Healing and Hope Session 3 Talk 1

TALK OUTLINE & PERSONAL REFLECTION/DISCUSSION QUESTIONS

Session 3, Talk 1: The Wounds in the Body of Christ

Paula Kaempffer, Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis

Talk Outline

I. We are all wounded.
A. We live in a wounded world. It affects all of us.
B. We act because of how we have been wounded.
1. Story of Homeless man who struggled to shower due to having been abused.
2. I cannot sit in judgment on another person for the way they look or the way they act. I cannot get inside of their heart. Only God can do that.

II. How have you been wounded?
A. We tend to hide our wounds
1. We can see wounding as total weakness, but hiding wounds does not work.
2. “The difficult thing is that vulnerability is the first thing I look for in you and the last thing I’m willing to show you. In you it’s courage and daring. In me, it’s weakness.”- Brené Brown
B. Hurt people hurt people.
C. Owning our wounds and loving ourselves through them is the bravest thing we will ever do.
D. The wound is the place where the light enters you. Shutting ourselves down closes us off to God and what He wants to do.
E. God wants to bring us into wholeness, exactly as he has created us to be.
F. It is painful to surface our wounds but naming them gives them less power over us.
G. Our very woundedness is why we need a God who loves as our God does.

III. Wounds from experience of Church
A. Examples of individual interactions
B. Sexual abuse by clergy scandal
1. Rocked our Church from the inside out.
2. Many parishioners appear tired of hearing of it; but victims are not going away. They are deeply fractured and wounded.
3. If victims could get over it, don’t you think they would?
4. Betrayed by the Hierarchy in the Cover-up.

IV. How to help Victim Survivors
A. Victims wanted to be believed and hear someone in the hierarchy say they were sorry.
B. Victims want to be listened to and believed.
C. Shared pain is no longer paralyzing but mobilizing, when understood as a way to freedom from that pain.

V. Secondary Victims
A. All of us, we are the Church, the Body of Christ, have been betrayed.
B. Many have left due to clergy who harmed.

VI. Virtual Support Groups
A. Started with COVID 19; on Mondays.
B. Victims are healing each other by sharing their stories and affirming one another.

VII. There are still victims coming forward
A. If they are wounded, we are wounded, because we are joined to one another… when one hurts, we all hurt.

VIII. What will it take for you to heal from being wounded by the Church?
A. We won’t heal from our wounds by doing nothing.
B. Pray for guidance and then act.
C. As you heal, so shall we all heal, because we are all part of the Body of Christ.

IX. Closing Quote
“Nobody escapes being wounded. We are all wounded people, Whether physically, emotionally, mentally or spiritually. The main question is not, “How can we hide our wounds?” so we don’t have to be embarrassed, but “How can we put our woundedness in the service of others?” When our wounds cease to be a source of shame, and become a sources of healing, we have become wounded healers.” – (The Wounded Healer, Henri Nouwen)