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Commentary

By Liz Quirin

A Time to Harvest

I preached the virtue of telling the truth to my children as they were growing up. “Always tell the truth because some day you’re going to need me to believe you.” I raised them to think for themselves, and when they were teenagers I sometimes wondered if this was truly a good idea since their independent thinking often clashed with mine, especially when they were in high school.

On one occasion, I discovered that my daughter had fabricated a story about her whereabouts, and I confronted her about it. Naturally, she denied it. Pressed, and with incontrovertible truth, she burst into tears and apologized. “Are you sorry for what you did or that you got caught?” I asked the tearful teen. Pleading desperately, she said it was because of her behavior not the fact that she had been caught in a lie.

I told her she had broken my trust, and it would take a long time to rebuild that trust. Trust is built on a relationship of mutual respect and is gained over time and through countless situations. Eventually, she and I lived long enough for her to move from teenager to adult, and we have, at least in my estimation, a wonderful, close relationship.
In any situation, when trust has been breached, the process of dealing with the break includes the shock of loss, the pain of betrayal and then, when the details of what has happened, how it happened and where forgiveness needs to be requested, perhaps healing can begin.

We as a people in the diocesan church are experiencing the shock and betrayal of trust once again. We thought priests in the diocese who abused children had been removed in the 1990s, beginning in 1993 and that all of this had been settled. Recent events and a jury verdict against the diocese seem to point in the opposite direction. The questions that pained us more than a decade ago have returned: How could this happen? Why weren’t our children protected?

Confused, angry and unbearably sad, we turn back to our God looking for comfort, looking for a way to believe. The father of one victim said he had always been Catholic and would remain so, a member of his parish. In light of his faith, can we also sustain ours? Standing with his family at a “ground zero” of turmoil, we stand as part of the “collateral damage” that ripples from that core.

We have to find a way to move away from a vortex of accusations and recriminations that, if we allowed it, will pull us apart. We have to return to the message, to Scripture to find out what to do. St. Paul told the Galatians: “Brothers, even if a person is caught in some transgression, you who are spiritual should correct that one in a gentle spirit … . Make no mistake … for a person will reap only what he sows because the one who sows for his flesh will reap corruption … but the one who sows for the spirit will reap eternal life from the spirit.” (Gal. 6: 1-8) It is, after all, harvest time.