Truth, Grief and Mourning

Friends,

Yesterday the news broke that L’Arche’s founder, Jean Vanier - revered during his time by many, including myself, as a “living saint” - was not quite what he seemed. Specifically, he was guilty, over decades, of covering up and potentially enabling the sexual and spiritual abuse of adult women without disabilities in community by his “spiritual father,” Pere Thomas Phillippe. More importantly, though, Vanier was himself the perpetrator of spiritual, emotional and sexual abuse against at least 6 adult women without disabilities, including several assistants and even one consecrated religious sister. Here is L’Arche USA’s statement on the matter.

To say this news is devastating is an understatement. As I woke and learned the truth - mostly through friends reaching out, followed by reading everything I could online - all I could do is sit back and cry and wonder how it even makes sense. How can one reconcile the genuine reality that what Jean founded - L’Arche, a place of healing, belonging and welcome - could be tied to this darkness? How do we keep one and throw out the other? How could someone who championed the weak and oppressed actually use his position of power to prey on the weak? What, then, even is real within L’Arche?

I thought Catholic News Agency Editor in Chief JD FLynn - whose son is named for Vanier, and who has adopted two children with disability - did a great job of stating something at the heart of this:

“I think part of the reason we look to holy people is b/c they seem like confirmation that the proposition of the Gospel is possible. When we discover their hidden wicked deeds, we wonder if we can be set free of our own wickedness. Holiness is possible in Christ. But hard.”

Indeed, if there is something wicked at the heart of L’Arche, which I thought was through and through full of light, how is there any hope for me to live up to the promise of the Gospel, and of what God calls me to be and do? Who, after all of this, can I - or any of us - trust?

Tomorrow night a few of us are getting together to discuss, process and understand how to move forward. I am aching for that time, to be with what has become my family.

Ultimately Vanier’s words - his writing, the philosophy, the spirituality - were very much a part of what drew me into 'L’Arche. But I realize they have not been the things that have kept me there. What has kept me there have been the relationships, especially with core members - with Laurie and Charles and Bruce and all the assistants who have welcomed me like family. It has been the acceptance, and the finding of a place where I and my gifts are recognized and needed. But ultimately where it matters more to be, rather than to do. None of that changes, with this news.