times<\/a> myself\u2013 not anywhere near as severely as my commentator\u2019s son, thank God, but I\u2019ve been in similar places, and it definitely changed me in ways I can\u2019t just shake off. I\u2019ve been told I should, by a lot of people. There\u2019s a persistent commentator whose sock puppet\u00a0accounts I\u2019ve had to block three times, who\u2019s adamant that I ought to get over it.<\/p>\n\u201cYou act as if everyone goes to church specifically to hurt you,\u201d he\u2019s said, and \u201cYou know, Mary, a lot of us have bad experiences in our childhoods and get over them.\u201d He\u2019s informed me that I\u2019m a \u201ctextbook narcissist,\u201d \u201cmendacious\u201d and\u00a0\u201cbitching on the internet\u201d as well, for speaking openly about abuse by authorities in Catholic circles at places which are famous for their piety. And I know that I ought to be able to overlook him and move on. Then again,\u00a0this particular troll\u00a0goes to my church and I have to see him in person, so it\u2019s difficult.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s\u00a0near impossible.<\/p>\n
It makes me\u00a0scared\u00a0to go to church at all, frankly.<\/p>\n
As Christians, we\u2019re taught to view our souls as the deepest and most valuable parts of ourselves. \u201cWhat does it profit a man to gain the whole world, yet lose his soul<\/em>?\u201d Christ asks, and I believe Him. I believe that the soul is the most important part of me. It would be better to surrender everything I had including my bodily life, than to sever my soul\u2019s union with her creator. That kind of talk is romanticized sometimes, and I don\u2019t think it should be. It isn\u2019t pretty. It\u2019s terrible. God doesn\u2019t want people to lose everything including their bodily lives; He wants His sons and daughters to be fully alive, happy and whole. His commands were meant to make us whole. It is a tragedy and a horror when someone is tortured into choosing between their soul and the rest of themselves. But if it comes down to the wire, my soul is my priority.<\/p>\nAnd that\u2019s why spiritual abuse is so horrendous and so difficult to overcome. Spiritual abusers prey on your soul. They threaten to cut your soul off from God. They claim that if their victims violate their commands\u2013 if they don\u2019t shut up, accept the abuse and \u201cGet over it\u201d\u2013 then their victims will lose their souls, the most valuable parts of themselves.<\/p>\n
God is love. God is mercy. God desires that all of His children be gathered together in peace, joy and wholeness, in zealous, scandalous love. But I don\u2019t see God in His fullness every day. I see Father so-and-so, Brother such-and-such, Sister Whomever, Mrs. X the catechism teacher and Mr. Y the cantor. I see the visiting bishop and the priest from out of town. I see the lady who remembers to bring gluten-free snacks to the doughnut social and the lady who glares at me from the other pew. I see the traditionalist Latin priest in his\u00a0pom-pom hat,\u00a0the more modern cheery priests\u00a0in their Roman collars. I see scholars and fools, saints and sinners. I see people who have been charitable to me in a hundred ways, people who didn\u2019t mean any harm, and also people who relish doing harm and call it righteousness.\u00a0 I see people. These are the people who bear the image and likeness of God, and some of them have abused, and claimed they did it in the name of God.<\/p>\n
It can get to the point where a person associates all of these people with the abusers, because of their trauma and suffering. That soul cringes away from Christians the way a shell-shocked soldier cringes from a backfiring car. It\u2019s natural. God sees our struggle and only He can truly judge.<\/p>\n
And no, we can\u2019t just get over it.<\/p>\n
We need mercy, gentleness and understanding, not attacks.<\/p>\n
(image via Pixabay)\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Last month, I posted a guest post by a dear friend of mine, about her spiritual abuse at an Orthodox monastery associated with a group \u00a0known as the Ephraimites. The post got moderate attention at first, but then a month later it was discovered by a supporter of the Ephraimites, and the combox exploded.\u00a0He verbally […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2694,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[865,728,626,501,485,628,1642,1641,1869,1652,2146,744,330,2940,481,14,2039,1746],"tags":[61,159,215,1750,4420,64,18,279,1352,3024,62,257],"class_list":["post-3685","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-abuse","category-christ","category-christian-idenitity","category-compassion","category-conscience","category-conversion","category-eastern-catholicism","category-eastern-christianity","category-empathy","category-horror","category-human-dignity","category-jesus","category-mercy","category-monasticism","category-personal-beliefs","category-prayer","category-public-face-of-catholicism","category-scandal","tag-abuse","tag-catholicism","tag-charity","tag-greek-orthodox","tag-harm","tag-jesus","tag-love","tag-mercy","tag-orthodox","tag-soul","tag-spiritual-abuse","tag-trauma"],"yoast_head":"\n
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