A Uniform Betrayed

For the better part of the last decade, we have watched a very public agony of revelations regarding a major religious organization. Seemingly month after month, more stories of the sexual abuse of countless numbers of children over the past 60 years by priests of the Catholic Church have come forward. Originally this sad phenomena appeared to be a purely American aberration, albeit it a national one. But subsequently this story has become international, from Ireland to across the European continent.


For a long time I had avoided commentary on this subject. The severity of these actions by so many priests across such a broad geography seemed to speak sufficiently for itself; I had nothing to add to the revelations themselves. But as the stories of abuse continue to unfold, there is perhaps a broader theme of betrayal that emerges.

There are three stories of fact that have emerged from this religious debacle. The first is that thousands of children were sexually abused by church leaders. As bad as that story is, the second correlated story is that the abuse was not acknowledged by church superiors in spite of the documented evidence and victim telling, and in fact was denied and/or covered up by church officials. Disciplinary action, such as it was, meant no acknowledgment of the truth of these occurrences, but simply moving offenders to another locale, often in a similar capacity for access to new children, thereby allowing for a third story of the abuse cycle being continued unchecked. The priorities of protecting the image and reputation of the church and its priests trumped the physical safety and mental / spiritual development of these vulnerable children. We hear these very personal stories come forth, watch and judge the inconsistent responses of church officials, and wonder what lessons we should draw from all of this.

The abuse of a child – whether physical, emotional or sexual – is inherently a horrible thing. Horrible because it is a corrupt expression of adult power, made possible by the very vulnerability of a child. A vulnerability arising from: the child’s physical inferiority of size and strength (thereby lacking the physical ability to resist), as well as; mental / emotional immaturity – a lack of sufficient life experience to provide a context for understanding what is happening to him/her. Yet something deep inside that child, from some unknown source of being, alerted the child that something wrong was happening, caused by someone who should be doing no wrong. And that is the true abuse: the violation of trust by someone the child assumed to be his/her perfect teacher and protector. Which then typically leads the child to a lifetime of mistrust, confusion, and a false seeking of (defensive) control over one’s life instead of the trust to live one’s life fully as it comes.

In these instances with the Catholic Church, the sin of inappropriate contact between priest and child was doubled by the sin of its repetition, and of the silence and cover-up that followed. For that which the child inherently knew to be wrong, no punishment of the perpetrator ensued; no quick end of the activity came; and in all likelihood the child continued to be told what “a good saintly person” his/her perpetrator was, leaving the child in total confusion and self-blame. When a supposed institutional greater good (protecting the church) is built on a foundation of wrong (abuse of children), there is no greater good to be had. There is only an insidious cancer created and lurking inside that institution, chipping away like an unseen (unspoken) termite at whatever institutional good was previously there. The Catholic Church (or any number of other current institutions) risks being undone as much by its failure to address its wrongs as by the original act of indecency itself.

In these instances of abuse, supposed priestly goodness was all for show, a sham covering a very human weakness. Adorned in the special robes and collar, reinforced by pronouncements of supposed dedication to living in God’s way, the uniform of the priest is designed to separate one from normal adult roles and accountability. The uniform is intended to make an immediate statement about one’s self, even if no facts have yet been presented for substantiation. It is the same for me when I put on my special robe for meditation, or the pendant that I wear around my neck that garners so much comment. I wear these to help reinforce in my mind that I am not in my everyday doing of things, that I am spending a few moments to be in a different place mentally than usual, experiencing a different experience. And these adornments do in fact help me make that transition.

So it is with all of the uniforms that we wear, which is why we wear them. A policeman’s uniform to show invested authority; the military uniform and the distinctive service branches and rank within each; the uniform of the janitor, the fast food worker, or the IT geek; the pin-stripe suit of the business man or woman; the overalls of the farm worker; the apron or the cocktail dress of the housewife; the torn jeans and colored spiked hair of the adolescent; and the American flag lapel pin that seeks to proclaim one’s patriotism. All of these uniforms are worn to make immediate visible statements - to ourselves and to the world - about who we believe we are, who we associate with, and who we aspire to be. Carried to the extreme, even “no clothes” serves as the uniform of the nudists.

The problem becomes when we, the insider, begin to believe that those uniforms in/of themselves make us who we want to be. The other problem is when we, the outsider looking in, accept another’s uniform as a confirmation of whom one is aspiring to be versus who one is. We forget that is all about who one truly is inside, not who he/she claims to be on the outside. In the case of religious leaders, the need for us to look beyond the trappings is even more crucial. Most all of the great spiritual masters warned us against accepting false gods (Moses) or false teachers (Mohammad, Jesus and Buddha) who claim spiritual authority but live untrue and unspiritual lives. The challenge to us is to look beyond the frock and to ignore the nice words. We need to remember that whether priest or nun or pope, lama or roshi or imam, reverend or pastor or bishop – the uniform (and title) means little. We must not be cynical, but we must be vigilant in our questioning and assessment of those who seek to lead us.

As Jesus and Buddha told us in their different ways, look not at the robes but at the deeds, and whether those deeds have led to positive or negative actions. Where love and acceptance flows forth downstream, that is where spiritual and godly leadership can truly be found. It is in the actions of love and benefit to others, not the adornments of uniform, that trust is truly deserved.