Not keeping secrets
We would have a staff meeting once a week when I was a curate. There were four of us, my excellent Rector, a retired priest and a lay assistant. My Rector adhered to the highest possible levels of confidentiality, information about pastoral care was only ever to be shared on a need to know basis. At one meeting our lay assistant commented, “While we keep things secret, everyone in the street knows about them!”
It seemed a very offhand comment at the time, and I probably leapt to the defence of the Rector for whom I have the highest regard. There are things I have heard that I will take to the grave with me, it being no-one else’s business what I have been told or what I have learned. But I wonder sometimes if the man had a point, that sometimes bringing things out into the light of day would allow things to be resolved.
It was our culture of secrecy in Ireland that allowed space for for paedophiles; it was our culture of secrecy that allowed women to suffer years of domestic violence.
Sometimes the church intervened. I heard a story of one country Rector, a mountain of a man who had been a keen rugby player in his younger days. Calling at a house one day, he met a woman cut and bruised from the thumping her husband had given her. He warned the husband that if it happened again the husband would be on the end of a beating. The Rector called one Friday evening to find the woman had again been assaulted, her husband had gone to a bar in the village to drink with his friends. The clergyman went to the bar and a few moments later the husband was lying in the street outside. Humiliated in front of his friends and fearing further retribution, the husband kept his fists to himself afterwards.
Most times, the church kept silent about bad things going on, and sometimes was itself responsible for evil deeds. The movement of paedophile clergy from one parish to another, allowing them a new set of victims, leaves an indelible blemish upon church history.
Maybe words are better than silence, maybe calling things as they are, even if it means saying bad things about people, is better than pretending that all is right with the world when everyone except ourselves knows that things are very wrong. It’s hard to imagine Jesus turning a blind eye to violence, or abuse or bullying.
It is a very difficult question to answer. To tell or not to tell!
Unfortunately its Religion and the church itself that gets the blame by the masses as been rife with paedophilia not the evil perverts who carry out the acts and hide behind the cloth.They do need exposing and helping to get rid of their perversion, sometimes caused by something that happened in their childhood.
I think it’s best to bring things into the open. I have friends who were damaged by the propagation of secrecy and inuendo, it damn near distroyed their lives . . they were the victims of gossip and supposition in a small country town which got way out of hand and Government Agencies were involved in the temporary removal of their children! Can you imagine! Had anyone actually spoken to them rather than spread rumours based on assumption, they would have learned the truth. (sorry a bit veiled I know) The difficulty is getting victims to acknowledge the truth or be brave enough to speak out and this sometimes takes years. Tough one Rev. I think the Church should intervene when it’s parishioners or clergy are involved.