framework made it impossible for me to align myself with the Church of my childhood. Ironic, when that framework had been, in part, formed by Catholicism.

Fast forward to 2010 when I hear a call. 'Walk with sin!'

The premise of my book Sinning Across Spain is that in medieval times, a pilgrim could be paid to carry the sins of another to a holy place, and on arriving, the stay-at-home would receive absolution.

That may sound like hocus-pocus. But it was also a call for empathy, for shouldering the burdens of others, and for re-examining my beliefs. I asked people to donate sins. They did, and I walked with them.

One sin I carried was anger. I met it many times during that 1300km slog, in myself mostly. The most potent occasion was in company with a Spanish man. He was walking in memory of his brother, who had suicided some years earlier. We'd already discussed whether that suicide might be a sin, but I hadn't known the circumstances leading to it. One day, my amigo turned to me. He asked me to tell him the sins I carried, and I said I couldn't.

'But I don't know these people,' he said.

'I made a promise,' I said. Una promesa.

We walked on, picking fennel-tops to chew and rosemary to sniff.

He said there was something he had never told anyone, and proceeded to describe events from decades earlier. I listened, but could make no sense. His casual tone didn't fit the words I was translating. I asked him to repeat. Questioned him.

Eight?

Yes, eight.

Every night?

Yes, every night.

I had to ask him to show me what he meant, my brain was so unwilling to process the story. Finally, watching the mime I'd requested, I could no longer deny what I was hearing. Under an electricity pylon, I sunk to the ground.

A religious man of the cloth had forced his penis into the mouth of my amigo's then eight-year-old brother. Night after night.

His brother told my amigo about it one evening after they had been watching their sons play football. Then he swore my amigo to secrecy in order to protect their parents. Una promesa. It was never spoken of again.

My amigo sat beside me, his citrus scent mixing with the aniseed of fennel, and apologised for speaking of his sin.

'No es tu pecado,' I said. It's not your sin.

'Es mi segreto.' It's my secret.

I pictured that little brother, grown to manhood, and his fears for his sons. I tried to imagine the story my amigo had invented for their parents, and his brother's wife and children. I wondered about the weight of all those lies.

What I remember most is the anger. Like a tsunami.

And I absolutely do not believe that anger was a sin.

How could I not feel angry with the Pope, the bishops, the cover-up, the refusal to take responsibility for those little people, grown large, blaming themselves in stifling silence? And for those who loved them and were helpless to ease the pain? Anger seems a fitting response when hope is killed. Surely the theft of innocence warrants rage?

We're all losing our innocence now, hearing stories that frighten and appal, disgust and repel us. Many — within the Church and also outside it — would prefer to look away, hoping that somehow things can go on as before.

But we can't. We mustn't. My amigo is healthier for telling his brother's story — I know that from his letters — and I'm a bigger human for hearing it.

We must all listen, no matter how painful. Child abuse is epidemic in Australia, and not only within organisations. If we are to look after our children, we must pay attention to them.

Since my book was published, people have told me many abuse stories — of their children, their friends, their parents. One of Victoria's worst offenders was my local parish priest. Neighbours' sons were affected. I can't look away, even when I want to.

But the book also brought me into conversation with many who want the Catholic Church to live up to its original promise — to love one another. The fact that they continue to believe in it is, to me, miraculous.

Belief. I thought I knew the meaning of the word, but a friend explained it to me recently. It comes, he said, from an old English word 'lief', which can be translated as 'love'. Belief, at its heart, is to-be-in-love. Faith, he says, is paying endless loving attention.

If we are to pay such attention, then we must look with an unflinching gaze, and the Church should lead the way, beginning by examining itself. It's time for it to mature, to 'walk its talk'. To acknowledge all people are equal, and to give love to all. Tough love, in respect of itself. Very tough. That may be the most Godlike love.