“Hour of the Wolf”: Further Reflections on Staying Catholic in a Time of Crisis

Earlier this year I edited an anthology, Christ’s Body, Christ’s Wounds: Staying Catholic When You’ve Been Hurt in the Church. The essays and poetry in the anthology explored how people who have been deeply hurt by other Catholics—by racism, gossip, financial crime, or various forms of abuse—come to learn that Jesus is not their abuser. The authors offered glimpses of faith they were still reshaping, trust they were still recovering.

This has been a hard year to trust God in the Catholic Church. Jesus tells His apostles, “Behold, I am sending you like sheep in the midst of wolves” (Matt 10:16). But for many Catholics, the wolves have been our own shepherds. I returned to several contributors whose pieces for Christ’s Body touched on abuse or who had written about their experiences of abuse elsewhere, and asked them to reflect on how things had changed for them since the anthology came out—and since the Pennsylvania Grand Jury report, and the resignation of Cardinal Theodore McCarrick. Here are their responses.

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