Just about four years ago, in our little community in this little town in Oklahoma, reality began to shift for me. Our pastor of 26 years retired. The commander-in-chief, Slithery (as some call him), sent a former policeman to take his place. In fact, this new person was sent to police us properly and to turn us from our heathen ways. Imagine! Our community was being run by the lay people! As catechized, baptized and confirmed Catholic Christian adults, we were operating under the clear misconception that we had been empowered by the Holy Spirit to be the Body of Christ, and we had the audacity to believe that we were the church! This needed to be changed at all costs!
The events that followed rocked our little community and changed it forever.
Why am I blogging about it now?
A friend recently remarked that the story of our community is a story of abuse in a family. In this particular family, many recognized that things were wrong, although some never saw any problem. Members of the family met to voice concerns, and those concerns were presented by representatives of the family to the powers that be in the hope of opening the lines of communication. The attempts were ignored. Over time, various members of the family were battered emotionally and spiritually by the perpetrators. The family name was changed to make it clear who held the power. Members of the family began to gather in locations away from home, hoping that by clinging to each other, we could maintain the connection to our roots. In these gatherings no bashing of the perpetrator was allowed; the pain of various victims smoldered while other family members were unaware of the details of the various abuses. Some of the victims sought therapy and worked hard to come to grips with what happened to them. More and more family members stayed away from family celebrations and incorporated themselves into other families to various degrees. An envoy representing the family formally complained to the patriarch, elaborating in detail the many ways the perpetrator had violated the code of conduct he was expected to follow, only to discover that the perpetrator was following the orders of the patriarch. As in the pedophilia scandals that continue to rock the Catholic Church, the perpetrator in this case of emotional and spiritual abuse was moved to a new location - not immediately, as that would have given the victims the sense that their cries of pain had been heard. No public acknowledgement of the pain inflicted on the victims or on the family has ever been forthcoming. Indeed, after the perpetrator was moved, his successor has continued to operate under the same directives from the patriarch. Some family members remain in the home, accepting the changes whether they like them or not. Some have severed ties with the family forever. Some who remain blame victims for having left and some who have left cannot understand why anyone remains. Are we to be forever divided?
When the patriarch and the perpetrator crafted their plan of attack on our community, there is no doubt that the first order of business was to divide and conquer. The perpetrator began by eliminating all our normal channels of communication to minimize sharing of experiences. He "randomly" selected the names of various "movers and shakers" to be rotated off councils and committees to minimize our knowledge of what was going on in the parish. Altbough we had discussed the abusive situation before, at this time I feel an urgency that many things must be documented. So I am beginning...
