How do you commemorate a nightmare? The Los Angeles Times this week has this poignant and, I think, important piece on how various dioceses around the country are honoring and remembering the victims of clerical sex abuse:

Oakland’s new Cathedral of Christ the Light stretches skyward, sheathed in gleaming glass that reveals a delicate skeleton of wood and steel.

Terrie Light has spent more than three years thinking about the elegant structure. She has attended more meetings than she can count about the $190-million cathedral complex while helping to design its most famous garden.

But the 57-year-old has no plans to be a regular visitor to the shadowy corner, with its privet hedges, curved wooden benches and somber dedication: “To those innocents sexually abused by members of the clergy. We remember, and we affirm: Never again.”

Light was molested by a priest in the Diocese of Oakland half a century ago. Although being around churches stirs painful memories, she hopes the tribute “might provide solace” to survivors and their family members.

But as she discovered, “what it actually ended up doing was make a lot of people mad.”

The survivors had originally envisioned a far different tribute, a big, splashy garden filled with flowers and fountains. What they got after much heated debate was small, simple, downright austere.

Then there were fights over the inscription, Light said, such as the diocese’s resistance to the engraved words “clergy abuse.” The very existence of such a monument leaves a lot of people “unsettled.”

The scandal “is not a thing that’s fixed,” Light said. “There are so many Catholics who don’t want to believe this happened or the extent of it. . . . Other people need to be reminded. Not me.”

The “healing garden” was dedicated this fall, the latest in a small sprinkling of tributes to victims of clergy sexual abuse nationwide, controversial monuments that raise more questions than they can possibly answer.

What is the proper way to remember the thousands of victims? What do the tributes accomplish? Are they enough? Why aren’t there more?

Cases of clergy sexual abuse have been reported in all 50 states and the District of Columbia. More than 5,000 priests in the U.S. have been accused. The Catholic Church in the U.S. has paid out more than $2 billion in legal settlements. Six dioceses have filed for bankruptcy.

But there are believed to be fewer than half a dozen monuments across the country, according to survivor advocates.

“A lot of churches and groups want to be attentive to the needs of victims. They don’t want to forget and don’t want bad things to happen again,” said Thomas Plante, a psychologist who has written about clergy sexual abuse. “But some rank-and-file Catholics want to move on,” said Plante, a professor at Santa Clara University. “You hear a bit of both. It’s tough. I don’t know how you resolve some of those conflicts.”

The dearth of monuments also reflects a more general Catholic architectural aesthetic that favors altars and stained glass ahead of tributes.

“If you look in Catholic churches, you don’t tend to see a lot of memorials,” said the Rev. Thomas J. Reese, a Jesuit priest and senior fellow at the Woodstock Theological Center at Georgetown University.

The ultimate aim, Reese and other theologians say, should be to create “living memorials” — dialogues that can repair frayed relationships better than a static monument.

“It reminds us that we have to do better,” Reese said. “That’s what church is all about. You don’t cover these things up. You face them. You expose them. And try and work toward some kind of healing.”

You can read the rest at the LA Times link, including the heart-rending story behind the first permanent tribute, in New Jersey. The tribute below, from Iowa, features a millstone and plaque with a Scripture from the Gospel of Matthew, illustrating Jesus’ angry warning against harming “these little ones.”
Top photo: Terrie Light, by Dave Geztschman, LA Times