Church in
Crisis
Monks suffer with abusers in the family
Last in a two-part series
By PATRICIA LEFEVERE
Collegeville, Minn.
The shame, anger and soul-searching that have gripped much of the
U.S. Catholic church in the wake of an avalanche of sex abuse scandals this
year have been felt acutely by the band of Benedictines who comprise the
monastic community at St. John’s Abbey here.
From the shocking revelation in mid-April that one of the
abbey’s former abbots had abused two monks, to more recent disclosures
against two former teachers in St. John’s Prep School, accused of sexual
misconduct with students in the 1980s, the abbey’s bad news has been
spread across Minnesota’s media like dirty laundry hung in the picture
window.
Adding to public confusion and criticism is the fact that monks
accused of abuse remain in the abbey. Many in the outside world cannot fathom
how the other monks can continue to live side by side with offenders. Survivors
especially do not understand why the order does not chuck the abusers out.
“Maybe some day they will understand,” Abbot John Klassen told
NCR. When Benedictine monks are professed, we take them “for better
or for worse,” he said.
“We are a family.”
That may be the reason the monks are allowed to stay, but it
doesn’t make life inside the abbey any easier. The abbey scandals
illustrate the tension that many Catholics feel when they try to weigh the
bishops’ “one strike and you’re out” policy alongside the
church’s call for forgiveness of the sinner and for efforts to reconcile
the hurting community. At St. John’s, abusive monks have been removed from
all parish and academic duties and restricted in their social contacts, their
travel and their use of any university or prep school facility where they could
have unsupervised contact with students.
Never in the history of the abbey have “we experienced a more
acute awareness of the frailty of human nature and of the need for repentance,
forgiveness, atonement and renewal,” Klassen said.
Over the last seven months all of the abbey’s 190 plus men
have suffered because of past deeds of 13 or so monks, but most have also
suffered compassionately alongside them. A few monks with whom NCR met
in September spoke of the “low-grade depression” that gripped their
household last spring, and is still around. They credited a renewed and deeper
prayer life for saving them in their most despondent days. Some are looking to
the future with less fear and more hope.
‘Painful, devastating’
“As painful, embarrassing and devastating as this has been,
it’s also making us connect much more deeply,” said Br. Paul-Vincent
Niebauer, associate dean of students and drama coach at St. John’s Prep
School. “It’s never going to not be there. It will come up with every
prospective novice, at the dinner table, in chapter and with your biological
family,” said the monk who spent 13 years as a circus ringmaster before
coming under the Benedictine tent.
But Niebauer believes Klassen has acted forthrightly.
“He’s not deflecting it or ignoring it.” The abbot has handled
the situation so well that Niebauer fears he may be transferred to another
abbey or to Rome. In August the Conference of Major Superiors of Men elected
Klassen as one of its three new board members. Klassen, 53, is beginning his
third year as abbot; his four predecessors served an average of 12 years
each.
Besides sparking anger and anxiety, the scandals call into
question the future of St. John’s, which includes a university, a
preparatory school, a publishing house and an ecumenical institute, each of
which appears in good health.
Nevertheless, “St. John’s is at risk,” Fr. Donald
Cozzens said earlier this year after ending 10 months as a visiting scholar at
the Ecumenical and Cultural Institute. Its monks -- like priests across the
nation and abroad -- are experiencing “the dark night of the spirit,”
said the noted author, psychologist and visiting professor at John Carroll
University in Cleveland.
Cozzens is right. St. John’s risks a drop in enrollment,
alumni loyalty and fundraising capability just as it is launching a $7 million
drive to build a 60-bed guesthouse for visitors and retreatants. The guesthouse
has been on the abbey’s wish list since 1979.
Last spring the admissions departments of the university and high
school breathed easier when each met its anticipated goals. St. John’s
University netted 1,862 students compared with 1,860 in 2001 and its sister
school, the College of St. Benedict in nearby St. [Joseph],
Minn., enrolled more than 2,000. “I think long term we’ll be fine,
but we’d be foolish not to consider this may impact on the future,”
said Mary Milbert, dean of admissions for both colleges.
Even if the three schools can draw the same numbers in the coming
academic year, attracting new monks to teach in them remains crucial if St.
John’s is to remain a center of Benedictine spirituality and scholarship
as it has for 14 decades. Currently one novice and five junior monks have
joined the abbey.
Fr. Columba Stewart, director of formation, has received inquiries
from quite a few prospective candidates -- “several of them quite
serious,” he said. He regretted that two novices had left, one on the eve
of his profession. The scandals “played a role,” he said.
Newcomers know it
The community has expressed its gratitude to the newcomers.
“They know everything there is to know about us, yet choose to join us.
Priesthood is a heroic choice now,” Stewart said.
The scandals have also forced the monks to re-examine their
vocations. This year’s renewal of vows was “much more
significant” Stewart held, than in the past. A new commitment to the basis
of monastic life, a “call to re-founding” is emerging, he said.
On a practical side, monks have considered the graying of their
community, the financial and societal costs of the lawsuits that the abbey
recently settled and the shortage of men to fill their shoes once they’ve
passed on. For years teaching monks have earned the same salary lay instructors
receive in the colleges. The difference is that monks return 55 percent of
their pay to the university. With fewer drawing salaries, monks may have to
decide to give back less to the university, retaining more for their own care,
Stewart said.
The scandals have “heightened these concerns and put our
future development under a shadow,” said Br. Bradley Jenniges, assistant
treasurer in the business office.
Jenniges, who cuts checks each month for the therapy costs of
those abused by abbey monks as well as for ongoing therapy for the monks
themselves, said that falling market prices have had a greater effect on St.
John’s holdings than have payouts to victims. In recent weeks the
university has been paying for ads in major Minnesota dailies to bolster its
image.
A few months ago Jenniges wondered “whether this was the
right place to be. I felt a lot of calling into question of a celibate vocation
in general,” he said. But his commitment to the community “and what
it says about trusting in Christ who has promised to be with us” is solid.
“It may be that additional changes in our lifestyle will be
forthcoming,” he said, “but I’m willing to anchor into that
process if my fellow monks are. I’m willing to stay in this community.
I’m hoping others feel the same.”
A relative newcomer to St. John’s, Fr. William Schipper, said
he senses that the atmosphere in the monastery has changed. “I’m not
oblivious to it, but I don’t feel it dragging me down,” said the monk
who is a faculty resident in a freshman dormitory.
Schipper, who teaches a course on male spirituality and sexuality
said that students have been very supportive of the monks. “They
don’t think we’re lurking around corners waiting to play with
someone’s genitals.”
A lot of the hurt that Schipper finds inside the house happens
because sexual abuse actually occurred and because “it’s being gone
over again and again. We can’t have a future because of these [news]
stories. It’s like an endless sentence for the community and the
perpetrators.”
‘These men are
suffering’
Very few monks shun those on restriction, said Fr. William
Skudlarek, spokesman for the abbey and liaison with the monks on restriction --
none of whom has chosen to talk to the press. Certain members feel
uncomfortable with the abuser monks because “these men are suffering a lot
and some people have a difficult time with suffering,” Skudlarek said.
“I believe there’s forgiveness which still needs to take place in the
community.”
Skudlarek told of two monks who tried to send letters of apology
to their victims. In one case the victim refused the gesture, in the other the
abbey’s lawyers ruled against it.
Last month Fr. Fran Hoefgen issued a public letter of apology to
his victim.
Although on restriction, Hoefgen, 52, tends the Grotto Garden that
overlooks Lake Sagatagan on St. John’s 2,500-acre property. An ace
photographer and lover of nature, Hoefgen’s work features prominently in
the current issue of The Abbey Banner. Finian McDonald, 73, another monk
on restriction, is also a gardener whose hobby gives him “great pleasure
both to watch it grow, taking care of it and to know that other people enjoy
its changing beauty.”
Schipper, who came from St. Meinrad’s Abbey in Indiana four
years ago, said he has seen a lot of fraternal support for the monks on
restriction. “The community has shown itself to be loving in the face of
something that has been horrible. Most of these monks have had 10 to 15 years
to process this stuff.
“I would be surprised if most of them didn’t have a
spiritual adviser. Some are very healthy as a result of all the therapy,
guidance and their willingness to be different,” Schipper said. But
it’s difficult for victims to accept this, he noted.
At the most recent renewal of vows ceremony -- held since the
scandal broke, each monk was asked: “What do you seek?” Niebauer
recalled well his feelings and his answer: “I seek the mercy of Christ and
fellowship in this community.”
The monk said he realized anew that “my commitment is to this
place, to these bricks and these men. It’s our community and we have to
own it if we want to wear this,” he said, tugging on the apron-like front
of his habit. “And today I do want to wear it.”
Patricia Lefevere is a special report writer for NCR.
National Catholic Reporter, December 27, 2002
[corrected 01/17/2003]
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