by Rev. Dr. Mary Susan Gast, Conference Minister, August, 2004
Monthly Reflections from The Pacific ~ News and Events of the NCNC United Church of Christ

...FOR THE HEART TO CONFRONT
      WHAT THREATENS TO DESTROY...

Words of encouragement and support for those ministering "in the fields."

“How long will it be, God?
 Have You forgotten me?
 Will You ignore me forever?
 How long will You hide Your face from me?
 How long must I wrestle with my thoughts,
 And carry the stone of grief in my heart?
 How long shall my enemy triumph over me?”
                          [Ps. 13: 1-2, The Psalms in Worship]

It’s really about trust. As in confidence, reliance, assurance, and security.

And it’s about putting first things first, in a Gospel sense, of course, where the last are first and the least are greatest.

“We thought they could change. We thought they could be cured. We didn’t know.” Thus Anna Quindlen cited the Roman Catholic Bishops and Cardinals who have been releasing, little by little, drip by drip, the cumulatively corrosive record of priests abusing those in their care, and those same priests being moved on to new parishes, with silence and secrecy covering their identities as sexual predators. Disclosure about decades of victim intimidation and financial settlements eats like acid through the bonds of mutual trust. The crimes and the complicity fuse, generating outrage.

“Pastoral care,” writes Dow Edgerton, Chicago Theological Seminary, “is not the care of a string of isolated individuals, but rather it addresses the community in its common life....There must be no privileging of the care of the violator that gives it priority over the care of those violated.......Failure to address the question of the restraint of evil-doing is neither pastoral nor ethical and abandons both the victim and the perpetrator to the power of death.” “Truly I tell you, just as you did it to one of the least of these, you did it to me.”

The United Church of Christ, like all denominations, has harbored sexual predators. Twenty-five years ago, it was not uncommon for a minister who had sexually exploited parishioners in one church, to suddenly leave that church and become the pastor of another congregation, in another Conference, with no word spoken about the cause of his departure. But the courage of church members to begin to speak the unspeakable, to stand with the vulnerable, identify the power dynamics in pastoral relationships, and develop systems of accountability for ministers and redress for the victimized caught hold in our autonomous yet covenantally connected network of churches. The first ethics procedures that were established in the UCC were focused on complaints of clergy sexual misconduct.

In the mid-1980’s we began talking to each other in the United Church of Christ about pastoral conduct and misconduct. Faith-filled attorneys advised Conference staff that “confidentiality” did not mean keeping quiet about those who exploit and abuse, that our responsibility to the health of the church took precedence over a minister’s claim that the truth about her or his pastoral ethics rendered him/her “unemployable.” For nearly two decades now Conferences have been committed to disclose to one another and to search committees information about past misconduct on the part of ministers seeking a new call. We will never screen out all the predators, nor preempt all those who might stray only once, nor heal all the hurt. But let us pray, in this and in all matters, for the heart to confront what threatens to destroy us, and the ears to hear the cries of the oppressed.

                                                                  ~ Mary Susan

Your comments are welcome
Send to msgast@ncncucc.org