Synod:
long term effects of sexual abuse on family life
(Vatican
Radio) The Synod of Bishops on the family winds up its small language group
work on Tuesday, with participants discussing further changes they’d like to
see reflected in the concluding document.
Over
the past two weeks the Church leaders have been seeking to resolve tensions
between two different visions of family life and ministry, one focused more on
the traditional teaching of the Church and the other searching for new ways of
engaging with people living in relationships outside of that Church teaching.
Maria
Harries is one of the 30 women attending the Synod as an auditor or specialist
in different areas of family life. She chairs the Catholic Social Services in
Australia and works with survivors of clerical sex abuse as a member of the
Australian Catholic bishops’ Truth, Justice and Healing Council. She talked to
Philippa Hitchen about her appeal to Synod fathers to broaden their vision of
family life and to acknowledge the healing that still needs to take place for
families devastated by the impact of sexual abuse…
Maria
speaks first about the importance of listening to and engaging with different
cultures, as she has learn through her own experience with Australia’s
Aboriginal people. She explains how they have a very different family model
which is not nuclear but rather a kinship or broader family system where a child
can have many mothers or fathers…
She
also talks about the lasting damage done by sexual abuse to both survivors’
families and the wider communities of the Church where people learn of crimes
committed in their parish or religious organisation.
Many
victims, she notes, don’t speak about the trauma of abuse until later in life
and so shockwaves, which have been building up over time, can drive people away
from the Church.
Furthermore,
she explains that new events continue to “trigger trauma” and the constant
focus of recent enquiries and commissions means survivors are constantly
“catapulted back into trauma”.
While
apologies are an important part of the length reconciliation process, Maria
says the Church must do more by setting up collective systems for healing, as
well as exploring how the abuse happened in the first place.
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