With the Christmas mail, city dean Monsignor Wilfried Schumacher from Bonn received a completely surprising certificate. His sermon is among the ten best in 2010. In view of the abuse reports, he was more in the mood for silence than for preaching, he tells our site interview.
For his sermon in March he was awarded the so-called "Silver Dove. our site documents the sermon in the wording.
Sermon on 3. Lenten Sunday on the theme of abuse by Msgr. Wilfried Schumacher (07.03.2010 in the Cathedral of Bonn)
To endure with them and at them!
Actually, today I wanted to replace the sermon with silence. The daily headlines of abuse, sexual and physical violence against defenseless children and adolescents leaves me speechless. But I also don't want to steal away wordlessly. Therefore, I invite you to be silent for a minute at the beginning of this sermon, in reverence for the victims, in deep shame for what people have done under the protection of the spiritual office, in acknowledgement of the guilt that the Church, to which we all belong, has brought upon itself.
When we designed our Lenten cloth in many conversations and reflections, the blanks were very important to us. We were aware that we can collect and publish countless photos, but there will always be suffering that we have not depicted.
We had no idea that a void would be filled so quickly – with the image of children and young people who have been subjected to sexual and physical violence. Every morning there are new headlines. Since yesterday also from the non-church area. But this cannot hide this terrible happening in ecclesiastical institutions. What we have been hearing there for weeks exceeds what I can imagine. It disgusts me. It makes us ashamed and unconcerned.
Behind it there is inconceivable suffering in the souls of children, of young people.
They can't talk about what happened to them. Silently they cry. They are unspeakable acts that make them deeply ashamed. Memories that arise again and again, too terrible to reveal to another. The images do not leave the soul. All this connected with people who were not indifferent to them for different reasons.
It is not surprising if it takes them decades to even talk about it. Now we have to listen to them, even if every single story hurts. Now they deserve all our attention, even if each case shakes us anew. Now we have to face their anger, because now they realize that they have been left alone, because others have looked away and covered up, and the perpetrators have only been transferred.
These wounds from childhood may never fully heal; but people who speak now experience that this is healing. That is why we need to listen to them.
When I look at the Lenten cloth, I see through the face of the suffering Christ to the faces of suffering children and young people who are abused by adults.
And I ask the Lord, looking down at me from the Lenten cloth: What is this now? Why this sometimes unbearable public discussion, which confirms many resentments and makes some people call for quick solutions??
I'm trying to make a response:
1. The force of the public discussion makes church finally act. All of our attention is on the victims, and we must be just as committed to preventing people with pedophilic tendencies from finding a place in the church where they can pursue those tendencies.
2. We need to create a climate in the church where the topic of "sexuality" is dealt with more openly.
Sexuality is a powerful force within us, but it is not the greatest and most important thing in life. The sexuality is not exhausted in the acting out of the sex drive. It helps us to be man and woman, to relate to each other. We know about its dynamics and also about the fact that we also have to domesticate it like a wild animal, so that it serves our love in a tamed way.
Sexuality is always also related to violence, to power over others. No area lends itself so well to exercising power over people.
Church has exercised psychological power over people in this area, especially in modern times. I am often deeply shocked when I hear in the confessional how people have often suffered for decades from this violence and are still suffering. Sometimes I look at the crucified man in the confessional and ask him: "Lord, why do you want to do this?? Why were these people so tormented without anyone laying a hand on them??"
To deal openly with this topic does not mean to approve everything, but also here: not to look away, but to honestly perceive and talk about it, does not mean to suppress people, but to free them to deal with it in love and responsibility.
3. The topic of "child abuse" dominates the headlines every now and then; but now the moral standard with which we appear is also the standard that lets the topic be in the headlines. Perhaps this will also sensitize our society to the subject. We must not continue to look the other way, neither within the church, nor outside, neither in Germany nor elsewhere in this world.
Now, however, the first thing we have to do is to endure. All who profess the church, priests as well as laymen, are under public criticism. No one can stay out of it – you have certainly experienced this in the last few days.
Clearly, this is not the whole church after all. And one is tempted to distract oneself with all kinds of arguments.
But now we stand first of all under the cross. We must not ignore the suffering of the crucified and not subordinate his suffering to our interests. Many looked the other way back then, too. "But all his acquaintances stood far from the cross," writes Luke (Luke 23:49).
We see through the Crucified One to the many people who have been violated. To endure with them and with them is to suffer with them during this Lenten season.