Why I Fled the Church or My Passover Seder Story

By Virginia Jones
Garden of Roses: Stories of Abuse and Healing
April 07, 2015

http://compassionategathering.blogspot.com/2015/04/why-i-fled-church-or-my-passover-seder.html

Last week I planned to attend a Passover Seder celebrated in a church, but I found myself too anxious to enter the building.  I never even parked my car.  After driving 45 minutes from my home to the church, I just turned around and drove home.

The Passover Seder is a dinner cum religious ceremony in Judaism that celebrates why and how the Jewish people fled slavery in Egypt for freedom in the land of Canaan.  Traditionally, the youngest child present shares the basic story of the Passover, but in Reform Judaism the celebration has become an opportunity to contemplate injustice in modern times as well.

For example, during a Passover Seder, one might contemplate why so many people are still enslaved in the modern world and why do so many people remain hungry.

It is also a common practice to invite to your Passover Seder the stranger and the person in need, in part, as symbols of the injustice the Jewish people had to endure in Egypt.  In other words, the Egyptians treated the Jews as strangers when they enslaved them.  The idea of inviting a stranger to your Passover Seder is to not behave like Pharaoh, to be hospitable and compassionate.

I long knew about the story behind the Passover Seder and the focus on social justice.  I wish I had known about the part of inviting a stranger to your table.

You see, I was invited to this Passover Seder by a Jewish friend.  The Seder was a communal Seder that  takes place at his Synagogue which happens to rent space from a Christian church.  The two communities, Christian and Jewish, gather each year to celebrate the Passover Seder together.

So the day of the Seder I put on nicer clothing than my usual jeans, made sure I had enough money for a generous donation for dinner, and drove my car over the river and through the city to the church cum synagogue.  When I drove around the curve in the road before the church, I found the modest church parking lot was full.  To the left  of the parking lot entrance was a gravel road which I took as I knew there were dirt roads behind the church.  I hoped to find parking there.  To my consternation I found this dirt road was just a driveway to someone's house so I had to back down the curvy, narrow driveway into the church parking lot.  Backing down a narrow and curvy road is challenging.  I had to move forward and reposition the car several times before backing down again and again and again and again and again and again.

As I struggled to back down the driveway, I felt mounting anxiety.  I told myself that I would get through this and go to the Seder.

Then, as I looked back over my left shoulder while backing down the driveway, I saw two cars sitting on the busy road waiting to turn into the church parking lot.  They were waiting for me, obviously, either being polite or not wanting me to back into them as they entered the lot.  I also saw people parking in the school lot across the road and walking to the church.  More and more people were witnessing my stupidity in driving up and then backing down the driveway.

Looking back, most might not have known that I had made that stupid mistake of driving up the driveway; many might have thought I was actually the inhabitant of or a visitor to the house at the top of the driveway, but the sheer number of people witnessing the event left me feeling humiliated.

My encouragements to myself that all would be well and that I would attend the Seder transformed into narration to self that I did not have to attend the Seder and see any of the people who were witnessing my stupidity.

I felt relief when I finally managed to maneuver my car back down into the parking lot and angle it out onto the road.

I did not try to find parking by the school or anywhere else.  I just headed my car home.

I found myself crying as my hands gripped the steering the wheel, and I wondered why I had found going to a synagogue that also served as a church so traumatizing.

Of course it did not take much contemplation for me to know the answer.

Eleven years ago I was thrown out of a Catholic Church in a painful and humiliating incident that took place in front of hundreds of people.

I was baptized Catholic by a priest named Gus Krumm, who, eleven months after baptizing me and my children, was revealed by a newspaper article to have abused some number of teenaged boys.  He was promptly removed from the Church and most parishioners never saw him again.

The Church held forums and gave out a little bit of information in lawyerly language that allowed people to read into the story their own version of events.

"Fr. Krumm was accused of abuse.  The allegations were investigated and found not to be substantiated."

No information was given as to when and how and who.  But if you look hard enough on the internet, and I did, that information is available.

Fr. Gus Krumm was a dynamic and funny and giving priest, and I was in denial about what he had done, but the information I found on the internet changed my mind.

The newspaper story that precipitated Fr. Krumm's removal was about a survivor who had come forward several times before including the time when Fr. Gus had first abused him.  But he had never before been believed. Fr. Krumm remained in ministry for a full twenty years after first being accused of abuse.  The priest Gus Krumm's survivors had come forward to way back when had become the head of a religious order in the intervening years.  In other words, the leader of the religious order had known about the abuse, protected Fr. Krumm for at least twenty years, and was lying about it to the people of the Church.

It took me about 17 months to assemble all the pieces of the story and come to terms with them.  My first thought was that the local church leaders couldn't possibly know that their religious leader knew about and covered up Fr. Krumm's abuses.  I believed in them and that they would do something if they learned the truth.  So I told them.

I found myself stonewalled and lied to.  I don't know what they knew, but they certainly didn't want me telling other people about what I knew.  Telling other people what I knew was easy.  I collected various press releases and newspaper articles.  The guilty had indicted themselves as they gave out pieces of the story to different newspapers.  All I had to do was underline their incriminating statements in different articles.

Then there were the articles about the victim who kept coming forward and forward and forward until Gus Krumm was finally removed from ministry.  I found his story credible, and I was impressed by how wounded he was by the lack of support he received as well as the repeated denial of his story.  He was so chronically depressed that he was unable to work a regular job.

How could the Church be so callous to someone so deeply wounded by the Church?

I found out just how callous and cruel some people in the Catholic Church can be.  Church leadership did not take kindly to me handing out incriminating news articles to other parishioners.

That Sunday I learned just what the Church would do to silence me, I sat with my two children in the last pew of the church.  My son has Asperger's Syndrome and has issues with noises and crowds so in our early years of being Catholic we always sat in the last pew of the church.  

That Sunday before Mass I sat in that last pew praying to be able to forgive the married, female church employee who stonewalled me when I tried to share with her my newspaper articles.  That same married, female church employee came to my pew and started taunting me.  I told her to go away, but she kept on taunting me.  I put my arms between my face and hers, but she kept taunting me.

Finally, I burst out in anger and started shouting.

I shouted about how the Church had known about Fr. Krumm's abuses and covered them up for twenty years.

I actually thought the people in the pews would care.  

That married female employee retreated into the vestibule, and I followed her, shouting.  I was in full fight or flight reaction, adrenaline pumping.  My anger overwhelmed me, and I left my children and purse in the pew.  A parishioner gathered them up and ushered them to the door of the church.  I saw a woman take out a cell phone.  I knew she was calling 911, and I attempted to leave the scene.

As I reached the threshold of the church, someone put me in a bear hug and dragged me back into the church.  I saw a parishioner who was a lawyer and who was close to church leadership standing nearby, watching.  I knew that he could offer a witness statement against me.  Who better to write a witness statement than a lawyer?

Finally, a police car pulled into the church parking lot.

I heard the lawyer say, "The police are here."

The person who had immobilized me in a bear hug released me.

Then I started pleading with the man who was holding my children to release them and let us go.

He said I was too emotionally distraught for him to give me my kids.  So I made my voice as calm as possible and repeated my request.

He stated once again that I was too emotionally distraught for him to release my children to me.

But magically, just as the policeman walked up to me, he released my children.

The policeman told me that I was trespassing and that I would be arrested if I ever came back to that Church.  Later I found out that he was the officer that Church employees always called when they wanted homeless people removed from Church premises.

As bad as that incident was, it might not be so bad if that was all the Church did to me.

The Pastor of the Church and two, TWO married, female employees of the Church called my husband at work four times the next day and asked to meet with him.

The problem was my marriage was already in trouble.  My husband frequently shouted at me, and I sometimes shouted back at him.  The pastor of the Church knew this because I had told him about the struggles in my marriage.

That married female employee also knew because she called my friends the previous week and asked them what they knew about me.  She asked if they should tell my husband about my activities in the Catholic Church.

My friend said, "I wouldn't do that if I was you."

Well, the married female church staff member did not take my friend's advice.

My husband yelled at me for 8 hours one night after the Church employees called him.  I never got over being scared.  I couldn't stay married to a man who frightened me one hundred percent of the time.

I don't know why that married, female Church employee did not listen to my friend.  But I did find out just how sacred the Catholic Church considers marriage.

What I do know is that married priests and female priests will not save the Catholic Church because married people and female people have been just as involved in covering up and lying about abuse as celibate male priests.

Fortunately I had enough brave friends who knew the truth.  They advocated for me before the Pastoral Council, and a very brave priest, Fr. Armando, apologized to me and invited me back into the Church a year after I was thrown out of the Church.

I feel  frustrated when I hear the Catholic Church condemned as a cult.  There are good priests such as Fr. Armando and good parishioners, just not enough who make clergy abuse a priority to really change things.

After being thrown out of that one Catholic Church, I attended another church where the local Voice of the Faithful (VOTF) chapter met until Fr. Armando invited me back to my former Catholic Church.  The people in the Voice of the Faithful Catholic Church were kind to me, but they were Catholics, not evangelicals bent on converting everyone possible.  People didn't greet me warmly as I entered the church, but after Mass, when I stood there crying, people came up to me to ask me if they could help.

At that time I was in the midst of a divorce, and I did not want my ex-husband to use my yelling in church about clergy abuse against me, so I always said, "No."

I was alone in my fight with the Catholic Church over clergy abuse.  Church employees had succeeded in isolating me by going to my husband.

Despite my persecution by Church employees, I remained in the Catholic Church for another ten years.  I finally stopped attending Mass about a year ago.

When I read the blog by that other clergy abuse advocate about the two dozen people from my Church who had gone to him for support, I connected the dots of why so few people had come to my support group for survivors in my Church.

I and my friends in the Church had asked Fr. Armando to place announcements in the bulletin about our support group, Fr. Gus Krumm, and about various resources for clergy abuse survivors, including the name and contact information for this other clergy abuse advocate.  

Over the years a few people who saw the announcements in the Church bulletin came to my group, but most had gone to the other clergy abuse advocate.

I knew when I read his blog that if anyone if the church ever asked who to go to, they must have all been directed to  him and maybe even told not to come to me.  Or maybe people didn't come to me because church personnel had told a lot of people that I was mentally unstable after I was provoked into shouting about clergy abuse just before Mass.  That damage to my reputation was never undone.

I have read so many accounts about survivors of abuse who were rendered unbelievable by church personnel with accusations of mental instability.

But, of course, abuse makes one mentally unstable and coverup of abuse only makes that mental instability much worse.  We become isolated with no one listening compassionately to our story.  

The voice of one crying in the wilderness is how I used to put it.

But the person crying in the wilderness is making a path for the Lord to enter this world.

But my path meant I felt anxiety whenever I entered a church.

Many, maybe most clergy abuse survivors feel the same way.

I know church personnel read this blog.  Please learn from it.  How can you make clergy abuse survivors feel safe entering a Church?  The Catholic Church is not very good at this.

I have read the stories of some clergy abuse survivors and heard the stories of others who first sought support in the Church only to be told to sign some papers promising to not sue or they were advised to forgive, forget, and move on because that is what Jesus did.

In the minds of clergy abuse survivors that advice on forgiving and forgetting is associated with the lack of justice, the lack of truth, the lack of atonement by the Church for clergy abuse, and the lack of compassion from the Church.

To survivors it seems as though the Church seeks cheap grace when it advises survivors to forgive.

I have struggled to forgive the Church myself.

Finally, after Fr. Armando published my announcements for our group of Catholics trained to listen to survivors with compassion in the parish bulletin week after week for over a year, after Fr. Armando supported me and believed me and believed in me, I finally felt comfortable in a Catholic Church again.

But when I read the blog written by that other clergy abuse advocate who works closely with people hired by the Church, the puzzle of why so few people had come forward in my Church despite so much effort on my part was solved.

They had come forward.  What I did worked.

But it was too big of a betrayal for me to remain Catholic.

I had done much good work in the Church.  I helped more than two dozen survivors come forward and seek help, but I was never going to receive that acknowledgment in the Church from most Church personnel or from most people closely connected to the Church.

I read that blog about a year ago and have not been inside of a Catholic Church since then.  Well, I admit, I did take a divorced friend for her first Christmas after divorce to Christmas Eve services at her request.

I have not fully closed the door on the Catholic Church.  I might go back.  I might church shop.

Right now my children are teens and have volunteer jobs and school and extra curricular involvements and drivers' licenses to obtain and college and scholarship applications to complete.

They need my time and my support, so I give it.

Church can wait.

And I've wondered about my faith.

Truthfully, although I believe in God, I am a universalist.  There have been many inspiring people in the history of the Catholic Church such as St. Francis.

But I find much which is of God in Buddhism and Hinduism, Judaism, and Islam.

I have always been attracted to social justice, and the Jewish community where I had hoped to attend Passover Seder, is very involved in social justice of the most loving and gentle sort.

Yehudah, the man who invited me to the Passover Seder, is the Executive Director for The Compassionate Listening Project chapter in Oregon.  I learned the skill of Compassionate Listening from The Compassionate Listening Project.  I used that skill to bring a couple dozen clergy abuse survivors together with other Catholics for mutual understanding and healing.  When a group of people listen to you and express compassion for you with a deep level of understanding about what you are feeling and why, it is very uplifting for the person being listened to and, I learned, for the listeners also.

Being listened to compassionately happened only individually for me in the Catholic Church.  I would not stop praising and thanking those individuals who did so -- Fr. Armando, Mary Lou B., Mary Lou H., the incomparable former Sister of St. Mary of Beaverton -- Fran Smith, Helen Q., Jim B., VOTF members, Fr. Ben, Fr. Larry, Fr. John who Fr. Ben says is on the path to be a bishop, and Sr. Kathleen and others too.  But the larger Catholic Church did not listen with compassion to me, and does not listen with compassion to most survivors of clergy abuse.

However, I believe there are many good Catholics who would listen to survivors if given permission and encouragement from Church leadership to do so.  These good Catholics need training to listen and to not give advice on forgiving to survivors.  Many survivors will attest to how many times they have been told to forgive, forget, and move on.

The word forgive, which is offered as a piece of wisdom, becomes triggering.  "Radical acceptance" or "letting go of anger" are better ways express the concept because those guilty of abuse and coverup rarely acknowledge their wrongdoing.  Advice to to survivors to forgive feels like being asked to let those guilty of abuse and coverup off the hook for their bad acts.

In Judaism it is believed that God does not forgive you until the person you have wronged forgives you.  You are supposed to atone for your wrongs to the people you hurt.  The one holiday more important than Passover in Judaism is Yom Kippur -- the Day of Atonement.

So I hope to go back to the synagogue some time to learn more about the faith that inspired my Christian faith and to be surrounded by people who actively practice the art of listening to the wounded with compassion.

Unfortunately I missed the holiday celebration to which strangers are actively welcomed because I was afraid to enter a Church.

© 2015 Virginia Pickles Jones.  Contact Virginia at compassion500@gmail.com.


PS.  I have documentation of the day I was thrown out of a Catholic Church while shouting about how Church leadership had known about and covered up the abuse perpetrated by Gus Krumm including police records and a recording of the 911 call made by another parishioner.  My voice is audible in the background in that recording.  I also have letters from witnesses who are all still alive.  Although Church leaders claimed not to know what I was upset about, other people knew very well why I was angry.