The recent revelations of the systemic sexual abuse of minors in the Catholic Church in France has left many people in the country angry, saddened and confused.
As in other parts of the world, where the abuse crisis unfolded years and even decades earlier, some French Catholics are questioning whether they can continue to remain in the Church.
It’s an issue that the French bishops will have pondered this past week during their plenary assembly at the Marian shrine of Lourdes.
And it is something that is quite personal to Patrick Goujon, a Jesuit priest, and Jean-Luc Souveton, a priest in the Diocese of Saint-Etienne.
Both were abused as youngsters.
They spoke with La Croix’s Florence Chatel about their ordeals, their struggles with faith in the Church and their hope for the future.
La Croix: You were victims of pedocriminal priests in your childhood or adolescence. And yet, you yourselves became priests. Did you ever think of leaving the Church?
Patrick Goujon: I had traumatic amnesia for forty years.
When the memory of my assaults came back, I revisited my reasons for being a priest.
But the question of “staying in the Church” did not arise at that time.
On the other hand, as a teenager, I asked myself this question because I was already very uncomfortable with the relationship to power in the Church.
I had discovered another vision by reading the texts of Vatican II.
It corresponded to the ordinary reality of what I was experiencing in Verdun in the parish and diocesan life of the mid-1980s.
What followed was more complicated for me because of the hardening of the Church.
I remember John Paul II’s speech on sexual morality in Strasbourg in 1988, the applause, while most of the young people present were doing the opposite.
Shocked, I said to myself: “Everyone is playing and the truth is nowhere to be found.”
Today, this distorted relationship to truth in the Church is breaking out.
This does not make me want to leave the Church, but to reform our relationship to the truth.
Jean-Luc Souveton: I have always held onto the memory of what I experienced, but in a very dissociated way.
It took me some time to realize how much this sexual assault had affected my life.
I have a hard time making attachments and a distanced relationship to the hierarchy, as if I lived in permanent danger in the face of authority.
Many people ask me how I could have become a priest.
One figure saved me: the priest in the novel The Keys of the Kingdom, by A. J. Cronin.
For me, to be a priest is to be a servant of each person’s unique vocation; if it is not welcomed and fulfilled, something is missing in God’s plan.
I have never really been tempted to leave the Church. If I left, I would be denying something essential to me, and that would destroy me even more.
Many people are reluctant to leave because they feel guilty about leaving Christ. That is not what holds me back.
This type of discourse forbids denunciation of its dysfunctions, insinuating that it would be doing harm to Christ.
I rail against the Church to the extent of the hope that I still have in her.
La Croix: The report of the Independent Commission on Sexual Abuse caused an earthquake in the Church. How did you feel about these reactions?
Patrick Goujon: In the speeches that followed the report, emotion prevailed.
Shame and anger were unavoidable, but they have become an instrument of communication in the Church.
However, the recommendations of CIASE begin with an education of the conscience.
It is to be feared that some of the bishops in office today are those who have covered up even recent cases.
But they speak as if they have just taken office.
When did they become aware of the responsibilities they did not assume?
Asking forgiveness from the victims and assuring that we pray for them do not commit us to anything.
Jean-Luc Souveton: I am tired of praying for us!
I suggest that anyone who wants to pray for the victims take up the Eucharistic prayer in which it is said: “Open our eyes to the needs of our brothers and sisters; inspire in us words and actions to comfort those who labour and are burdened. Make us serve them truly…”.
The question of forgiveness is often presented as a guarantee for victims to be healed.
This places the responsibility for their own misfortune on them.
An old priest used to tell me that before confessing “you have to let your dirty laundry soak”.
As long as one is not affected by what the sin has done in the life of the other and in one’s own life, the request for forgiveness is too soon.
It doesn’t allow time for the dirty laundry to soak in order to welcome the victims hurt by past, but also present, actions.
Three months ago, I heard myself say, “Jean-Luc, you kept quiet for forty years, you couldn’t go on?”.
La Croix: Your voices have been freed: has this changed your relationship with the Church?
Jean-Luc Souveton: By speaking out, I became aware that there was regular institutional violence in the Church.
For me, it was a kind of perfect society. I came out of naivety.
When I learned that 330,000 people had gone through the same thing as me, I cried for hours.
Patrick Goujon: I cancelled my appointments for two days. I was unable to talk.
Like Jean-Luc, I also had to come out of denial about church violence.
Some priests knew about my attacker’s crimes and did nothing.
I found myself in a state of post-traumatic stress. I can’t stand the careful interactions between myself and others.
The most spiritual act of the Sauvé report is to have shown us that these sexual assaults in the Church are against the fifth commandment “Thou shalt not kill”.
People tell me that the victims did not die. But some have committed suicide and others are still suffering.
Six years ago, a doctor remarked to me, “It’s strange, you have symptoms of autoimmune disease, but we can’t find anything”.
Then on the doorstep, he asked me if I had been abused as a child since a correlation has been statistically established between the two.
We don’t resurrect so quickly.
We are indeed in the land of the living, but criminal death still has physical and psychological effects.
We have a salvation experience, but the Passion continues, too.
Every morning, I have to do twenty minutes of exercises to unfold my body.
La Croix: Father Jean-Luc Souveton, you will be with other victims at the bishops’ assembly in Lourdes. What strong measures do all of you expect?
Jean-Luc Souveton: I hope that the bishops will stand up as one to say that they recognize the systemic responsibility of the Church and that they are open to the rights of victims to ask for reparation.
One day, a bishop said to me: “We are looking for what might calm you down…”
I don’t want to be calmed down, I want to be given justice.
One of the things that hurts me the most is that the Church reacts under duress.
But a coerced gesture will not have the therapeutic, salvific effect of a freely given gesture.
Patrick Goujon: A certain number of the report’s recommendations can serve as an examination of conscience. They resonate with the strongest Christian tradition.
Rather than resolving to implement them by bending over backwards, there is reason to rejoice. I expect the bishops to read the report, to welcome it, to reflect.
I don’t expect them to have solutions immediately, but I do expect them to make decisions to work and to change what needs to be changed as soon as possible.
I am filled with hope, but also with vigilance.
- Florence Chatel: First published in La-Croix International. Republished with permission.