In cooperation with Bishop Geoffrey Robinson and his publisher, John Garratt Publishing, we have pleasure in presenting the end chapter meditations from his book which has created so much interest around the world. Today the reflection comes from Chapter Eleven.

"A Dark Grace, A Severe Mercy"

Sexual abuse is a bulldozer gouging a road through the fragile ecosystem of love and meaning that a person has been painfully constructing.

It is in the abuse of minors more than anywhere else that one learns that sex is never trivial, for it impacts on the deepest being of a person, on the very concept of who one is.

In sexual abuse there is always spiritual harm, for the abuse always harms the persons sense of wholeness and connectedness, and hence the person's sense of meaning and identity.

Sexual abuse by a direct representative of a religious belief destroys the answers that the belief has given up to that point. The link between the minister and the god can be impossible to break and it can easily seem as though the very god is the abuser. The search for perfect love within that system of belief can become impossible.

Spiritual healing means helping a person to be whole again and to find a new world of meaning, a new set of satisfying answers to the basic questions of life, and this means a new set of persons, objects, activities and ideas that can be loved.

The journey will be slow and the path followed by individuals will be very personal. We must seek to assist each of them along the path they have chosen, no matter how different it is from our own path.

We must never try to impose a duty to forgive but, if the time is right, we can assist people to leave behind, to let be, and even to seek change and growth in the offender.

In all its horror, sexual abuse can actually become the catalyst that produces a better church, the only force in the church powerful enough to bring about necessary change. If we are willing, it can be for us a "dark grace, a severe mercy".

Credit: These meditations are taken from the end of chapter reflections in Bishop Geoffrey Robinson's book, Confronting Power and Sex in the Catholic Church — Reclaiming the Spirit of Jesus, published by John Garratt Publishing. We thank Bishop Robinson and John Garratt Publishing for permission to reproduce these meditations on Catholica Australia.

Bishop Geoffrey Robinson who has degrees in Philosophy, Theology and Church Law, was Auxiliary Bishop in the Archdiocese of Sydney from 1984 until his retirement in 2004. In 1994 he was elected by the Australian Bishops to the National Committee for Professional Standards, coordinating the response of the Catholic Church in Australia to revelations of sexual abuse, and from 1997 until 2003 he was co-chairman of this committee..

We welcome your thoughts in response to Bishop Robinson's reflection in our forum.

©2007 Geoffrey Robinson

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