MOST ABUSERS ARE FATHERS AND GRANDFATHERS (First published in 'NZ Catholic', October 20 2013 as AN EMOTIONAL PRO-LIFE CONFERENCE IN DUNEDIN:

 

 

Harrowing, heart-broken sobbing; sublime hymn-singing: these sounds, more than the presentations, defined last month’s Voice for Life conference in Dunedin.

Well, for me they did. Only two delegates heard the singing, in St Joseph’s cathedral late that Saturday night. One had decamped from the conference dinner to watch the footie, the other to call a taxi. (‘You’re not walking through the Octagon,’ said ‘im indoors who was watching the game in our room, ‘take a taxi.’)

We coincided at reception. He hadn’t heard about the Eucharistic Adoration for Syria. He was keen, and he had a car. In the cathedral, the sacred silence was broken only by Tongans singing hymns, in four-part harmony, a cappella.

The weeping happened in full conference when Anne Lastman of Melbourne, an international expert on trauma, grief and loss, was giving us the lowdown on sex abuse.

‘One, two, three abortions,’ she said, ‘that’s not out of the way. But when someone’s had five or six, you immediately know there’s a history of sex abuse.

‘It’s okay to talk about priests abusing children,’ she went on, ‘but it’s not okay to talk about abuse in ‘normal’ families. Most abusers are fathers and grandfathers.’

That’s when the sobbing started. Near the back of the room. Quietly at first, just gasps. Then full-throated, full-on sobbing. No one looked round. Anne Lastman left the podium and went down the back. We heard the door close behind them.

Anne’s place was taken by Hilary Keift. Hilary’s a share-milker from the ‘Naki. She spoke slowly, calmly, without notes. She told us how five years ago her twin son and daughter found their big sister hanging in the car shed. Ariana survived, but emotionally she’s still the fifteen year-old who a year earlier had been taken from her Anglican school for an abortion, and delivered home afterwards by the school nurse. ‘She sat at our kitchen table,’ said Hilary, ‘and told me she’d taken Ariana to counselling.’

Hilary was probably crying too, but I was sitting too far back to see. Or maybe she cried at the opening of a subsequent session when she said, ‘It was a botched abortion. Ariana will never have any children.’

The electric atmosphere in the cathedral that Saturday night spoke to me of the pro-life activist’s need for intimacy with Jesus Christ. As he demonstrated by keeping his apostles close for three years before sending them out, the casual acquaintance we make with the Lord by avoiding serious sin isn’t enough to effect change in others. To turn back the tide of evil we ourselves must be radically changed, by keeping company with Christ in prayer, every day.

‘This kind (of devil) is not cast out but by prayer and fasting’ (Mt 17,20). Activists may campaign, write letters, make speeches, even hold conferences; but if prayer doesn’t go up to God his grace can’t come down. Nothing is achieved. 

‘I planted,’ says St Paul (1 Cor 3, 6) ‘Apollos watered, but God gave the increase.’