Trouble at home: How should parishes respond to domestic violence?
Monday, July 18, 2011
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Father Charles W. Dahm, O.P., is associate pastor of St. Pius V parish in Chicago and the author of Parish Ministry in a Hispanic Community (Paulist).
This article will appear with survey results in the December 2011 issue of U.S. Catholic.
A More Important Question
By Anonymous (not verified) on Monday, July 25, 2011Why is it that men store their pain in their fists?
Empowerment as A Victim Comes from God's Grace
By Anonymous (not verified) on Tuesday, July 19, 2011Victims of anyone who abuses a trust relationship by breaking a laws we have to protect us from those who think they are above the law or that it does not apply to HAVE TO REPORT THE BREAKING OF THE LAW TO OUR JUSTICE SYSTEM WHO IS THERE TO ENFORCE THESE LAWS.
God's Grace is a gift. Victims do not have to hang their heads and let others break laws that were enacted to protect them. Report it to law enforcement until justice is served on the abusers who are breaking them.
Anytime a person or an organization is in a relationship with you and they misuse their power and authority over you cause you harm and break our laws...report them and prosecute them to the fullest. Don't stop unless these abusers and law breakers prove beyond any doubt that they deserve the respect and authority you have given to them in the relationship.
Yes. There are disagreements between people who love one another and who have pledged through our faith to care for you and you for them. But disagreements---even shouting, arguing, protesting, and verbal threats are not physically damaging nor can they harm your psyche unless you let them. God gives us grace to help us stand up to those who break the law to harm us.
I learned that anyone and any organization can abuse their power and authority over you for any reason. It is good to try to work these problems out without having to bother our legal system with them. But when one party in the relationship does not see their error and fails to change their wrong-doing, then just walking away and talking to others about it only helps the victim temporarily.
If you really want to stop abusers then you have to make them stop abusing others too. You do that through our legal justice system and not by just getting up and walking away from the abuser and letting that abuser or that abusive organization go free to abuse someone else the same way!
There is no justice without peace and no peace without justice.
THE ONE IN 20 HAVE RIGHTS TO REMAIN TOGETHER WITHOUT REJECTION
By Anonymous (not verified) on Tuesday, July 19, 2011The recovery and rehabilitation of all families from Domestic Violence will not Happen unless we find ways to heal those families. You are not healing them when you separate them and write their marriages off...YOu are only sending the abuser off to find someone else to abuse and the victim off to find another abuser or to live a life in which they never learn to be empowered in a relationship with another.
You cannot fix the problem if you are sending out 19 unhealed abusers to find someone else to abuse and their victims to continue to suffer from the attitudes of people perpetuated by this article about victims and abusers in family situations.
My husband and I recovered from violence in our home only to be victimized and questioned and wrongly diagnosed by people in the church from whom we would never have shared our recovery if it were not part of a background check. And the results of their attitudes, the consequences to my career and our family income and the loss of our community parish participation is the reason why.
I don't think we who are THE ONE IN TWENTY SHOULD BE FEARED AND REJECTED BECAUSE GOD HELPED US TO RECOVER FROM VIOLENCE AND MOVE ON AND BE A HAPPY CATHOLIC COUPLE...
I think that the church needs to look to those of us who have recovered as role models to help the 19 they fail to help to recover from domestic violence.
Remember....Our children and grandkids do not see domestic violence in our home.....So they will not repeat it in their homes if this research is true.
BUT...the children who you fail to help their families stop being abusers and victims will grow up being abusers and victims in spite of your separating their parents from each other...
STOP THE VIOLENCE. FIND OUT HOW THE ONE IN NINETEEN DO IT. I can tell you it is not by separating couples from each other...IT IS BY BRINGING THEM TOGETHER WITH GOD, CHURCH, HOME, AND COMMUNITY!!!!
Good for you!
By Anonymous (not verified) on Tuesday, July 19, 2011Congratulations and God Bless you on your success. You are absolutely correct that ALL parties involved need help to recover whether or not the marriage is disolved.
Your experience, however, does not extrapolate. Just because something worked for you does not mean it will work for everyone. Just because some people can overcome their violent tendencies does not mean all can or even want to try. Just because your marital violence was not seen by children does not make that true in all cases - in fact, I suspect it is rather rare.
I am the product of an abusive "sacramental" marriage. I grew up watching abuse and being abused on a regular basis. I grew up in an environment of hate rather than one of love. My parents should have been separated long before they finally divorced when I was an adult. My mother is Catholic but my father was not. She felt 'stuck' and hopeless in the marriage for a very long time. He died at 87 believing in his right to violence and that he was righteous in his violence. Thank God, I was able to break that cycle with my own family -- without the aid of counselling.
You chose, and were given the Grace, to work it out. You could have made the same choice even if counseled to physically separate. Even if abuse were grounds for an annulment - a couple is not forced to choose that course. Everyone must examine their own conscience in such situations and make every effort to save a salvageable marriage. Your experience with the Church post-recovery is certainly most regrettable, inexcusable, and must be rectified but it would still be wholly irresponsible and, perhaps, life-threatening to counsel ANY abuse victim to remain in that abusive situation. Safety first! THEN counseling and reconciliation remain options. Of course the Church should laud and support the one in twenty -- but they should also protect and support the nineteen in twenty. I commend Fr. Dahm for his efforts and this insightful article.
ommission
By Anonymous (not verified) on Tuesday, July 19, 2011The parish helps abused women escape abuse even if it means escaping their husbands. These women inspire other abused women to do the same. That's as it should be. What Father Dahm fails to mention is that to the Church these women are still married to their abusing husbands and will always unless they go through the further abusing process of a marriage annulment their husbands will probably not cooperate with. Unless a Marriage Tribunal made up of unmarried men who don't (supposedly) have sex determines that somehow these women's marriages weren't really sacramental marriages from the start they will be prohibited by the Church forever from remarrying or having sex of any kind with anyone including themselves. If their marriage to their abusing husband is found to be a sacramental marriage from the start the Church orders these women to be single mothers without the emotional, sexual or economic help of a man. Why does Father Dahm and every other Catholic author on this subject fail to mention this? No doubt because it sounds harsh and absurd. When a non-Catholic woman escapes an abusive husband she has the option of divorcing him and remarrying a good one. A Catholic woman may obtain a civil divorce and must in order to submit to the charade of annulment. Her only hope of remarrying is if a bunch of celibate priests decide her Catholic abusive marriage wasn't a marriage to begin with. If not she's stuck. In the eyes of the state she's a divorced woman. In the eyes of the Church she's still married to the abuser she was supported to leave. I hope all Catholic support services for abused women make clear that once she leaves the abuser she will probably still be married to him until she or he dies. The abuser, knowing that the Church says they're still married, may make sure she goes first.
Agreed
By Anonymous (not verified) on Tuesday, July 19, 2011The Church, and those who support everything it does without question, like to emphasize the positive and ignore the negative. While there is certainly a lot of good in the Church's move toward support for abused spouses, and without taking anything away from that, the problem will never be fully corrected until documented abuse becomes automatic grounds for immediately declaring a marriage non-sacramental and granting an annulment - with no ability for the abusing spouse to contest the annulment.
Until that day - all other support is marginalized by the overriding fact of still being "married in God's eyes". Until that day - the Church undeniably holds that an abusive marriage is sacramental until and unless three priests decide it isn't in a widely variable by location, contestable, laborious and often painful process of annulment is completed.
While I do not advocate that annulments should be as easy as civil divorce -- the sacrament is debased when it calls any abusive marriage sacramental.
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