As I See It

by Fr. Vin

Fr. Tom’s Guilty Plea

[What follows is part of a column I wrote in December of 2006 when Fr. Tom’s actions first came to light; I’ll have some additional comments at the bottom of the page.]

The news about priests’ misconduct hits people differently.  Friends and close colleagues are often stunned and almost unbelieving; their sympathy goes instinctively to the “wounded healer” whose wounds are now exposed for all to see.  Parents naturally think first of their own children at risk, and worry about what might have happened and how to have conversations with their children they hoped they’d never have to have.  People who have themselves been victims of abuse are likely to find old memories and feelings given new energy, almost as if “it’s happening all over again – and to me.” 

My hope with this column is to make things more complex.

That is, simple attitudes, feelings, and understandings are often natural and almost inevitable.  Yet if thirty-five years of being a confessor have taught me anything, it’s that people are complicated.  It’s easier on us to think of people as if they’re “all light” and to be praised, or “all darkness” and to be condemned.  But people are a mix, and we do them an injustice when we fail to give due weight to either the light or the darkness.

I admit this isn’t easy; it requires that we notice our feelings, but not use them as a guide to judgment.  It’s why we require a tradition (like the law, civil and canonical) and a community (civil society and the church communion) to remind us of aspects of people and situations that we’d be inclined to overlook.  Fairness calls for dispassionate judgment, and few of us human beings know our own biases and blind spots well enough to be able to be dispassionate on our own without guidance from tradition and community.

We need to notice our desire to oversimplify so as to end the tension that living with complex feelings and attitudes involves.  We can acknowledge our strong emotions, our discomfort with trying to think things through and appreciate all sides – yet not be ruled by such forces.  It will be especially hard when present events remind us of half-buried (or all-too-vivid) memories of trauma, and people who find themselves in such situations may need to seek out-trained help.  But it’s not easy for anyone, myself included.

I’m writing this part four days after Tom entered his plea of “guilty” and was sentenced to prison.  I’ve heard reactions from a few parishioners, and I suspect that many others are feeling things that are hard to put into words, or are still stunned and puzzled.  Even though the facts of Tom’s crimes are now more clear with his plea, keeping our responses complicated – as I wrote above – is still important.   What he’s pleaded guilty to is in no way a “victimless” crime; and yet his motives are unknowable to us, and perhaps even to him.  To what degree this behavior is freely chosen or a compulsion, an addiction or a sin, is something probably only God knows for sure.  For society to work and for innocent people to be protected, we have to make judgments about behavior, and we need to say clearly that this is evil.  But we also have an obligation as disciples of Jesus to love and to forgive every sinner, however hard that might be. 

Forgiveness doesn’t mean there should be no consequences.  And it doesn’t mean that we should suppress feelings of anger or shock or disappointment.  Forgiveness begins in the awareness that we are all sinners in our own different ways, all in need of God’s mercy.  We’re much more alike in this than we’re different.  The possibility of our offering forgiveness begins in a deep awareness of having been forgiven by God.  Even without understanding much of what moved someone else to act as he or she did, we can begin to forgive by deepening our awareness of our own need to be forgiven.  So keep the victims of Tom’s actions in your prayer, and his family, and him, and all those to whom he ministered.  But use this time to become a more wholehearted disciple of Jesus, the “friend of sinners,” as well.  Until next week, peace.