Yes, I, for one, would like to email the Pope. I would like him to know that “the sadness and shame” in “his church” pales in comparison with the effects of sexual abuse on victims. My abuser was not a priest, but close enough--he was my father--my Catholic, go-to-church-every-Sunday father. The abuse was sexual, psychological, and emotional. Abuse is always about control. Always. How profoundly the spirit is effected by this! This is what I would tell the Pope:
Much like the Catholic church, my father ruled with fear. He’s been dead for over 10 years, but at the age of 54, I am still afraid, and most of the time I don’t know of what. I am a recovered alcoholic for 26 years, educated, attractive, and single for the third time. I can’t hold onto a job for more than 2 or 3 years at a time, although I am very talented. I had a year of therapy before re-entering the college scene at the age of 45, following my father’s death. With a 3.8 GPA, I finished the undergraduate and graduate programs at a local university. Today, I am without a full-time job, again, and the fear is so consuming that I almost can't breathe.
I cry a lot, lately, because I just can’t figure things out. I go between bursts of hope and depression, between energy and paralysis. At times, I seem to be climbing upwards, out of failure and poverty, but always the slide back into these dark crevices occurs. With 3 wonderful grown children and two precious grandchildren, I still hear the old tapes of my father’s voice telling me that I will never do anything important, that I never make anything of my life. I have spent my life at different levels of financial poverty and went to college on school loans that I now can’t repay. What I know of my father is that he was abused in the Catholic school he attended in the 30s. My grandmother was afraid to do anything about it. We have all been strangled by fear, it seems.
My story is like many stories of abuse victims. What I want you to know . . . what is really important here is not the church’s shame, but the victim’s shame. It was not their fault, but they bear the burden of its effects, nevertheless. God isn’t weeping over the Catholic church, he’s weeping over the damaged children who have grown up unable to obey his frequent command of “do not fear.” Fear is our bread, our staple. We live around it as best we can, but it’s always there, always pressing us from within. Many of us would go into therapy if we could afford it, but we can barely maintain living independently as it is. Many of us have no insurance. In our deepest place of grief and shame, we are hoping that God is nothing like the Catholic church.
You can worry about the tainted image of your church, but the bloody field where lambs lie torn and twitching in the unholy silence seems far more worthy of a shepherd’s concern. If a daring few hadn’t recently raised their voices until the news media took notice, would you even know of this emotional-psychological slaughter? And even so, my own still-Catholic family members have accused these raised voices of doing it for the attention, and for the money. “Why can’t they just get on with their lives?” they muse about the bleeding lambs. Ahh, yes, where is the healing?
You want miracles? They are holding on, walking around, surviving abuse as best they can. They are members of communities, raising children under strained conditions. They are legion, in the streets, where no one handles damage control.

Sincerely,
Unnamed