Where Abuse is Shielded by Love

You may remember me writing some time ago about my life in the Diocese of Chichester, where I was a worshipping child during the heady days of the 1980s and 90s in Eastbourne. You will also know that Eastbourne has been exposed as something of the epicentre of abuse by priests, a number of whom have been charged and prosecuted for the sexual abuse of the children in their pastoral care. Names like Roy Cotton, Robert Coles and Gordon Ridoubt are names in the public domain and are the names of people known to me throughout my own childhood. Other names will eventually become known and I know them too. 

I was reminded yesterday something of the dangers that exist in church life as this matter and the wider debate was discussed at a meeting I attended. It is the case, for all sorts of laudable reasons that for many Christians this is to be dealt with in a pastoral way. By that I mean that in receiving the testimony of an abuse victim, who may or may not wish to disclose that abuse to the statutory authorities, a priest has not passed on the knowledge of either recent or historic abuse allegations to anyone else. This is matched by a fervent desire to walk with the victim and not to add further pressure to them by making a disclosure. 

Sadly, such love is devastatingly dangerous. It is true to say that sex offenders act compulsively and often habitually and a statistic was cited by an expert yesterday that an offender, when caught, is likely to have offended in excess of a hundred times, and that unless stopped, is likely to re-offend in the future. The implication, therefore, of taking a pastoral view with a victim is that the abuser is spared legal process, kept away from therapy, and is allowed by lack of prevention and the secrecy engendered by the shame of sexual abuse to continue. It seems that this is symptomatic of the way such matters were dealt with in Eastbourne and wider afield. Greater love hath no (wo)man than to prevent abuse. 

Questions such as the seal of confession also play into this debate that is now acute. The abuser and victim of sexual abuse experience shame and for opposite reasons seek to hide the fact of their abuse (given or taken) from others. Indeed, it is also the case that the average time from abuse to disclosure is 23 years! 

Until recently, I will confess that I wondered why people left it so long to disclose abuse. Cases like Jimmy Savile have created a new culture of honesty and bravery among historical victims, and so it is that many clergy will start to receive disclosures from victims, often wrapped up in terms of not wanting their secret disclosed. As soon as the disclosure is silenced in love, the abuser walks free from justice or indeed from help. If you are a clergy person (or anyone else) who is approached by an abuse victim, please tell someone as soon as you can. Better to betray the wish of a victim couched in their sense of shame than to discover that in so doing, another victim was created. 

Christians Who Know Best

Those of us who are perhaps more liberal than others theologically find that we become a source of reassurance to other Christians who have been exposed to a particular behaviour on the part of other Christians. I call myself liberal but only insofar as I am not harshly dogmatic. I know my Scripture and take a perspective in my faith that regards that the works and desires of the Lord are constantly unfolding. 

There are those, however, who take a different stand-point. I cannot say that they are wrong, and would never presume to think that they are - but I do wonder about how these levels of certainty are born when found in some of my bothers and sister in faith. 

I am fairly certain about a good many things, but by no means all things. My head and heart is but one place that God speaks and I am not the best listener. I try and I fail, and as a priest, I often worry. Yet, and it happens quite often, that people cross my path or the path of those in my 'care' who walk with absolute convicted certainty. They KNOW God's will, they KNOW God's plan and they KNOW what the right and wrong of that is. And because they KNOW it (as distinct from 'think' it, 'believe' it or maybe even 'suspect' it), will have a clear plan for the world. I am sure it is great if you have that certainty - but so many people do not.

I can't pretend to fully understand the mind of my beloved wife and adored children - what chance do I have with my other best-friend, the God of the Universe and Everything?

The problem with those who are certain of all this stuff is when they meet someone who is less certain and indeed less equipped to fight the advancing conviction that seeks to compel them on. Experience has taught me that people like that come away feeling like they are somehow deficient or indeed insufficient. The spiritual disposition of many Christians is one of willing uncertainty. They probably think that they don't 'do' it right, but proceed in faith and let God do what God does. Some give up and we lose them from our churches forever. 

I speak to many people whose opening gambit is of the order of "where am I going wrong?" or else "how do I do it right?", or else "how do I become a better xyz?". Then I have those who tell me that after a conversation with one who KNOWS, they feel like a failure and very much like giving up. I reach for Psalm 139 very frequently, or else speak of the road to Emmaus. I hope it helps. 

This post serves two purposes really. To the 'certain' Christians I would gently ask you to consider whether you have ever had doubts, how they felt, and whether certainty (often a blind form of that certainty) would have helped you. If you have had no doubts at all, then frankly you trump Jesus himself who did. Then to those Christians who feel that they fall short, or worse have been made to feel that they fall short by other Christians (wittingly or otherwise) - God is bigger than any Christian I have ever met - and I am fairly certain that God can cope with your foibles. To quote Michael Ramsay (badly), if you want to love God - great. If you can only manage to want to want to love God, then God delights in that too. 

Let's face it, if God can love me and put me in a collar, he has both a sense of humour, and the ability to deal with whatever you feel you have in shorter measure. Rejoice and do nothing else but know. 

1                 O Lord, you have searched me out and known me;  
you know my sitting down and my rising up;
     you discern my thoughts from afar. you know my sitting down and my rising up;     you discern my thoughts from afar. 

2                 You mark out my journeys and my resting place
and are acquainted with all my ways. 

3                 For there is not a word on my tongue,   but you, O Lord, know it altogether. 

4                 You encompass me behind and before
and lay your hand upon me 

5                 Such knowledge is too wonderful for me,
so high that I cannot attain it. 

6                 Where can I go then from your spirit?
Or where can I flee from your presence? 

7                 If I climb up to heaven, you are there;
if I make the grave my bed, you are there also. 

8                 If I take the wings of the morning and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea, 

9                 Even there your hand shall lead me,
your right hand hold me fast. 

10               If I say, ‘Surely the darkness will cover me
and the light around me turn to night,’ 

11               Even darkness is no darkness with you;     the night is as clear as the day;
darkness and light to you are both alike.  

12               For you yourself created my inmost parts;
you knit me together in my mother's womb. 

13               I thank you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made;   marvellous are your works, my soul knows well. 

14               My frame was not hidden from you,
when I was made in secret     and woven in the depths of the earth. 

15               Your eyes beheld my form, as yet unfinished;
already in your book were all my members written, 

16               As day by day they were fashioned   when as yet there was none of them. 

17               How deep are your counsels to me, O God!
How great is the sum of them! 

18               If I count them, they are more in number than the sand,
and at the end, I am still in your presence.   

19               O that you would slay the wicked, O God,   that the bloodthirsty might depart from me! 

20               They speak against you with wicked intent;
your enemies take up your name for evil. 

21               Do I not oppose those, O Lord, who oppose you?
Do I not abhor those who rise up against you? 

22               I hate them with a perfect hatred;
they have become my own enemies also.  

23               Search me out, O God, and know my heart;  try me and examine my thoughts. 

24               See if there is any way of wickedness in me  and lead me in the way everlasting.

Just Because You Can ...

When I was in business, it was part of my job to discuss staff, their performance, their possibilities and in that to be frank and honest with the person to whom I was talking. I do that in certain aspects of the work that I do now. 

I am someone who believes that truthfulness is good, but delivered in complete terms can also be very harmful. 

A film was made a few years ago, a very funny film starring Jim Carrey that attended to the damage that absolute truthfulness can cause. Called 'Liar Liar' it told the story of a man who was caused to tell nothing but the truth. His world unravelled and he lost almost everyone who was close to him, not because he was a terrible human being or a monster, but because the truth, while absolute, is like a light. Too much and in too high a concentration causes damage to the eyes!

And so we have Wikileaks. This issue has been examined at length in other blogs, so I will try not to copy or mimic their work, but it is an issue that causes me some worry. For those of you as yet unexposed to the entity called Wikileaks (where have you been?), it is a site that publishes leaked documents from official organisations like governments and their departments. Leaks of American diplomatic discourse, opinion about Russian policy - all such things are making headlines. Apparent slurs of individuals are counted among this number. My post won't even begin to unpack the potential for misinformation, agenda forming, accuracy or other value measures of the site itself.

At the face of it, their work is easy to defend - the noble propagation of the mighty and unassailable truth. However, truth is contextual. Were such a thing written down, you could leak a document stating that I claim to be attracted to fifteen year-old girls. It would be the truth - or at least the truth in the context of the other fact that I was also fifteen when I expressed such a thing. Somehow I sense that the latter fact, the other truth, would not emerge. One Cloakey down the plug-hole.

So, back to my office conversations. There were times when I expressed concerns about honesty, work ethic, appropriateness for role. They were all things that I said. They were expressed  in order to work through issues of staff management, and therefore caused me to act in certain ways. Were I to have had those conversations in the presence of those staff members, it would have been outrageous behaviour, and would likely have caused my own demise. 

So, just because you can leak a document - it doesn't mean that you should. Not all truth is for public consumption. Frankly, I don't think any of us want the truth, the whole truth and nothing but - I don't think that we are made that way. The leaks that are making news headlines in this week are in danger of breaking up relationships between nations, hurting the ties that bind people, nurturing yet more distrust. So the Americans said this or that. Would any of us want every thing we say published? To my mind, we all work out our place in the world by working through problems and dilemmas concering other people. We have to have opinions in the longer or shorter term which don't need to see the light of day. If our every word is in danger of publication, then dialogue will cease, trust will fail, opinions will not be held, and things will start to unravel. 

And the Truth Shall Set You Free

...Arse Gropper ...

...is how my daughter pronounces 'grasshopper'. You may have seen others on the blog ... 'spagolognaise' is obvious, but Jess still pronounces 'dressing gown' as 'abbiguyon'. It is part of the Cloake patoir now. Jess still has trouble with the letter 'l', so '...and one for the yittle boy who yives down the yane' is commonplace.

What falls out of the mouth of my babes and sucklings got me a'thinkun yesterday. The mispronouned words are funny - but the clearly pronounced publically uttered (albeit innocent) questions are less of a happy matter for Mrs Acular and me.

"Daddy, why is that yady fat?", stated less than three feet away from the hapless (if, admittedly morbidly obese) lady, in an empty cafeteria. 

"Is that cereal bar nice?", retorted a deeply embarrassed Daddy, now exhibiting a blush hotter and redder than the surface of the sun.

"But daddy, the yady is fat" ... and so on, until we left (the lovely woman didn't betray so much as a flicker)

I thought this through, and it reminded me of a conversation that I had had many years ago in one of my London carpet emporia. A customer and I had come to the end of a rather nasty 'spat', we had both raised our voices, we both swore at the other, we had finger-pointed, then we concluded with something of a friendly and mutually respecting epilogue (once we had thrashed out the minor details). We later commented how refreshing it had been to be honest with one another, and how we ought to have a day in the year where we could have an amnesty on the truth - that is to say, say it like it is, honestly. I grant you that one us had called the other 'a f*cking animal' and the other 'a vile slug' - though we did giggle about that afterwards.

So, an amnesty on the truth. If that day had been yesterday, I would have been compelled to make comments about excessive consumptions of calorific content, a glandular matter perhaps, sizeable bones even, or more particularly a lethargic metabolic temperament. That would be why, my daughters two, 'the yady is indeed fat'.

Wider issue here - if we follow this to its logical conclusion, it is clear how much 'half-truth white-lie semantic prestidigitation' we surround ourselves in. The politically correct world is largely one of fibbing-to-protect. Can you imagine a ministry where the vicah could only be truly and painfully honest? I shudder to think ....

(Thanks to Reverendfun for the cartoon)