One in an occasional series of reflections on homelessness and my duties as a pastoral intern at St. Francis House, a daytime shelter on 39 Boylston St. in Boston (http://www.stfrancishouse.org). Apologies for the long-delayed backtracking.
The week of March 19-23, 2007
I have little to report, but much to ask. Please keep Mallory in your prayers. Her life is in danger, so soon after her day of glory.
She graduated from our Moving Ahead Program on March 16, certainly one of the proudest, most hopeful moments in her life. I could not be present to cheer for her because I was demonstrating in Washington, DC. If only I could have been there and here in Boston. I thought of her, and I thought about how good it would be to resume our Friday afternoon tutorials, moving from mathematics to reading comprehension and writing skills. She could continue striving for her GED and continue rebuilding her life. Our routine, one of many healthy routines she had adopted, would go on as before.
But life is not working out that way, because Mallory has become homeless. Not figuratively in the way I have described homelessness before, but literally. Recently she was booted from the recovery residence she was living in because she allegedly failed a urine test three times. (Mallory vigorously denies she could have failed the tests and has claimed it was discrimination because she is a transgender person.) She is practically penniless, and despite her job skills training through our program she is having difficulty finding employment. Finding work and low-income shelter is complicated because of her CORI status and the short length of time she has maintained sobriety.
Speaking to me and to the MAP admissions director, she confessed that if she does not succeed in finding a place to live and work to do in Boston, she will have no choice but to return to Springfield, where, she said, she would very likely meet her demise among bad company.
As dire a scenario this is, I thought to myself, our shelter’s life skills program really works, because there’s no way Mallory would have realized before that her way of life in Springfield was leading her to an untimely death. She has discovered a community in Boston that is nurturing her into new being, and she knows she can rely on a network of support broad enough to meet all her needs and deep enough to sustain her through many crises. In her mind, to return to Springfield is become entangled in a web of disease and dysfunction, to places that deform the better habits of the mind and heart. Mallory knows where temptation lies; she believes she has been delivered from a host of evils, and she does not want to be rendered into their clutches again.
But time and circumstances are conspiring against her wish to stay in Boston. She is shuttling around the city meeting with housing, employment, and CORI counselors and other social services specialists to work an eleventh-hour miracle. Understandably, she has no time now to continue tutorials with me. She regrets it, but she said her life is really in a mess.
I told her that I cannot help her much now, but I will do the best for her I can—I will pray. You can do that, too, so pray with me for Mallory.
Showing posts with label sin. Show all posts
Showing posts with label sin. Show all posts
Friday, August 3, 2007
Sunday, February 4, 2007
Letter From Boylston Street #3
One in an occasional series of reflections on homelessness and my duties as a pastoral intern at St. Francis House, a daytime shelter on 39 Boylston St. in Boston (http://www.stfrancishouse.org).
Previously I have written that homelessness is a state of being that transcends the material poverty that ordinarily gives rise to it. I say ordinarily because I contend that the state of being with which I associate homelessness may be experienced without material want. Any person who feels cast out of society or cut off from the community experiences the psychological and spiritual equivalent of homelessness. The psychological symptoms include fear, anxiety, depression, feelings of inferiority and worthlessness, and other marks characteristic of trauma. The spiritual symptoms include feelings of guilt, condemnation, and a loss of meaning.
Not all the students in the Moving Ahead Program, our social skills class, are homeless in the narrow sense of lacking shelter. Several are recovering from chemical addiction or mental illness or both. Several are recently paroled from the state penitential system. However, they are all, from the broader perspective I espouse, displaced persons, disaster victims, men and women without a firm footing in the world we have fashioned and to which we cling for sanity and stability. Please remember that there’s nothing intrinsically “wrong” with these men and women, and even if there was, that is not the issue; the problem is that they lack their rightful place in society. Our shelter’s educational services enable them to reclaim such a place. As the pastoral intern, I have been given two small projects within this greater reclamation project: 1) establish a hope-filled correspondence with prisoners waiting to enter our program upon release; and 2) tutor current and former students who seek to pass the GED exam or brush up on their skills.
One of the principal instructors has assigned three students to me. I met the first on Friday. Let’s call her Mallory. A week earlier the instructor prepared me with some basic information about Mallory and her needs. He provided the results of the pre-GED exam she had taken and indicated which skills needed the most development. He provided some resources from which I could build a curriculum for Mallory. But one of the first things he made a point of explaining to me was that Mallory was a transgender person. He said he didn’t know if I had ever seen a transgender person before, so he was telling me this so I wouldn’t be surprised by her. Prior to Mallory I had met three transgender persons. The first was a black transsexual female in Baltimore, a student in the adult education center where I volunteered as a teacher. She was not a student of mine, so I regarded her with polite disinterest. The second and third I met working as a canvasser for the Sierra Club last summer. One, a female androgyne, I regarded internally with disgust, and I never talked to her. The second, a male androgyne, eventually I got along rather well with, but at first repulsed me deeply. Even in his case, I never got over looking at him as a curiosity, a self-made freak, one not to be taken as seriously as any other person.
I spent two and half hours with Mallory on Friday leading review exercises in some basic principles of arithmetic. She had arrived 15 minutes late and was in little condition to learn, suffering badly from a chest cold. It was difficult to conceal my displeasure during the session as she repeatedly succumbed to spasms of coughing and phlegmy hacking. She complained she was hot; she complained she was tired. She said she had to get her nails done; she said she had to purchase her bus ticket. She lamented she wasn’t going to see her friend in Somerville; she lamented she was dying. We trudged through the exercises with as much good will as we could offer each other. Although I maintained a professional kind of cordiality, I couldn’t help but cringe inside.
I must confess that I was relieved when our session was over. Mallory had coughed on me so much, I was sure I had caught some germs. But I’m not so sure that was the chief source of my discomfort. Here’s the nagging question: would I have been so worried about catching a cold if it had been someone else, anyone else? A black, a Latino, a lesbian or gay or bisexual, a homeless person? Mallory was none of these. She was other than these, and this was an other I had not yet learned how to be at home with. I did not know how to make her feel welcome. I must have made her feel, in a word, homeless.
***
That evening I traveled to Jamaica Plain and attended a lecture by George Williamson, a retired Baptist pastor who had participated in the civil rights movement and later joined the antiwar and gay rights movements. The stories he told described his gradual liberation from the structural sin of racism, militarism, and heterosexism, a redemption he said was mediated by the Gospel example of Martin Luther King. His final story concerned crossing yet another frontier into freedom, beyond the wilderness of social sin, with his congregation. One day a cross-dresser entered his church and sat for the service. He received a hug from a woman sitting next to her during the passing of the peace. That woman, a lesbian, spoke to Williamson in his office afterward and confessed that she felt uncomfortable sitting next to the cross-dresser, to the point where she wanted to leave. However, she continued, that would have meant denying to the cross-dresser the same dignity and personhood she had long struggled to achieve. She concluded it would have been hypocritical for her not to welcome this individual. So she embraced the cross-dresser, albeit reluctantly. She said did not particularly feel the love of God between them, but she did her best to love the guest.
A little while later the cross-dresser entered Williamson’s office, lifting praise for his congregation. For the first time he felt like he belonged in a church. He said he was overjoyed because he had been welcomed so openly by the woman who embraced her.
Jesus liked to answer foolhardy questions with his own questions. When the scholar of the law who wished to justify himself asked Jesus, “And who is my neighbor?” the question he received, after the telling of the parable of the Good Samaritan was, “Which of these … was neighbor to the robbers’ victim?” In doing this, of course, Jesus is turning the question backward and back on his interrogator. To ask who your neighbor is, is the wrong question; it is better to ask if you are being the neighbor. It’s another way, to quote George Williamson, of “Jesus jerking us around.”
Lord, help me to recognize the sin into which I was born, the sin that I have tacitly accepted and appropriated, the sin that I now confess as my own. Help me to love my neighbor like Jesus and make your mercy manifest. I cannot be a neighbor to the poor unless I make the poor feel at home with me. Let us rebuild homes for the victims of poverty, racism, militarism, and heterosexism; let us build homes for those who have yet to feel at home in our society. By your manifold grace let us become neighbors in your glorious kin(g)dom, Mallory and me. We’re not going to be redeemed apart from each other; save us now, and save us together.
Jesus, jerk me around if you must. Amen.
Previously I have written that homelessness is a state of being that transcends the material poverty that ordinarily gives rise to it. I say ordinarily because I contend that the state of being with which I associate homelessness may be experienced without material want. Any person who feels cast out of society or cut off from the community experiences the psychological and spiritual equivalent of homelessness. The psychological symptoms include fear, anxiety, depression, feelings of inferiority and worthlessness, and other marks characteristic of trauma. The spiritual symptoms include feelings of guilt, condemnation, and a loss of meaning.
Not all the students in the Moving Ahead Program, our social skills class, are homeless in the narrow sense of lacking shelter. Several are recovering from chemical addiction or mental illness or both. Several are recently paroled from the state penitential system. However, they are all, from the broader perspective I espouse, displaced persons, disaster victims, men and women without a firm footing in the world we have fashioned and to which we cling for sanity and stability. Please remember that there’s nothing intrinsically “wrong” with these men and women, and even if there was, that is not the issue; the problem is that they lack their rightful place in society. Our shelter’s educational services enable them to reclaim such a place. As the pastoral intern, I have been given two small projects within this greater reclamation project: 1) establish a hope-filled correspondence with prisoners waiting to enter our program upon release; and 2) tutor current and former students who seek to pass the GED exam or brush up on their skills.
One of the principal instructors has assigned three students to me. I met the first on Friday. Let’s call her Mallory. A week earlier the instructor prepared me with some basic information about Mallory and her needs. He provided the results of the pre-GED exam she had taken and indicated which skills needed the most development. He provided some resources from which I could build a curriculum for Mallory. But one of the first things he made a point of explaining to me was that Mallory was a transgender person. He said he didn’t know if I had ever seen a transgender person before, so he was telling me this so I wouldn’t be surprised by her. Prior to Mallory I had met three transgender persons. The first was a black transsexual female in Baltimore, a student in the adult education center where I volunteered as a teacher. She was not a student of mine, so I regarded her with polite disinterest. The second and third I met working as a canvasser for the Sierra Club last summer. One, a female androgyne, I regarded internally with disgust, and I never talked to her. The second, a male androgyne, eventually I got along rather well with, but at first repulsed me deeply. Even in his case, I never got over looking at him as a curiosity, a self-made freak, one not to be taken as seriously as any other person.
I spent two and half hours with Mallory on Friday leading review exercises in some basic principles of arithmetic. She had arrived 15 minutes late and was in little condition to learn, suffering badly from a chest cold. It was difficult to conceal my displeasure during the session as she repeatedly succumbed to spasms of coughing and phlegmy hacking. She complained she was hot; she complained she was tired. She said she had to get her nails done; she said she had to purchase her bus ticket. She lamented she wasn’t going to see her friend in Somerville; she lamented she was dying. We trudged through the exercises with as much good will as we could offer each other. Although I maintained a professional kind of cordiality, I couldn’t help but cringe inside.
I must confess that I was relieved when our session was over. Mallory had coughed on me so much, I was sure I had caught some germs. But I’m not so sure that was the chief source of my discomfort. Here’s the nagging question: would I have been so worried about catching a cold if it had been someone else, anyone else? A black, a Latino, a lesbian or gay or bisexual, a homeless person? Mallory was none of these. She was other than these, and this was an other I had not yet learned how to be at home with. I did not know how to make her feel welcome. I must have made her feel, in a word, homeless.
***
That evening I traveled to Jamaica Plain and attended a lecture by George Williamson, a retired Baptist pastor who had participated in the civil rights movement and later joined the antiwar and gay rights movements. The stories he told described his gradual liberation from the structural sin of racism, militarism, and heterosexism, a redemption he said was mediated by the Gospel example of Martin Luther King. His final story concerned crossing yet another frontier into freedom, beyond the wilderness of social sin, with his congregation. One day a cross-dresser entered his church and sat for the service. He received a hug from a woman sitting next to her during the passing of the peace. That woman, a lesbian, spoke to Williamson in his office afterward and confessed that she felt uncomfortable sitting next to the cross-dresser, to the point where she wanted to leave. However, she continued, that would have meant denying to the cross-dresser the same dignity and personhood she had long struggled to achieve. She concluded it would have been hypocritical for her not to welcome this individual. So she embraced the cross-dresser, albeit reluctantly. She said did not particularly feel the love of God between them, but she did her best to love the guest.
A little while later the cross-dresser entered Williamson’s office, lifting praise for his congregation. For the first time he felt like he belonged in a church. He said he was overjoyed because he had been welcomed so openly by the woman who embraced her.
Jesus liked to answer foolhardy questions with his own questions. When the scholar of the law who wished to justify himself asked Jesus, “And who is my neighbor?” the question he received, after the telling of the parable of the Good Samaritan was, “Which of these … was neighbor to the robbers’ victim?” In doing this, of course, Jesus is turning the question backward and back on his interrogator. To ask who your neighbor is, is the wrong question; it is better to ask if you are being the neighbor. It’s another way, to quote George Williamson, of “Jesus jerking us around.”
Lord, help me to recognize the sin into which I was born, the sin that I have tacitly accepted and appropriated, the sin that I now confess as my own. Help me to love my neighbor like Jesus and make your mercy manifest. I cannot be a neighbor to the poor unless I make the poor feel at home with me. Let us rebuild homes for the victims of poverty, racism, militarism, and heterosexism; let us build homes for those who have yet to feel at home in our society. By your manifold grace let us become neighbors in your glorious kin(g)dom, Mallory and me. We’re not going to be redeemed apart from each other; save us now, and save us together.
Jesus, jerk me around if you must. Amen.
Sunday, January 21, 2007
Letter From Boylston Street #2
One in an occasional series of reflections on homelessness and my duties as a pastoral intern at St. Francis House, a daytime shelter on 39 Boylston St. in Boston (http://www.stfrancishouse.org).
From an incident on Friday morning:
“I came up here for an emergency clothing ticket.”
“I’m sorry. We don’t have any emergency clothing here in the day center.”
“But they told me I can get an emergency clothing ticket in the day center.”
“The only way we give out clothing is by the lottery downstairs every morning at 9 o’clock.”
“I need some emergency clothing, do you hear what I am saying?”
“Yes, and I’m sorry, but I don’t have any clothing to give you.”
“They said I can get some emergency clothing up here. Now I need some clothes!”
“I know, but I said we don’t have any clothing here for you. I’m sorry.”
“I need some fucking clothing. They said I can get some emergency clothing. Give me some fucking clothing!”
“If I had the clothing, I would give it to you. We don’t have any clothing here.”
“I need some fucking clothing! Now give me some clothing!”
“I want to give you some clothing. But we don’t have any clothing. There’s nothing else I can do for you.”
“They told me to come up here for the emergency clothing!”
“I can’t give you any clothing.”
This went on, back and forth, between me and a taller, stronger guest, and I began to worry for my safety, as I was all alone behind the hospitality desk (which should never be the case). Finally, I called for one of the staff, who was just as tall and strong as this aggrieved guest, and he convinced the guest that I was telling the truth. I should have said right at the start that the security desk in the lobby gave our guest the wrong information.
This is not the first time guests have been waylaid by misinformation. Now, the security desk knows that there is no emergency clothing available in the day center. All clothing is distributed on the second floor, above the mezzanine. There hasn’t been any emergency clothing distribution in the day center as long as I have been volunteering. Since the introduction of the clothing lottery, we have also stopped giving out emergency clothing tickets. Surely this intelligence has filtered down to security, because they supervise the daily clothing lottery! So why do some staff insist on sending guests to the mezzanine, where they are bound to be frustrated?
Ignorance itself isn’t sin, but willful ignorance is despicable, especially when it frustrates faith, hope, and charity. I refer to ignorance of the reality of the situation as well as ignorance of the possible consequences of our behavior. What angers homeless persons the most is the kind of negligence that opens up, as a yawning void, on account of one person’s or one group’s calculated avoidance of the other person’s experience of the common situation. This anger spilled over several times during worship at Common Cathedral today, as several homeless disrupted intercessions, the Eucharist, and concluding prayers with shouting and infighting. One homeless person, Ken, stepped forward and said he had been barred from St. Francis House and Pine Street Inn, an overnight shelter, for preaching. Invoking God, he promised that things are going to get bad at these places.
When security continues to send our guests to floors where their needs cannot be met; when volunteers do not have the right answers or are put into situations where no answers they can give are the right answers; when guests rage against yet another slap to their dignity, everybody loses. All are caught in sin.
***
A windy winter has arrived at last, and I have been worrying about the homeless, knowing that some men and women are going to die on the benches of Boston Common this month or the next. Earlier in the week a friend of mine called an ambulance for a hypothermic homeless person squatting in Copley Square. She had bought a coffee for him, only to find that he was too cold and too weak to raise the cup to his lips. On Saturday I met Steve, who was squatting in the subway station at Hynes Convention Center, and he looked much worse than he did several months ago. He had been beaten up, he was fitted in a neck brace, and he was starving. His speech was badly slurred. I wanted to find out what happened to him. All he kept asking was, “I’m hungry. Can you help me out?” I brought him some rice, vegetables and chicken from a Korean-Japanese buffet down the road. “Are you a Christian?” he asked. Pausing for a moment, I said cautiously, “Yes.” “Why do you care for me?” he asked. I said, “You said you were hungry, so I came back to feed you.” In between his falling tears he said to me, “Nobody cares for me. I just need somebody to love me.” We prayed together, and he asked me to give him a kiss. I brushed away the hair from his forehead and gave him a kiss of peace. We embraced. He said Jesus Christ had brought me to him and the Holy Spirit was here. I had no words.
Lord, correct our ignorance. Lord, defeat our negligence. Help us see your face and not be surprised by its pallor or its ugliness. Keep us from recoiling at first from the fury etched into the lines of your mouth and forehead. Let us not look away if we see you wailing for your welfare. We dare not turn away, even if your image appears in a form so abused that the child of God we find curses us. We do not turn away, but we turn back because we know it is we who have abused these children of God. Ours is the sin, the slavery, and the suffering; yours is the kin(g)dom, the power, and the glory. Set us free from the snares we have laid.
From an incident on Friday morning:
“I came up here for an emergency clothing ticket.”
“I’m sorry. We don’t have any emergency clothing here in the day center.”
“But they told me I can get an emergency clothing ticket in the day center.”
“The only way we give out clothing is by the lottery downstairs every morning at 9 o’clock.”
“I need some emergency clothing, do you hear what I am saying?”
“Yes, and I’m sorry, but I don’t have any clothing to give you.”
“They said I can get some emergency clothing up here. Now I need some clothes!”
“I know, but I said we don’t have any clothing here for you. I’m sorry.”
“I need some fucking clothing. They said I can get some emergency clothing. Give me some fucking clothing!”
“If I had the clothing, I would give it to you. We don’t have any clothing here.”
“I need some fucking clothing! Now give me some clothing!”
“I want to give you some clothing. But we don’t have any clothing. There’s nothing else I can do for you.”
“They told me to come up here for the emergency clothing!”
“I can’t give you any clothing.”
This went on, back and forth, between me and a taller, stronger guest, and I began to worry for my safety, as I was all alone behind the hospitality desk (which should never be the case). Finally, I called for one of the staff, who was just as tall and strong as this aggrieved guest, and he convinced the guest that I was telling the truth. I should have said right at the start that the security desk in the lobby gave our guest the wrong information.
This is not the first time guests have been waylaid by misinformation. Now, the security desk knows that there is no emergency clothing available in the day center. All clothing is distributed on the second floor, above the mezzanine. There hasn’t been any emergency clothing distribution in the day center as long as I have been volunteering. Since the introduction of the clothing lottery, we have also stopped giving out emergency clothing tickets. Surely this intelligence has filtered down to security, because they supervise the daily clothing lottery! So why do some staff insist on sending guests to the mezzanine, where they are bound to be frustrated?
Ignorance itself isn’t sin, but willful ignorance is despicable, especially when it frustrates faith, hope, and charity. I refer to ignorance of the reality of the situation as well as ignorance of the possible consequences of our behavior. What angers homeless persons the most is the kind of negligence that opens up, as a yawning void, on account of one person’s or one group’s calculated avoidance of the other person’s experience of the common situation. This anger spilled over several times during worship at Common Cathedral today, as several homeless disrupted intercessions, the Eucharist, and concluding prayers with shouting and infighting. One homeless person, Ken, stepped forward and said he had been barred from St. Francis House and Pine Street Inn, an overnight shelter, for preaching. Invoking God, he promised that things are going to get bad at these places.
When security continues to send our guests to floors where their needs cannot be met; when volunteers do not have the right answers or are put into situations where no answers they can give are the right answers; when guests rage against yet another slap to their dignity, everybody loses. All are caught in sin.
***
A windy winter has arrived at last, and I have been worrying about the homeless, knowing that some men and women are going to die on the benches of Boston Common this month or the next. Earlier in the week a friend of mine called an ambulance for a hypothermic homeless person squatting in Copley Square. She had bought a coffee for him, only to find that he was too cold and too weak to raise the cup to his lips. On Saturday I met Steve, who was squatting in the subway station at Hynes Convention Center, and he looked much worse than he did several months ago. He had been beaten up, he was fitted in a neck brace, and he was starving. His speech was badly slurred. I wanted to find out what happened to him. All he kept asking was, “I’m hungry. Can you help me out?” I brought him some rice, vegetables and chicken from a Korean-Japanese buffet down the road. “Are you a Christian?” he asked. Pausing for a moment, I said cautiously, “Yes.” “Why do you care for me?” he asked. I said, “You said you were hungry, so I came back to feed you.” In between his falling tears he said to me, “Nobody cares for me. I just need somebody to love me.” We prayed together, and he asked me to give him a kiss. I brushed away the hair from his forehead and gave him a kiss of peace. We embraced. He said Jesus Christ had brought me to him and the Holy Spirit was here. I had no words.
Lord, correct our ignorance. Lord, defeat our negligence. Help us see your face and not be surprised by its pallor or its ugliness. Keep us from recoiling at first from the fury etched into the lines of your mouth and forehead. Let us not look away if we see you wailing for your welfare. We dare not turn away, even if your image appears in a form so abused that the child of God we find curses us. We do not turn away, but we turn back because we know it is we who have abused these children of God. Ours is the sin, the slavery, and the suffering; yours is the kin(g)dom, the power, and the glory. Set us free from the snares we have laid.
Thursday, December 28, 2006
Letter to Father Tom
Father Tom Saloy served at Our Lady of Grace, the Catholic parish in my hometown, for 11 years. During those 11 years he became one of the most beloved priests ever to serve in our church. Accepting a new assignment from the diocese, he left our parish in June with great fanfare.
Late in November he pled guilty to possessing child pornography.
Here is some background on the case:
http://www.newsday.com/news/local/longisland/ny-liporn1201,0,1120050.story?track=mostemailedlink
And here are some columns in the parish bulletin by Father Vincent Rush, the current pastor at Our Lady of Grace:
http://www.ourladyofgrace.net/Pastor%20Page/Fr%20Vin/AsISeeIt/BC061126.htm
http://www.ourladyofgrace.net/Pastor%20Page/Fr%20Vin/AsISeeIt/BC061203.htm
http://www.ourladyofgrace.net/Pastor%20Page/Fr%20Vin/AsISeeIt/BC061210.htm
I have known Father Tom since 1999. Like many people of the parish, I thought well of him, and our interactions were always cordial. Lots of parishioners thought the world of him. Many of us were hoping he would become the senior pastor of Our Lady of Grace one day. Never did I imagine he was struggling with sexual compulsions like these. Never did I imagine that the national clerical sex abuse scandal could touch home or persist even today, with all the new safeguards in place in Catholic parishes everywhere. Never did I think any children, near or far, could be harmed by the priests I knew, least of all Father Tom.
Now Father Tom's life is in ruins. His shadow self has been bared for all to see. Surely his family is devastated. The people of the parish are devastated. And by perpetuating the infernal commerce of child pornography, who knows how many youths have been seriously hurt.
As far as I know, Father Tom cannot initiate any contact with the outside world, but he can receive correspondence through the Diocese of Rockville Centre. For a month I have thought and prayed about what I would say to him. Here is the letter he is receiving from me. I don't know if it is pastoral or tactful, but I hope it is true, and if so true, I pray Father Tom is strong enough to accept it.
***
Dear Father Tom,
From the moment I learned of your arrest I have sought to write you, but I knew I had to wait for the Spirit to bid me to speak. Today is the feast of the Holy Innocents, and now I know the time is right to share my share of God’s Word with you.
Perhaps you know these words of the prophet Jeremiah: “In Ramah is heard the sound of moaning, of bitter weeping! Rachel mourns her children, she refuses to be consoled because her children are no more.” Tell me, Father Tom, do you pray as Rachel prayed, with moaning and weeping for the children who “are no more,” the ones spiritually deformed, whose souls have been murdered through such awful sexual exploitation as you had patronized? I have cried for them and for you. I cannot speak to them, but I can speak to you, and I say to you, pray for these holy innocents! Seek their forgiveness! The people of faith cry out for them and for you.
You are now literally estranged from the world, but even before your confinement you were radically estranged from yourself and the world by your sin, as are we all. You were always very good at pointing out the wonderful goodness of God’s creation, but in my opinion you were very poor at pointing out the fundamental “wrongness” attending the human condition. I am still trying to figure out why you lacked the capacity or the willingness to articulate the tragedy of this separation of men and women from their true being or the personal dimension this separation takes when we turn away freely from God.
Because you are culpable for your offenses, you are cut off from the world in a way that surpasses in its ignominy the isolation the lepers endured in the age of Francis or the persecution the first victims of AIDS suffered a generation ago. Unlike those “outcasts” you bear a deserved personal guilt. But I am a Christian, and I abhor such damned separation, whether or not the one cast out is guilty. If I could meet you now, I would greet you with a holy kiss of peace, as Francis greeted the leper, or with a healing embrace, as our parish embraced AIDS patients years ago when it allowed Christa House to be built on the church grounds. I would greet you in the name of Jesus and all the nameless, unknown children caught within a web of all-too-human addiction, exploitation, and destruction. Your addiction may well be incurable, but you can still be healed in the soul, renewed in the Spirit, and reunited with the body of Christ, ever fractured, forever one. I pray the same is possible for the children whose harm you caused.
Out of the depths comes our cry for mercy, and from the depths comes God’s forgiveness. May God’s grace, which knows the depths, raise you up from your sin, and may the Spirit lead you to the new life for which you wait with longing and anticipation. You will be made well in Christ’s living peace. For these hopes, I pray—and you can depend on my prayers, Father Tom. Now and always, the Lord be with you.
Late in November he pled guilty to possessing child pornography.
Here is some background on the case:
http://www.newsday.com/news/local/longisland/ny-liporn1201,0,1120050.story?track=mostemailedlink
And here are some columns in the parish bulletin by Father Vincent Rush, the current pastor at Our Lady of Grace:
http://www.ourladyofgrace.net/Pastor%20Page/Fr%20Vin/AsISeeIt/BC061126.htm
http://www.ourladyofgrace.net/Pastor%20Page/Fr%20Vin/AsISeeIt/BC061203.htm
http://www.ourladyofgrace.net/Pastor%20Page/Fr%20Vin/AsISeeIt/BC061210.htm
I have known Father Tom since 1999. Like many people of the parish, I thought well of him, and our interactions were always cordial. Lots of parishioners thought the world of him. Many of us were hoping he would become the senior pastor of Our Lady of Grace one day. Never did I imagine he was struggling with sexual compulsions like these. Never did I imagine that the national clerical sex abuse scandal could touch home or persist even today, with all the new safeguards in place in Catholic parishes everywhere. Never did I think any children, near or far, could be harmed by the priests I knew, least of all Father Tom.
Now Father Tom's life is in ruins. His shadow self has been bared for all to see. Surely his family is devastated. The people of the parish are devastated. And by perpetuating the infernal commerce of child pornography, who knows how many youths have been seriously hurt.
As far as I know, Father Tom cannot initiate any contact with the outside world, but he can receive correspondence through the Diocese of Rockville Centre. For a month I have thought and prayed about what I would say to him. Here is the letter he is receiving from me. I don't know if it is pastoral or tactful, but I hope it is true, and if so true, I pray Father Tom is strong enough to accept it.
***
Dear Father Tom,
From the moment I learned of your arrest I have sought to write you, but I knew I had to wait for the Spirit to bid me to speak. Today is the feast of the Holy Innocents, and now I know the time is right to share my share of God’s Word with you.
Perhaps you know these words of the prophet Jeremiah: “In Ramah is heard the sound of moaning, of bitter weeping! Rachel mourns her children, she refuses to be consoled because her children are no more.” Tell me, Father Tom, do you pray as Rachel prayed, with moaning and weeping for the children who “are no more,” the ones spiritually deformed, whose souls have been murdered through such awful sexual exploitation as you had patronized? I have cried for them and for you. I cannot speak to them, but I can speak to you, and I say to you, pray for these holy innocents! Seek their forgiveness! The people of faith cry out for them and for you.
You are now literally estranged from the world, but even before your confinement you were radically estranged from yourself and the world by your sin, as are we all. You were always very good at pointing out the wonderful goodness of God’s creation, but in my opinion you were very poor at pointing out the fundamental “wrongness” attending the human condition. I am still trying to figure out why you lacked the capacity or the willingness to articulate the tragedy of this separation of men and women from their true being or the personal dimension this separation takes when we turn away freely from God.
Because you are culpable for your offenses, you are cut off from the world in a way that surpasses in its ignominy the isolation the lepers endured in the age of Francis or the persecution the first victims of AIDS suffered a generation ago. Unlike those “outcasts” you bear a deserved personal guilt. But I am a Christian, and I abhor such damned separation, whether or not the one cast out is guilty. If I could meet you now, I would greet you with a holy kiss of peace, as Francis greeted the leper, or with a healing embrace, as our parish embraced AIDS patients years ago when it allowed Christa House to be built on the church grounds. I would greet you in the name of Jesus and all the nameless, unknown children caught within a web of all-too-human addiction, exploitation, and destruction. Your addiction may well be incurable, but you can still be healed in the soul, renewed in the Spirit, and reunited with the body of Christ, ever fractured, forever one. I pray the same is possible for the children whose harm you caused.
Out of the depths comes our cry for mercy, and from the depths comes God’s forgiveness. May God’s grace, which knows the depths, raise you up from your sin, and may the Spirit lead you to the new life for which you wait with longing and anticipation. You will be made well in Christ’s living peace. For these hopes, I pray—and you can depend on my prayers, Father Tom. Now and always, the Lord be with you.
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