Fr. Seamus Enright, in a 1997 sermon during Limerick’s Solemn Novena in honour of Our Mother of Perpetual Help, preached on violence towards women and children.
I heard the door-bell of the monastery ring in the early hours of the morning. My first reaction was to ignore it, to hope somebody else would answer it. Or that the person would go away. But the bell kept on ringing, and eventually I came downstairs and opened the door. A woman and her children stood there. They looked very distressed and frightened. The woman’s husband had attacked her and then thrown herself and the children out on the street. She came to the monastery because she could think of no place else to go. I brought them in, found a place for them to sleep and then went back to bed myself. But I had difficulty sleeping. It was my first encounter with family violence. The year was 1977.
Why wait so long?
Some years later I fell into conversation with a woman after a session of the Limerick novena. The woman had just left her husband after 30 years of physical and emotional abuse. She wanted me to reassure her that she had done the right thing. I wanted to know why she had waited so long.
Over the years, she said, when things were very bad, she often told her story to priests. They told her about her duty – her duty to remain in a violent and abusive marriage. Marriage was for ever. For better or worse. Offer it up. Pray about it. God will reward you in heaven. She went looking for hope and they sent her away with mouthfuls of platitudes. But more than priests failed her. The Gardai, at the time, would not intervene in domestic disputes. Her mother, when she summoned up the courage to tell her, suggested it must be her fault. She must be doing something to annoy her husband.
Better and worse
Things have got both better and worse since I met those women. Better, because there is a greater awareness of the extent of family violence and abuse. We must be grateful to the women’s movement for this. Thank God for feminism! Worse, because of the continuing increase in violence towards women. We live in violent times. Much of the violence is directed at women. Things are worse too, because many of us continue to deny the extent of the problem, and many of us continue to blame the victims. I was coming out of a meeting recently at which violence towards women in families was being discussed and somebody said to me: “Women must accept some of the responsibility.” Blame the victim!
What can we do? What is expected of us as followers of Jesus?
1. We must – all of us -listen to what women and children are saying. We must pay
heed to their pain and to their suffering. We must take them seriously. Jesus leads the way here. We must imitate him. Women belonged to the inner circle of the followers of Jesus. Jesus engaged seriously with women and children. Unfortunately, the church has not always followed his example, but we are learning and, hopefully, improving.
2. We must help men discover new ways of being manly: a gentle rather than an aggressive manliness, a co-operative rather than a competitive spirit, new ways of relating in both family and community. A way of life in which violent and abusive behaviour is never acceptable. No woman or child ever deserves to be treated violently or abused. We must never excuse violence, never turn a blind eye to violent and abusive behaviour.
Jesus will, if we allow him, teach us what it means to be real men and how real men live. It is time to say good-bye to the hard man and to welcome the gentle man.
3. We must confront the violence in society and the violence that lurks in our own hearts. Jesus invites us to look at what is going on in society and to look at what is going on in our own hearts. The followers of Jesus must turn their backs on all forms of violence – the violent attitude, the violent word, the violent gesture, the violent action. Children learn what they live. If they experience violence at home or in school, they are likely to practice violence.
4. We must tackle poverty and injustice. I am not for a moment suggesting that poor men are more violent and abusive than other men. Men from every class, race and religion abuse women and children. What I am saying is that poverty is an abuse of people. Forced, long term unemployment does violence to the human spirit. Poverty and unemployment strip people of their dignity. Injustice violates the image of God in children, women and men.
A society that tolerates as much poverty and injustice as we do in Ireland today is an abusive society. Ireland today is an abusive society. We all carry some responsibility for this. We have, for the first time in history, the means to tackle poverty and exclusion. We have the means. All that is lacking is the will.
5. Children need stable, meaningful relationships. Rejection and neglect seriously damages children. It is an abuse of children to deprive them of the stable, meaningful relationships they need. It is an abuse of children to reject and neglect them.
I was working with a group of children recently. One little boy, about eight years of age, told me he lived with his grandmother. It emerged in our conversation that both of his parents had new partners and that these new partners did not want him. There was no room for him in the households of his mother and father. Imagine how that little boy is feeling. Imagine the lessons he is learning. Imagine the burdens he will carry through life.
Taking people seriously
Jesus models good relating for us: he accepted people, listened to them, attended to their problems, took them seriously. People felt safe in the presence of Jesus. He helped them to feel secure. He was then able to challenge them.
What children and young people need is what we all need. We need to be accepted, listened to, affirmed, taken seriously, engaged with. We need to feel safe and secure.
Sometimes we need to be challenged. Challenged to let go of attitudes and ways of behaving that limit our own development and make life difficult for others. We need to be challenged to live like Jesus.
This article first appeared in Reality (October 1997), a publication of the Irish Redemptorists.
