Teaching New Priests How to Minister to Abuse Survivors
A group of experienced seminary educators has proposed a set of benchmarks that they say will better prepare Catholic priests to walk with people who have experienced abuse in the Church.
These benchmarks are outlined in “Fully Equipped for Every Good Work,” a white paper coauthored by Fr. Thomas Berg, a priest of the Archdiocese of New York, and visiting professor at the McGrath Institute for Church Life at the University of Notre Dame who previously served thirteen years as a formation advisor at St. Joseph’s Seminary in Yonkers, New York. Berg is also a member of Awake’s Board of Directors and author of Hurting in the Church: A Way Forward for Wounded Catholics.
The complete list of 12 core competencies is available on the McGrath Institute website.
The benchmarks were created after two consultations, held at Notre Dame in 2021 and at St. Thomas University in 2022, to discuss the problem of sexual abuse in the Catholic Church. Attendees included victim-survivors of abuse and advocates as well as priests and bishops, psychologists, lawyers, and scholars. The people with lived experience of abuse expressed hope that priests and seminarians “could receive more specific training in trauma-informed pastoral care,” Berg explained in a recent interview.
Their request led Berg to collaborate with psychologist Tim Lock, director of psychological services at St. Joseph’s Seminary (Dunwoodie) of the Archdiocese of New York, and moral theologian Justin Anderson of Immaculate Conception Seminary School of Theology at Seton Hall University to begin to create a list of benchmarks or competencies for seminarians to demonstrate before ordination. The coauthors further honed this list with the help of people who have experienced abuse in the Church and others, including researcher David Pooler of Baylor University, who studies clergy-perpetrated abuse of adults.
Here's an abbreviated summary of the 12 benchmarks, along with insights from Berg on why each one matters in preparing seminarians to minister to people wounded in the Church. He and his coauthors believe seminarians must:
1. Understand legal definitions of sexual assault, consent, and more.
Seminarians must have a working knowledge of the legal definitions of sexual harassment, sexual assault, and consent as described in the laws of their state. Additionally, seminarians should understand when they are mandated to report sexual abuse to local law enforcement.
2. Exhibit knowledge of power dynamics.
Berg explained that seminarians must understand how power works, including the intersections of emotional, physical, sexual, and spiritual abuse. “In cases that involve clergy, sexual abuse is always spiritual abuse; the two go together,” Berg said.
Spiritual abuse can be particularly harmful, as is explained in the white paper: “When spiritual abuse is intertwined in the above-mentioned abuses, the impact on the victim’s spiritual life can be exponentially more destructive.”
Berg noted that the case of former cardinal Theodore McCarrick, who abused seminarians, helped men in seminary see that they might be vulnerable to harm themselves.
“But the harder piece is to get the guys to understand that as soon as they are appointed in some service area as clerics, there is now a power differential,” he said. “These are now your parishioners, you’re in a ministerial relationship with them, and there’s a power differential that is operative in everything you do.”
3. Demonstrate an understanding of trauma-informed pastoral care.
Knowledge about the impact of trauma has grown over the last decade. “Trauma-informed pastoral care is, in a nutshell, the understanding that people are wounded and that they may act out of these wounds,” Berg explained. “As a priest I may need to accompany them in the process of discovering their wounds and dealing with the fallout of them.”
Ideally, he said, seminarians would complete one or more courses dedicated to the topic of emotional and psychological trauma, which would include testing and evaluation to ensure that they are mastering these ideas.
4. Learn to participate in small groups that include survivors.
Small groups can be meaningful places for Catholics, including clergy members, to encounter people who have experienced abuse and hear their stories. Restorative justice practices are often based on small group sharing and listening, and seminarians must learn best practices for small groups, making them safe spaces that foster constructive conversation and healing without re-traumatizing participants. It may help, for example, for clergy members to attend in ordinary street clothes, since people who have been abused in the Church may find clerical collars triggering.
5. Develop an ability to manage emotional discomfort or distress.
People who have experienced harm in the Church can be understandably emotional when telling their stories. And their painful experiences may evoke powerful feelings in the people listening. “These are oftentimes very tense, very emotional encounters, and you have to be especially ready,” Berg explained. “Regulation of one’s own emotions is a skill that we all need, but especially in these contexts.” He would like seminaries to give men opportunities to practice encountering strong emotions in pastoral settings. Seminarians must also learn to deal with these difficult experiences in healthy ways.
6. Be aware of clergy abuse of children—and adults.
The white paper stresses that seminarians must be aware of the potential for abusive relationships between clergy members and children, as well as between clergy members and adults. “Establishing and maintaining healthy boundaries in relationships is primarily the grave responsibility of the cleric,” the paper states.
7. Know local diocesan policies regarding child protection.
The white paper calls for seminarians to read and understand the child protection policies in their diocese, to know the diocesan departments related to these policies, and to “acquire familiarity with the personnel who work there.”
8. Be willing to meet with abuse survivors and listen to their stories.
Although many people who have experienced harm in the Church may be hesitant to meet with a priest, Berg stresses that seminarians and priests must be open to hearing survivor stories and listening with attentive compassion.
“Experience and studies have demonstrated repeatedly that our initial reaction, and the first words that come out of our mouths, have an enormous impact on the victim and their possibilities for healing—for better or worse,” the white paper states.
Seminarians must learn how to receive such stories, a process that involves validating the person’s experience and letting them know that they are believed.
9. Learn best practices in ministering to victim-survivors as they approach the Sacrament of Penance.
The Sacrament of Penance can be very complicated for people who have experienced abuse in the Church, especially those harmed in the context of a confessional. This benchmark involves thoroughly preparing seminarians to work with victim-survivors who might want to experience this sacrament.
One survivor of abuse offered these two questions that a priest might ask himself before ministering the Sacrament of Penance to someone who has experienced abuse: “How might my own wounds negatively or positively impact this encounter? And how can I be an instrument in God’s hands so that he can make of this encounter a new path forward for the penitent?”
10. Understand how to be present at activities designed for survivor healing.
Seminarians should learn the history of restorative justice movements and how to participate in related activities, including healing circles. “To heal a hurting Church,” the white paper says, “we need to turn with greater energy, hope, and dedication to a broader deployment of the practices of restorative justice.”
11. Explore what happens to a brother priest when he is accused and how to accompany him.
A recent survey of priests revealed widespread anxiety of being wrongly accused of sexual abuse, and not being supported by their bishop through the process. “This is an appeal for seminarians to lean into this fraught issue in your diocese and learn as much as you can about the process of handling these cases,” Berg said. “A lack of transparency just fuels the anxiety.” He recommended that seminarians ask questions that promote transparency. They might, for example, ask diocesan staff how previous cases were handled and why.
12. Develop knowledge around the Church’s theology of scandal.
For multiple centuries, Church leaders have held that a priest who perpetrates abuse not only harms the person who is victimized, but also “scandalizes” the faithful, Berg explained. The benchmarks suggest that “we have to get back to a theology that understands that the truth must be known, even if we can foresee that some people may be deeply troubled by this,” Berg said. “There’s a much greater value at stake in being honest, in being truthful.”
Some of these benchmark topics have already been addressed in seminaries, but often in brief ways, in the context of day-long workshops, for example. Berg said that workshops lack the depth of multiple courses on such topics. He and his coauthors hope that these benchmarks lead to new seminary curricula.
Berg and his colleagues at the McGrath Institute also plan to invite individual U.S. seminaries to sign on to supporting these benchmarks and incorporating them into their formation programs.
These benchmarks have been met with skepticism from some people with lived experience of abuse, but “I’ve also received very genuine expressions of gratitude,” Berg says, “especially from the survivors who contributed to this work.”
—Erin O’Donnell, Editor, Awake Blog
