March 2025

Dear Friends,

Much of the world is currently experiencing fear and trauma. Bishop Mariann Budde, the Episcopal Bishop of Washington, DC spoke for many of them when she addressed the president at a National Prayer Service with a plea for mercy “upon the people in our country who are scared now.” Many Catholics, including the U.S. bishops, have joined her in speaking on behalf of immigrants and refugees, the poor, and those in marginalized communities.           

For many Catholics the work of contending with trauma and moral injury continues in our own house. The impacts of clergy sex abuse are still being felt. This abuse is particularly damaging because the perpetrators operate under the “halo of religion,” affecting not only the immediate victims but their families and the wider community of faith. The responsibility for the damage done rests not only on the moral failure of the perpetrator but on the religious institutions that enabled it. We have recently published several titles that explore this crisis and contribute to  the ongoing conversations on how to address the trauma and promote individual as well as community healing.

Theology in a Post-Traumatic Church,edited by John N. Sheveland includes a Foreword by Jesuit Hans Zollner, one of the leading ecclesiastical experts in the field. Julie Feder of Creighton University writes: “This important collection brings together psychologists, ethicists, biblical scholars, and systematic theologians to rethink traditional theological concepts and ecclesial practices in light of victims’ experience. . . . It both offers concrete, practical suggestions for ecclesial ministers and provokes big picture, critical questions for those seeking to make sense of their own grief in a sinful church.”           

Ashley Theuring, in Sacrifice Lost: The Dark Legacy of the Cross,looks at the clergy-sex abuse scandal in light of theories of the atonement, which focus on the passion and suffering of Christ as a source of salvation. She notes the ambivalent potential of such theologies: for some survivors, they offer a source of solace, while for others, they can trigger feelings of guilt and fallenness. She asks what it would mean for the church to regard victim-survivors as the “crucified people” in the church, and to reflect on the crucifixion and resurrection themes in their narratives.           

Finally, inTorrent of Grace: A Catholic Survivor’s Healing Journey after Clergy Abuse Mark Joseph Williams offers a deeply personal reflection drawn from his own painful story. His experience of abuse led to a spiral of substance abuse and shame. And yet he experienced healing in the place few survivors would look—in the Catholic Church, and especially the Eucharist. There, he writes, he rediscovered new life within the sacraments and the mystery of the cross. Jesuit Hans Zollner writes: “An extraordinary testimony that confronts with candor the suffering caused by abuse. A powerful encouragement to hope against hope and to believe in the presence of grace—even in darkness and despair.”

Many of us, in the times we are living through, long to believe in the presence of grace—even in darkness and despair. Together, may we find our way.