Making the Eucharist Accessible to Survivors of Abuse
Editor’s Note: This week we revisit a post from August 2023 about important efforts to bring Communion to victim-survivors who wish to receive this sacrament.
Some survivors find it painful to participate in sacraments in parish settings.
In her work with people who have been sexually abused in the Catholic Church, Paula Kaempffer, Outreach Coordinator for Restorative Justice and Abuse Prevention for the Archdiocese of Saint Paul & Minneapolis, has found that a surprising number long to participate in the sacraments and some especially want to receive Communion.
“I hear from victim-survivors how much they crave the Eucharist,” Kaempffer explains. “The Eucharist is so healing, and it also helps them to feel that they still belong to our community.” Yet it can be truly difficult for victim-survivors to participate in Catholic rituals and sacraments in typical parish environments. “I think what the parishioner in the pew doesn’t realize is that in many instances the abuse took place inside a church,” says Kaempfer, who is herself a survivor of sexual abuse as an adult. Just setting foot in a church building or receiving the host from a clergy member can be traumatizing to survivors, she says.
Recently Kaempffer and a fellow abuse survivor began to consider a powerful idea: why couldn’t they take the Eucharist to survivors who want to receive it, in the same way that lay ministers take communion to parishioners who cannot leave their homes due to illness or mobility issues?
Archbishop Bernard Hebda supported the idea, and now a survivor—who had served as a lay Eucharistic minister before she experienced clergy abuse as an adult—visits the homes of other survivors in the archdiocese who ask to receive communion. “She’s extremely compassionate,” Kaempffer says, and her status as a fellow victim-survivor helps people feel safe and understood.
Since word about the new ministry has spread, Kaempffer has received calls from interested people around the world, asking her for advice on how they can offer the Eucharist to interested survivors in their communities. Kaempffer recommends not sending priests to offer Communion, but instead involving lay ministers who are victim-survivors of abuse and still deeply engaged in the Catholic Church. “Some people cannot even come close to a priest,” she says. “But a victim-survivor gets it. The victim who is receiving communion doesn’t have to explain themselves.”
Kaempffer stresses that receiving the Eucharist is not a good choice for all survivors; some need to maintain their distance from the Church to maintain their mental health. But for the benefit of those who do want to receive Communion, she says she is praying for the idea to spread to other dioceses and Catholic institutions.
THE CHALLENGE OF ATTENDING MASS AFTER ABUSE
Esther Harber, Awake’s Survivor Care Coordinator, knows just how difficult it can be even to set foot in a church after abuse. As a lay minister in New York City in her twenties, Harber was raped by a priest in a church. In the minutes after the assault took place, her perpetrator gestured to the tabernacle and commented that he and Harber were in the presence of God. This multiplied Harber’s confusion and distress. She believed deeply that Jesus is present in the Eucharist but also felt deeply abandoned by God, who had not protected her. “It was as if [the abusive priest] had weaponized the Blessed Sacrament against me,” she remembers. At the time she was living in community with other lay ministers, and everyone attended Mass in the chapel in their building. Almost no one knew about Harber’s assault, and she felt obligated to attend Mass and serve in roles such as altar server during daily Mass. “I would force myself to go, and really struggle,” she explains, often crying or suffering panic attacks during Mass.
Looking back, Harber wishes she had understood something she knows now, that Church teaching excuses people who are ill from their obligation to attend Mass. Given that mental illness and trauma are legitimate illnesses, this knowledge would have helped her in the agonizing days after the assault and during the traumatic reporting process, she says.
Now, years into her healing journey, a process that has included lots of trauma-informed psychotherapy, Harber says that the memories of the rape and its aftermath no longer cause her the level of pain they once did. But attending Mass can still be difficult. Sometimes the readings include scripture passages that her abuser used as he groomed and abused her. “Those can jar me still,” Harber says. It can also be difficult to attend Mass when she’s thinking about the experiences of other abuse survivors that she accompanies in her work with Awake. Many tell her that they feel left out of the Catholic community and no longer feel comfortable participating in sacraments that were once a tremendous source of comfort.
“I’ve heard survivors say, ‘the Blessed Sacrament has been stolen from me,’” Harber says. “It breaks my heart because the sacraments belong to us. The Church is the steward of the sacraments, but she herself is not the giver. One of the deepest longings of my heart is to take it back, not just for myself, but for other survivors.”
RECLAIMING THE MASS FOR SURVIVORS
During the Awake Survivor Retreat in July 2023, Harber worked carefully with her fellow retreat facilitators to create a safe, supportive environment for people who have experienced abuse in the Church. The facilitators met virtually with retreatants several times before the in-person retreat to learn what attendees hoped to gain from the time together, and some expressed an interest in attending Mass together. The facilitators spent a lot of time considering specific elements of the experience that could be distressing or triggering for attendees.
“Obviously with a liturgy or anything spiritual, you can’t avoid all triggers,” Harber explains. “But what we can do is make it a safe environment for them to experience the trigger and to be there and be okay with it.”
For example, they chose to celebrate the Mass not in a church or chapel, but outside, on the beautiful grounds of the retreat center. “We found that being outside really lightened people’s spirits,” Harber says.
To build the sense of community and safety, those who attended Mass sat in a circle, with the altar as one part of the circle. The Mass was led by Fr. Matt Duclos of the Diocese of Albany, who Harber felt was an ideal choice because of his “humble stance of solidarity with survivors” and his commitment to listening to and learning from people who have experienced abuse. At the same time, Harber and another retreat facilitator, Laura Hancock of the Awake Prayer Team, distributed Communion, with the hope that this would make the experience of receiving the Eucharist more comfortable for some.
Yet Harber believes that the most helpful element of this Mass was the sense of supportive community. Each attendee knew that there were at least two people in the Awake community praying for them by name that weekend. At the Mass itself, survivors were surrounded by other survivors, people that they knew.
“This created a sense of safety that most of them hadn’t had in a long time,” Harber explains. “There’s such power in knowing that they are no longer alone, they’re no longer ostracized, they are accepted.”
—Erin O’Donnell, Editor, Awake Blog
