Enjoy the Silence: Triduum, sexual abuse, and the disappearance of the crucified
“Words are very unnecessary / They can only do harm
Enjoy the silence”
(Depeche Mode)
German political theologian Fr. Johann Baptist Metz famously wrote on many occasions that the challenge for theologians in the second half of the twentieth century would be to learn how to write theology that places the world’s victims at the center of its reflection. In particular, Metz insisted that theologians could no longer do their work with their backs turned to Auschwitz. In his most recent book, Catholic theologian Tom Beaudoin echoes Metz, writing that today we cannot do theology with our backs turned to the victims of sexually abusive priests. (His reflections on the latest round of abuse reports can be seen here or here.)
But this is, I fear, precisely what is likely to happen in most Roman Catholic parishes during Holy Week. Given the tendency toward apolitical and irrelevant homilies that have become standard in our communities, I have my doubts that many Good Friday homilies will make reference to the crucifixions experienced by victims of sexually abusive clergy. A friend of mine, and a doctoral student in theology herself, remarked to me that the Pope’s silence in the face of cover-up accusations could be due to the view that Holy Week is perhaps not an appropriate time to discuss such things. I suggested in return that if in Holy Week we focus our attention on the suffering of Christ, then acknowledging the Christ that suffers in the victims seems entirely fitting this week. More than fitting. Necessary. But sadly, if we are to get any reference to the scandal at all, it is likely to be the sort of thing Archbishop Timothy Dolan’s flock received at Mass this past Passion/Palm Sunday when he insisted that it is Pope Benedict who has been “crucified”.
In such a context of silence, denial, defensiveness, and submissiveness, what would a Triduum celebration even mean if not the willful liturgical obscuring of the continued crucifixion of Christ today? The Catholic mystical tradition has consistently insisted that Christ suffers today in his body. But as Salvadoran liberation theologian Jon Sobrino presses us, “it would be idle to say that Christ crucified has a body in history and not identify it in some way. [...] From the viewpoint of christology we must ask what this body is.”
It is truly difficult to hear the continued reports of children raped by priests and not be struck by the presence of the Crucified One there. But this presence is denied—“I do not know the man!”—each and every time church leaders and members alike remain silent or utter words of defensiveness that embarrassingly fill nearly every news story or ecclesial statement covering the abuse.
Is a Triduum that intentionally turns its back on the suffering body of Christ in such a way worth celebrating? No doubt, we will hear once again the church’s language of “entering into the sufferings of Christ” as we do each and every year. But when will we learn that such pieties are at best meaningless or at worst utterly destructive if we are unwilling as a church to identify—and to identify with—Christ’s suffering body today? We cannot enter into Christ’s sufferings without entering those of his body. Indeed, the only way to enter into Christ’s sufferings is through the sufferings of others.
If we do not—if we cannot—do so, if we cannot, as Paul said, “discern the body” and we instead celebrate the holy mysteries without a recognition of the victims, we eat and drink condemnation on ourselves.
Archbishop Oscar Romero was conscious of the way the “crucified peoples” mediate the presence of the Crucified One. Despite his position of privilege, Romero saw the crucified people around him yet did not deny their presence, cover them up, or become defensive about the political and religious systems that produced them. Instead, he “incarnated” himself among the crucified and shone a light onto them insisting that they were the ones God loves the most. And he did this no matter how uncomfortable it would be and with no regard for the repercussions. We know the end of that story.
Despite Romero’s relevance as a true model for today’s episcopacy and today’s church, I fear that Romero too will be absent and unremembered over the course of this week’s liturgies. Although his life, death, and resurrection among his people mediates to us something of the Christ event, our backs, and the backs of our celebrants and homilists, will be turned to him as well.
Liturgy should always, though usually does not, draw us into the sufferings of others. During Holy Week, the celebration of the Lord’s passion and resurrection, this should be even more true. But as a life-long faithful participant in the church’s liturgical life, I am increasing frustrated by the fact that we literally have to work against the liturgy—as it is conducted by most celebrants and most communities anyway—in order for this to happen. The suffering of human persons at the hands of our social, political, and ecclesial systems is “disappeared,” removed even from our liturgies where our anamnetic words and actions suffer from the worst kind of spiritual myopia and, as Sobrino calls it, “christological deism.”
And from where I stand, just days away from these holiest of days, I anticipate only more silence in the face of the reality of the world’s suffering, especially that suffering directly caused by the church. And I am not sure I can take it this year.
Good for you, Michael. You raise the fundamental crisis of our faith community today.
What better time than Holy Week to raise this fundamental question? And in such an eloquent and personal manner?
Thank you for doing this.
How to commemorate and enter personally and collectively into the paschal mystery, incarnated here and now in the suffering humanity of our own time, our village, our city?
How to connect our liturgical rituals of the Great Lent or Triduum with the reality of the cosmic Christ who is entering here and now into his redemptive process of transforming history by kenosis and engaging in transformation of the powers that be?
One haunting and rivetting statement of Romero has captured my attention recently, and I am now wrestling with the implications, just as you have raised your own struggle with the church’s silence and coverups in the face of human suffering.
What possible meaning can we glean from San Romero who identified so deeply and personally with the poor, the outcast, the marginalized of his own nation El Salvador (and how can we apply this to our own situation today), when he uttered the following words:
“La causa de nuestro malestar es la oligarquia”.
prayers for the Roman Catholic Church
if one part suffers, every part suffers with it; if one part is honored, every part rejoices with it.
thanks again, Michael, for faithfully speaking the truth
Did you see that article a couple of weeks ago about the head Vatican exorcist? He believes Satan is at work in the Vatican and that the sexual abuse is proof of it.
Great reflection, Mikey!
God bless you this Holy Week.
Indeed. Failing to validate the suffering of our fellow man does indeed amount to “the willful liturgical obscuring of the continued crucifixion of Christ” and to “turning our backs on Christ.” But we should remember that Christ’s suffering body includes more than just those who suffered from abuse by Catholic clerics, and the oppressed in El Salvador. There are the oppressed in Nicaragua, Myanmar, Guatemala, Tibet, N. Korea, and elsewhere. We cannot dehumanize them and exile them from the body of Christ. And not only the sufferers of clerical abuse and political oppression, but the Tutsis who suffered genocide by the Hutus, and the moderate Hutus that were killed for trying to shield Tutsis, and the Hutus that were killed as retribution. Talk about suffering—you cannot raise the subject without including mention of Rwanda, the most horrific spasm of human-caused suffering since the Great Leap Forward, which caused the starvation of 20-443 million innocent Chinese.
And of course we cannot forget those killed in Darfur among the warring tribes there, nor those in southern Sudan raped and slaughtered in the horrific war between the Dinka and the Nuer. And we can’t talk about oppression and suffering while ignoring our brothers and sisters in the Balkans—our pulpits must tell the story of the slaughter of Croatians by Serbs and Bosnians, and the slaughter of Bosnians by Croatians and Serbs, and the slaughter of Serbs by Bosnians and Croatians, as to fail to recognize their suffering would be to turn our backs on Christ and obscure the continued crucifixion of Christ.
Surely it’s not just some suffering that counts, right? Did you mean to say that we only need to talk about the sufferings of Catholics but we can ignore the sufferings of others? Surely not. Or did you mean to say that we only need to worry about those who suffer at the hands of Catholics, but we can ignore the suffering caused by the Burmese junta or the Lord’s Resistance Army or the warring gangs in East Los Angeles? Are you saying the suffering of the Burmese and North Koreas can be ignored because neither the perpetrators nor the victims happen to be Catholic? Surely you don’t think we can just ignore the suffering of our fellow brothers and sisters just because there aren’t Catholics involved, right?
So I’m with you—starting today, all priests should climb into the pulpit and start recognizing the suffering of humanity, from the suffering of gladiators and those oppressed and slaughtered by the Romans, and then talk about the towns destroyed by the raids of the Vandals and the Goths and then the Vikings and the Huns and then all those suffering from religious wars and the age of revolution, all those slaughtered in the Reign of Terror in France, and all those slaughtered by Napoleon’s army, and all those enslaved anywhere, and all those suffering from tribal wars throughout Africa, and all those suffering from the Civil War and World War I and II and Mao’s purges and Pol Pot’s killing fields and Stalin’s genocide in Ukraine and the bombings in Vietnam and Cambodia. We need to Get Started!
I’m with you! We need to get the focus back on the depravity of man and our sinfulness and our own history and our own suffering! We need to focus on problems caused by bad politics. Latin American death squads, bad Church administration, bad health care options and bad people everywhere! Otherwise, we might take our eyes off of Christ. And that would be wrong.
Gregor,
Your point, please? More succinctly?
Thanks for your words here—they are striking and timely. My community is praying the Stations of the Cross tomorrow with words and images from El Salvador, including those of Sobrino and Romero. Surely, your engagement of their work in light of our current Church situation will enrich my prayer tomorrow, and my own grappling with all this in the time ahead. Thanks—