A Priest Speaks From the Heart—Outside the Clericalism
Boundaries Continued

Reviewed by Bill Casey, Co-Chair VOTF Conference

Sadly, he recognizes that his voice is more of one crying in the wilderness when he writes about other priests’ response to the scandal, “There is a most conspicuous voice missing, strangely silent among the sad and often angry, lamenting chorus … the voice of us parish priests … perhaps … choosing to be silent in our protest … unable or unwilling to speak … because we are afraid”.  He wonders if priests are like the prophet Jonah who chose to turn and flee from their “appointed Nineveh.”

Yet Bergquist is no angry cynic or iconoclast railing against his chosen vocation or colleagues. Instead he invites himself and his colleagues (and by extension all Catholics) into the pain and brokenness that the scandal has imposed on all in order to discern the teachings of the Spirit that we will miss if we fight or flee it. He suggests that what priests need most is to enter this painful space as “wounded healers”, drawing upon the symbol that Henri Nouwen presented nearly thirty years ago. Bergquist enlarges the image, however, by adding the roles of poet and prophet to it. “The wounded healer…is both poet and prophet for us in our time of need. As poet, [he] fashions and forms his words from deep within his broken heart and wounded experience, still deeper within his grieving soul … As prophet, [he] looks deep into the human heart and dares to speak to the seriousness of the situation, acknowledging his own pain and suffering, even as he acknowledges that of others. From this broken place he courageously speaks, not with an anxious fear but with a strong gentle faith…most especially, a caretaker, a caregiver, a shepherd of souls, in short—a ‘Pastor’. And it is especially this notion … that I fear we have lost sight of in the midst of this scandal and crisis.”

In speaking as priest, prophet and poet, Bergquist draws from rich sources of Scripture, poetry and wisdom teachers. He leaves no doubt that he is speaking from a larger “voice” that has been refined in the cauldron of loss, suffering, faith and hope. He spends one chapter (Spending Our Winter’s Night Grieving) leading the reader into the depths of the scandal’s wounds according to the “Five Stages of Loss” made famous by Elizabeth Kubler-Ross. In another chapter (Winter’s Grieving and Weeping Grace), he presses the reader into a space of potential healing, but not with quick or easy steps. He writes, “From within this brokenhearted priesthood we ought to take our rightful place within a brokenhearted church. Not separated or set apart, but standing in solidarity with those who weep. The Church Grieving is not a deserted and desolate wasteland, not should it ever be seen as a failure.”

Bergquist is not simply a voice; he is a priest of action that flows from his voice. In a final chapter (Winter’s Redeeming Elegy), he describes a healing ritual, an expression of a “brokenhearted but truly repentant church,” that he has offered to those suffering the wounds of the sexual abuse scandal.  It is a ritual that holds in tension the raw cries of the wounded as well as faith and hope on a horizon of healing. It is not designed FOR the abused or for those suffering in any way from the scandal BY the clergy; rather it is a model in which a community in grief confesses its wounds and seeks to enable each other to reach out to the healing graces offered by a compassionate God.

Near the conclusion of the book, Bergquist wonders (perhaps laments), “[r]ather than standing and preaching against the sin of ‘relativism’, might we as a church be on our knees questioning our ‘relevancy’? ... In a world filled with ‘what ifs’—What if our shepherds would actually abdicate their roles as C.E.O.s and step out from behind their corporate attorneys? ... What if our shepherds would lead us in, and by, a life of humble penitence and conversion?  What if .. ? … But we need not wait and wonder. If not us, who? If not now, when? If history has taught us anything, it has taught us that change, authentic and meaningful change, usually rises up from below.”

Bergquist’s book is a call to raw and unqualified discernment of our own hearts as we struggle, as he does, to make sense out of a desperate situation in our church. Still it bears particular application to those who wear the mantle of priest. One can only hope that it will move priests outside the clerical culture to meet the laity, who must also move outside their boundaries, to join in a deep and authentic response to the terrible plague that has found its way into our lived experience as Church.

Bill Casey

Note: The Long Dark Winter’s Night raises one of the predominant themes that will be addressed at the VOTF conference in Boston on September 14-15, 2012.  The book is currently available from Liturgical Press and is expected to be available for sale at the conference.