John 1:
5 The Light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it
The light of God has shone brightly into the darkness recently, and what’s been revealed is simultaneously both impossible to ignore and unbearable to look at. The Attorney General’s office of Maryland produced a report on April 5, 2023, which cast a light on man’s inhumanity to man so starkly, and so blindingly bright that I’ve felt awestruck and dumb since reading it. The report titled “Attorney General’s Report on Child Sexual Abuse in the Archdiocese of Baltimore” documents, over the course of 435 pages, and in excruciating detail, the abuse of the Catholic Archdiocese of Baltimore from 1940 through the early 2000’s. The full report, laid utterly plain and bare, can be found here. In it, the Attorney General’s investigators uncovered more than 600 cases of child abuse from over 150 abusers in approximately 60 years. As the report says, given that U.S. Department of Justice estimates that only 33.9% of this kind of abuse was even reported in 2019 (and significantly less in 2020), it seems likely that the 600 cases are, if anything, an understatement. The accused abusers, mostly dead given how long ago these events happened, are all documented, named, and their abuse stories told. Their full name and title, their date of birth, education, date of ordination, date of death known places of work or assignment, and a full summary of their abuse is brought to light. Hence the 435 pages. The victims, on the other hand, have largely been kept anonymous. This is to say that the report is exhaustive in the way it tells each horrific story, details the background behind the Archdiocese, the history of abuse laws in Maryland, and in the recommendation it makes for legal changes.
Frankly, it beggars belief.
And that’s the problem.
No one in the Archdiocese of Baltimore seemingly wanted to believe it, and when I say no one, I really mean it. The difficulty of getting these abuse cases reported is striking, and the record shows that only the most severe cases were reported in a timely manner. Instead, most were reported years after the fact, or never at all until this investigation. The pattern suggests that while there was certainly a massive number of “bad apples”, these weren’t isolated incidents. The whole tree was rotten. We might call it a culture of abuse, or a culture of enablement of abuse. There was a systematic attempt to cover up these incidents, move abusers around, hush victims, and suppress information. Of course, some might challenge the term systematic because this kind of cover up procedure wasn’t written in the bylaws, but that hardly matters. The result was that everyone knew what they were supposed to do, and if there was a system for reporting these incidents in a timely, responsible manner, it was entirely circumvented by the real system, the leadership culture in place to protect the Diocese and the faith. As the report says, “Church documents reveal with disturbing clarity that the Archdiocese was more concerned with avoiding scandal and negative publicity than it was with protecting children.”[1]
On the day of the Attorney General’s report, the Archbishop of the Archdiocese of Baltimore also published his own message to comment and respond. Archbishop William E. Lore confirms that the accounts are “shocking and soul searing” and verifies in no uncertain terms that “these evil acts did occur.”[2] After offering an apology, credence, and legitimacy to the victims, the archbishop says, “it is important that we shine God’s light on these lived accounts of abuse.” And, of course, it is important that God’s light is shined into the darkest places. For the victims who, generally, do not get their stories told until decades later (the average age that a victim who reports their childhood abuse is 52 years old!), and who generally do not get justice at all, God’s revealing light is a necessary first step toward God’s complete justice.
But that’s also the problem with God’s revealing light. Almost no one wants to step out into God’s light. No one wants to be exposed, and no one wants their families, friends, neighbors, co-workers, or co-believers to be exposed. Stepping into God’s light brings shame and guilt, and Adam and Eve noticed this immediately upon have God’s knowledge thrust into their minds. Likewise, it brings shame and guilt onto us, onto our friends and peers, and onto our institutions, which we have often given much of our lives to. Just as the Archbishop said, God’s light is “shocking and soul-searing", and just like the Attorney General’s report said, avoiding scandal and negative publicity is often more important than justice itself. Stepping into God’s light is difficult even for the victims. Being the whistleblower is arduous, terrifying, and isolating. Trying to speak truth to power in the face of powerful institutions often exhausts and overwhelms the victims and worse still, it comes without much hope of meaningful change or justice despite the effort.
For those of us who are bystanders and onlookers, news watchers and report readers, either in this case, or in the SBC scandal from last year, or in any scandal (because most if not all religious organizations are fully capable of scandal), what do we do, what do we say, and how should we feel? How do we respond in moments of such tragedy? Because it is a tragedy for the victims first and foremost, and a tragedy for the image of Christ in our already apathetic and distrusting culture. Personally, I found myself oscillating back and forth, running between anger and sadness, between bitterness, frustration, depression, logical explanations, and rationalizations. I found scriptures that matched each of these feelings. My anger led me to Matthew 23, a favorite passage of mine, where Jesus’s righteous anger is poured out on the self-righteous and hypocritical religious elite, who are, as Jesus says, “whitewashed tombs,” beautiful on the outside, and utterly dead on the inside. Later I found myself in Ecclesiastes 3:16:
16 And I saw something else under the sun:
In the place of judgment—wickedness was there,
in the place of justice—wickedness was there.
I found myself praying for the victims, but also feeling a thick malaise hanging over the day, like the world had lost a little bit of its color for a time. And I realized just how much courage it takes to tackle these kind of tragedies, and just how much courage it requires to not only shine a light on darkness, but to dare to look after you do. The report thrusts the abusers into the light, and allows the victims to remain protected in anonymity, allowing for perhaps the first time, some measure of comfort and justice. What courage, and fidelity to duty! Ephesians 5:11-14 tell us that we ought to:
11 Have nothing to do with the fruitless deeds of darkness, but rather expose them. 12 It is shameful even to mention what the disobedient do in secret. 13 But everything exposed by the light becomes visible—and everything that is illuminated becomes a light. 14 This is why it is said:
“Wake up, sleeper,
rise from the dead,
and Christ will shine on you.”
Wake up! Do you see how God’s light sears the soul and heals the wounded? Wake up! Do you see God’s distaste for the darkness that hides, and God’s love for the light that exposes? Wake up, I say, as much to myself as to you, that God might shake me from my own cowardice to reveal the places hidden in darkness. Wake up! Because God’s light overcomes, and whether we enter into it now, or wait until it finds us, we will all, inevitably, be thrust into the light. Wake up! And listen carefully for the cries of the abused, because while it is shameful to even mention what the disobedient do in secret, everything is to be exposed to the light.
It is hard to peer into the dark places, for we would rather be ignorant of evil than to live with the reality of its depravity. It is hard to look into the dark, but is anything too hard for the Lord? As the Psalmist writes in Psalm 139:
12 even the darkness will not be dark to you;
the night will shine like the day,
for darkness is as light to you.
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[1] Brown, Attorney General Anthony G. Attorney General's Report on Child Sexual Abuse in the Archdiocese of Baltimore. Interim Public Release, Baltimore: Maryland Office of the Attorney General, 2023.
[2] Lore, William E. Archdiocese of Baltimore. April 5, 2023. https://www.archbalt.org/a-message-from-archbishop-william-e-lori-on-the-maryland-attorney-generals-report/ (accessed 2023).
CGGC eNews—Vol. 27, No. 16
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