Cover
story Violence at home
By KATHRYN CASA
Special to the National Catholic Reporter Sacramento,
Calif.
After I obtained a restraining order, then a divorce and my
ex-husband didnt pay his child support, I went to the priest, who said,
Let us pray. I then found out that the priest and my ex had become
good buddies and golf partners. My ex is now a bigwig in the church and very
popular with the Christian ladies. Meanwhile, he calls to threaten me, ripped
the front door off my house at Christmas and pays no support whatsoever, hiding
all his income. Needless to say, I do not attend Mass anymore ... --
Posted in an Internet chat room on domestic violence
When Sheila Henriquez found herself
in an abusive relationship, she didnt even consider asking her priest for
help. She was, after all, in a situation that mirrored her parents
marriage, and when her mother had talked to her priest decades earlier, she was
told to learn to be a better woman, Henriquez recalled.
Henriquez, who lives in San Jose, Calif., said that as a child she
began to resent her mother. I looked at it in a distorted view and never
held my father accountable, but blamed my mother for not being strong enough,
as if in some way she was responsible. Then as a young adult
I chose men
exactly like my dad.
When trouble surfaced early in her own relationships, it
didnt occur to Henriquez to turn to the church for help. The
churchs interests have been geared more toward keeping the family
together instead of making sure the family was in a safe place, she
said.
Not all victims are as skeptical as Henriquez -- at least not at
first. When social services agencies in Santa Clara County, Calif., asked
domestic violence victims where they first turned for help, their answer,
overwhelmingly, was to their church. But when the victims were asked where
support was most lacking, their answer was the same: the church.
That was in 1996, when public awareness of domestic violence was
growing, strong laws finally were being enacted and law enforcers and courts
were joining the fight. The Santa Clara County survey and others like it around
the country prompted secular agencies to extend an unprecedented hand to
churches, mosques and synagogues to join the fight.
The new frontline in the fight against domestic violence is
the faith community, said Henriquez, a legal secretary who eventually
left her abusive relationship as well as the Catholic church. Today she devotes
most of her spare time to fighting domestic violence, which is estimated to
claim the lives of an average of four women a day in the United States
alone.
The church is where people go to ask forgiveness for their
sins and find the strength to make the decisions they have to make,
Henriquez said. If the church is not going to back them up when
theyre in trouble, if the churchs response is going to be,
Lets pray about it because you need to be stronger, then we
dont stand a chance of putting these laws into place. So getting the
churches involved in this effort is a huge piece of the puzzle.
There are loads of victims in there who need to hear this
and begin that communication to break down those walls of silence, because
ignorance is not bliss and silence is not golden.
As many as 3.9 million women are physically abused by their
husbands or live-in partners each year, according to U.S. Justice Department
estimates.
One 1998 survey determined that nearly one-third of the women in
this country reported being physically or sexually abused by a husband or
boyfriend. Thirty percent of Americans say they know a woman who has been
physically abused. Not all victims are women, but of the approximately 1,800
murders attributed to intimate partners in 1996, three out of four victims were
female.
Whats more, a national survey of more than 2,000 U.S.
families found that about half of the men who frequently assaulted their wives
also frequently abused their children.
Statistics like those make it likely that domestic violence
touches every American church in some way. Yet domestic violence counselors
find some Catholics misread the churchs intolerance of divorce as a
mandate to remain in an abusive home.
Holding on to the faith
A lot of victims hold onto their faith to be able to live
another day, and in doing so they turn to the Bible, said Luz Elia Meraz,
formerly of WEAVE, Women Escaping a Violent Environment, in Sacramento, Calif.
They think, Im carrying my cross or I got
pregnant when I was 16 so I deserve this, said Meraz, herself a
Catholic.
There is a conflict, acknowledges Jayne Ann Kita,
executive director of the Pastoral Project on Domestic Violence, a
collaborative of Catholic Charities, Catholic Health Initiative and the Omaha
archdiocese. It can be very confusing for many [victims] because they
feel like theyve made the vows and its their job to make this
relationship work.
But the safety of women and children takes top priority, Kita
emphasizes. No one wants them to be injured, hurt or killed. Although the
Catholic church does take very seriously the family unit, when the batterer
batters he has broken the covenant, so the victim is not breaking the covenant
by leaving to protect herself. No one is promoting divorce, but we are
promoting whatever needs to happen to make the victim safe.
Interviews with activists, parishioners, priests and nuns around
the country point to a growing willingness among Catholics to get involved.
That doesnt hold true in every Catholic church in every part of America,
but those close to the issue say many Catholic churches are working on the
issue alongside secular organizations. For some of the most traditional
religious organizations, its taken a leap of faith to set aside long-held
stereotypes of secular activists as, as one activist put it, a bunch of
liberal, bra-burning feminists trying to seduce young women and turn them into
lesbians.
Religious orders like the Sister of Mercy and the Sisters of
Social Service have long and often quietly held important roles in supporting
women and children victims of abuse. From urban Houston to rural Michigan to
the barrios of Los Angeles, sisters have long been involved in the gruesome,
often frustrating work of trying to extricate frightened, debilitated women and
children from the grip of their batterers and help them build new lives.
Catholic hospitals, too, have taken a leading role. You cant go to
the bathroom at a Mercy hospital without seeing a message about domestic
violence, commented one activist.
But more and more, rank and file Catholics are hearing about
domestic violence in the context of a Mass or homily, through outside speakers
invited into the church, in blurbs in their Sunday bulletins, even in
pre-marital and baptismal counseling. Pastors, lay leaders and parishioners,
many of them women, are keeping shelter phone numbers in their pockets and by
the phone, learning to reach out to someone they suspect is being abused, and
even conducting them to safe houses. One priest tells of twice ferrying
endangered women and children to a safe-house contact in the parking lot of a
supermarket in the middle of the night, both times by covering them with
blankets in the back seat of his car to hide them from enraged abusers.
A bishop speaks
Bishop James A. Griffin of Columbus, Ohio, in January told a forum
on domestic violence attended by 250 leaders from across Ohio that people of
faith are called to be advocates for the needs of domestic violence
survivors. He said he has asked his pastors to educate their
congregations about the issue.
The religious community must work to eliminate structural
barriers and build institutional supports that empower women who are victims
and survivors of family violence to make choices that provide safety for
themselves and their children, the bishop said.
The McAuley Institute, a branch of the Sisters of Mercy with
shared headquarters in Maryland, works with faith-based communities to develop
low-income housing. Housing is a key to empowering and organizing women, many
of whom are driven to homelessness as a result of domestic violence.
Rebecca Mathis is McAuleys regional program associate in the
greater Houston area, where an estimated 900 women and children are turned away
from domestic violence shelters each night after the 300 available beds are
filled. Before joining McAuley, Mathis helped establish a program for victims
of domestic violence through Northwest Assistance Ministries, an umbrella
social service agency with the support and leadership of more than 40 local
churches
We would hear from women after theyd been to the
elders of their church repeatedly for help and had been told Were
going to pray for you so you will be able to cope and be a better wife and
mother, Mathis said.
That was usually the first round of help. Eventually, if she
continued to go back and particularly if there was any threat of government or
social services or police intervention, they would step up their
response, Mathis said, because outside intervention was seen as eroding
the family. If she goes outside the family and tells family secrets then
she has betrayed the trust of the family unit.
Mathis worked with Houston area churches for nine years and said
Catholics were among the programs strongest supporters, not only
financially but also by following up with offers of support after a woman had
been referred to the agency.
Further west, in the sprawling Sacramento diocese that spans 26
Northern California counties, family life director John Rieschick, a former
Maryknoll missionary in Africa, hauls out a massive three-ring binder that his
department distributes to all parishes and missions in the diocese. The hefty
training and resource manual includes bilingual fliers that parishes can
photocopy, and an extensive referral directory -- including outside agencies
and professionals where a victim can go for help.
A priest needs not only good counseling skills, Rieschick
maintains, but also a good Rolodex.
Rieschick says hes encouraged by the response to his
outreach. Activists and abuse victims throughout the country say the old
stories still persist -- when one San Francisco Bay Area victim turned to her
minister for help, she was advised to buy a new cookbook -- but such stories
are becoming less common.
In the Sacramento diocese, only one priest out of more than 100
has told Rieschick we dont have that problem here.
Rieschicks work garners praise from WEAVE, where he sits on
a multi-faith advisory panel. Meraz, who worked as WEAVEs community
outreach program assistant, said Rieschicks educational efforts in his
sprawling diocese help priests become more susceptible to this
information. Consequently, she said, victims are starting to understand,
God wants his children to be safe. We all have value.
Diane Falash of rural Weiser, Idaho, recalls a 1995 National
Council of Catholic Women conference in San Francisco that featured the
Clothesline Project, a series of shirts made by and for victims of domestic
violence. After the project was presented, the audience was invited to
participate. The women poured in there to make shirts. So to say we
dont have a problem is hiding your head in the sand.
Falash said that experience just overwhelmed me, the
tremendous horribleness of this thing. When she returned home she got
involved in her communitys domestic violence resources, but Falash also
wanted to see her church do something. I felt the clergy kind of shut
their eyes to the problem. Women in these situations would come in and it was
go home and pray about it instead of realizing the danger and lack
of safety.
Falash became even more active in her National Council of Catholic
Womens unit and later was named the groups national Community
Concerns chairman, overseeing a doll project to promote awareness of child
abuse.
In the five years since her focus shifted to domestic violence,
Falash believes the churchs response to the issue has improved, in part
because the whole country has moved forward. Congress last year reauthorized
the Violence Against Women Act.
Its been a cumulative effect: the prominence of the
domestic violence question, the actions of Congress and the Supreme Court,
states toughening up laws. Its been a whole combination that has helped
women finally get the legal rights they deserve, and I think the church is
following that, she said. It took a push by all of us to make the
church sit up and listen.
On the national level, the National Council of Catholic Women was
targeting domestic violence even before a U.S. bishops letter turned a
spotlight on the problem in 1992, according to the councils program
director, Sheila McCarron in Washington. Her organization continues to make
domestic violence a high priority, providing its members with resource material
and support to address the problem on a local level, she said.
U.S. bishops in 1992 issued what many consider a landmark pastoral
letter on domestic violence. When I Call for Help: Toward a Church
Response to Domestic Violence, exhorts Catholics to stop using biblical
text to support abusive behavior: Abused women say, I cant
leave this relationship. The Bible says it would be wrong. Abusive men
say, The Bible says my wife should be submissive to me. They take
the biblical text and distort it to support their right to batter.
The letter continues, Even where the Bible uses traditional
language to support the social order common in the day, the image presented is
never one that condones the use of abuse to control another person. In
Ephesians 5:21-23, for instance, which discusses relationships within the
family, the general principle laid down is one of mutual submission between
husband and wife. That passage holds out the image to husbands that they are to
love their wives as they love their own body, as Christ loves the church. Can
you imagine Jesus battering his church?
The letter urges pastors to make their parishes places where both
abuser and batterer can seek help, and to develop links with outside agencies
and community resources. Clergy are advised to learn as much as they can about
domestic violence and address the issue in homilies, to ask direct questions if
abuse is suspected and to hold the abuser, not the victim, accountable.
But the document also concludes: Ultimately, abused women
must make their own decisions about staying or leaving. It is important to be
honest with women about the risks involved. Remember: Women are at a most
dangerous point when they attempt to leave their abusers. Research indicates
that women who leave their batterers are at a 75 percent greater risk of being
killed by the batterer than those who stay.
Churchs message still mixed
Marie Giblin, assistant professor of Christian ethics and theology
at Xavier University in Cincinnati, believes the churchs message is still
mixed. Multiple papal statements of the 20th century have attempted to
defend women and advance their cause and yet at the
same time express profound resistance to change in womens role and place
in society, Giblin writes in the winter 1999 edition of Listening:
Journal of Religion and Culture.
Although Rome opposes violence against women, it has been vague on
the issue of domestic violence, she notes in the article. The way the
issue is addressed emphasizes violence in war conditions and in sexual
exploitation of women for profit (whether in prostitution or pornography).
There is no room for the harsh reality of domestic violence in their idealized
view of marriage and family.
Giblin points out that the Vatican made no reference to domestic
violence in three major documents that address marriage: John Paul IIs
Letter to Families for the U.N. International Year of the Family in
1994; the Vatican Congregation for Catholic Educations Directives for
forming seminarians for ministry to marriage and family; and the Pontifical
Council for Familys guidelines for marriage preparation. Silence in
these documents means a missed opportunity for the church to take a pro-active
stance against domestic violence by educating not only couples, but those who
minister to them, she asserts.
In Giblins view, the U.S. bishops have been reluctant to
confront Rome or address the possibility that church teaching may
contribute to a climate that supports domestic violence.
Yet many others have interpreted the bishops letter as a
green light for the church not only to confront the issue of domestic violence,
but to do it shoulder to shoulder with other faith and secular
organizations.
As churches work more closely with community resources and vice
versa, a formidable stereotype is falling by the wayside, says David Lee,
recently the director of community education at the Support Network for
Battered Women in Mountain View, Calif.
Weve had to break down the barrier of faith
communities not trusting the domestic violence community -- that domestic
violence agencies are about breaking up families, Lee said. And the
faith communities have been seen as doctrinaire and not providing support.
By creating opportunities to work together we can make a
tremendous difference. They can provide the spiritual leadership that we
cannot, and we can provide knowledge and resources theyre not aware
of.
Lee, who now works for Stand Against Domestic Violence in Concord,
Calif., co-chaired the 1998 faith-focused Power to Change Conference in the San
Francisco Bay Area. It was attended by 280 people including lay leaders,
directors of social action and womens committees as well as clergy. Last
summer, Lee went back to the people and organizations that attended in an
effort to gauge tangible reaction to the event. We wanted to test the
effectiveness not by whether people enjoyed the day but whether people took
action.
He found out they did. It ranged from simply putting a
domestic violence bumper sticker in the church bulletin to as complicated as
organizing community-wide conferences, Bible studies, Day of the Dead exhibits,
poetry, developing protocols for how a congregation responds to domestic
violence.
The bottom line, Lee said, was that the conference did serve
as inspiration for clergy and faith communities to realize they can do
something.
A spiritual crisis
Lee has used the conference as a springboard to develop a Web site
(www.interfaithfamilyviolence.org) that includes perspectives from
Muslim, Christian, Jewish, Buddhist and Hindu faiths. It features sermons,
adult education curricula, prayers, interfaith dialogues, community organizing
ideas, art displays and education materials as well as links to a wealth of
other resources on the Internet. Lee calls the site a living document and
continues to build on it, welcoming input wherever he can find it.
Further north in Seattle, the goal of the nationally recognized
Center for the Prevention of Sexual and Domestic Violence
(www.cpsdv.org) is to serve as a bridge between religious and secular
communities in the education and prevention of domestic violence.
When a victim or a survivor or a family is affected by
domestic violence, we believe its also a spiritual crisis, says
Thelma Burgonio-Watson, the centers director for training and education,
so we try to enlighten everybody around the role of religion toward
healing, because religion can be a resource or it can be a block. Were
trying to maximize religion as a resource toward healing and
prevention.
She admits its not always easy to convince religious leaders
to come to training sessions. They give us many reasons: They have too
many things to do; domestic violence is not a priority. But slowly and surely
were getting them to come.
In an address last summer, the centers founder, Marie
Fortune, noted that a century ago wife abuse was common. Thirty years ago
there were no public services for victims. Twenty years ago there was no
accountability for offenders. Ten years ago it was still legal to rape your
wife in some states
All of this has changed due to a lot of hard
work.
In concluding, Fortune invoked a passage from Ecclesiastes. She
said, So Isaiah urges us: Do not remember the former things, or
consider the things of old. I am about to do a new thing: Now it springs forth.
Do you not perceive it?
National Catholic Reporter, June 29,
2001
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