Penance Service Regarding Child Sexual Abuse

This is a beautiful service and I would like the sentiments to be followed with decisive actions against the perpetrators as well as those keeping the light from shining on the darkness of this sin.

A Penance Service worth pondering and praying...

Posted: 31 Mar 2010 09:08 PM PDT

H/T to the blog, Pray Tell (which I'll feature as a Link of the Day soon after Easter) for this remarkable text from Vienna. This is in the form of a dialogue and it's worth noting which part Cardinal Schönborn chose to speak...



On Wednesday, March 31, a liturgy of lamentation and penance was held in St. Stephen’s Cathedral in Vienna in the context of the many cases of physical and sexual abuse which have come to light in Austria and elsewhere in recent weeks.

Over 3,000 people took part. Cardinal Christoph Schönborn and Catholic theologian Veronica Prüller-Jagenteuful read the following confession.

Cardinal Schönborn: Triune God, you led our mothers and fathers out of slavery into freedom and taught them the 10 commandments of a good life. You became flesh in Jesus Christ and showed us that love is the fundamental rule in all things. You are with us as Holy Spirit to lead us.

Veronica Prüller-Jagenteuful: And yet we become sinful before you and before one another. Enormous sin has been revealed in these weeks. It is the sin of the individual. It is the sin permeating structures, models of acting, and models of thinking. It is the sin of not offering help and not daring to speak up.

Both: The responsibility for this concerns us as members of the church in widely varying degrees. And yet, we are your people together and we stand in common responsibility. And so we confess to you and to one another our sin:

Prüller-Jagenteuful: We confess that we have not followed God alone, but rather have followed the gods of our need for lording over and superiority.

Cardinal: Some of us have, precisely in that sense, abused others, even children.

Prüller-Jagenteuful: We confess that we have obscured and betrayed the name of God which means love.

Cardinal: Some of us have preached the love of God and yet have done evil to our charges.

Prüller-Jagenteuful: We confess that we have not kept holy and not sufficiently valued the sacraments and other times and places of special encounter with God.

Cardinal: Some of us have used these as opportunity for assault.

Prüller-Jagenteuful: We confess that we have not maintained between adults and children relationships of unconditional respect for the other.

Cardinal: Some of us have used and destroyed the trust of children.

Prüller-Jagenteuful: We confess that we have not takes seriously the destruction of life and happiness in life, that we have not understood the destruction and we have trivialized it.

Cardinal: Some of us have become guilty of the inner murder of other people.

Prüller-Jagenteuful: We confess that we have not cherished bodiliness and have failed in the task of rightly living out our sexuality.

Cardinal: Some of us have done sexual violence.

Prüller-Jagenteuful: We confess that we have wanted to possess youth, beauty, and vitality for ourselves.

Cardinal: Some of us have stolen childhood from boys and girls and robbed them of the capability of living out successful relationships.

Prüller-Jagenteuful: We confess that we did not wish to acknowledge the reality, that we covered up and bore false witness.

Cardinal: Some of us have been able thereby to further delude ourselves and others and continue the criminality.

Prüller-Jagenteuful: We confess that we have wished to have control over others and possess them.

Cardinal: Some of us have thereby usurped the bodies of the weakest ones.

Prüller-Jagenteuful: We confess that we craved security, calm, power, and reputation.

Cardinal: For some of us the Church’s appearance of sinlessness was more important than anything else.

Both: We, the People of God, his Church, bear this sin with one another.

We confess this sin to those many people whom we as Church and some of us as particular individuals have sinned against.

We confess this sin to one another, for the Church has become sinful in its members.

We confess our sin to God.

We are ready to take on our responsibility for the past and the present, individually and communally. We are ready to renew our models of thinking and acting according to the Spirit of Jesus and to collaborate in the healing of wounds. We place ourselves as Church before the judgment of Christ.

Cardinal: O Christ, you said that you have taken our sin upon you. And yet we implore you today: Leave some of it for us. Help us not to brush it away too quickly, and make us ready to take it on: each one for individual sin and all of us together for common sin. And then give us hope in judgment: hope for new freedom from truth, and for that forgiveness for which we have no claim.

Amen.

Forgiveness

A friend sent this to me a couple of years ago. I do not know the author. If you do, please let me know so that proper attribution can be provided.

The ability of humans to forgive each other never ceases to
amaze me. It's almost as amazing as the ability of humans
NOT to forgive each other. Even when they've been
irreparably harmed, irreversibly bereaved, some people
manage to dig deep and find forgiveness, while others who've
been barely scratched struggle to even say the word
"forgive."

Marriage counselor: "Star Jones, I know this is hard, but
can you please tell your husband, Al, that you forgive him
for finishing the pumpkin pie."

Star: "I forg ... I forg ... I forget you!"

Al: "Come on, Star. It was only a pie!"

Star: "It may have been only a pie to you, but to me, it was
breakfast. You didn't expect me to eat only the T-bone,
did you?"

Some folks hold grudges for an eternity. They'll go decades
without talking to a friend or family member, even someone
as close as a brother or sister. If they're lucky, they'll
eventually reconcile, just in time to share a condo at the
retirement village.

Eighty-year-old woman: "I forgive you, Harold. I really do.
I can't be mad at my brother forever."

Seventy-year-old man: "Oh, thank you Mildred. That's very
gracious of you. I really didn't mean to use your fruitcake
as a doorstop. It was an accident."

Woman: "Oh, that didn't really bother me, Harold. What
bothered me is when you started killing rats with it."

Man: "I'm so sorry, Mildred. I was just trying to give them
a snack. Do you think I was being cruel?"

Forgiveness often means looking at the big picture and
realizing that everyone makes mistakes. That's probably how
Hillary Clinton managed to forgive Bill. She took all his
good deeds into consideration and decided that the marriage
was worth saving, that he was truly sorry, that it wouldn't
be much trouble to staple his boxers to his undershirt.

It always helps when the offender apologizes or seems
remorseful. But even then, some offenses just seem
unforgivable. It still amazes me that Don King managed to
forgive his electrician. If he can do it, so can the rest of
us. That's why I've decided to do a little forgiving myself:

---I forgive Ben Affleck for the movie "Gigli."

---I forgive Madonna for all her movies.

---I forgive Elmo for stealing my wife's heart.

---I forgive Keanu Reeves for stealing my wife's
hairstyle.

---I forgive Janet Jackson for showing us her breast during
the Super Bowl. And I'm more than willing to forgive her
again.