For fallen-away Catholics, finding your way back to the Church can be hard; for those who have suffered sexual abuse at the hands of a priest, it can be impossible — all of which makes James O’Bryan’s story all the more incredible.
O’Bryan was part of a lawsuit brought against the Vatican in 2004, alleging a systematic cover-up of sexual abuse that was responsible for his own abuse at the age of seven (in 1928), and for which his attacker was never tried. What followed, O’Bryan says, was worse than the original molestation: James’s father didn’t believe his story, and his relationship with his paternal grandparents was ruptured after they told him that he and his mother “were all going to hell.” He lost his faith and endured years of psychological trauma as a result.
And yet, after everything, he has found his way back into the Church — 80 years later — through the outreach of one man:
Orthodox. Faithful. Free.
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In January, his wife of 52 years, Grace, was dying, he said. She was an Irish-American from Boston’s deeply Catholic culture, but had herself been long estranged from the church. However, she asked for last rites. the Rev. Louis Nichols, a local priest, came and performed them, then did the funeral Mass.
“I saw how compassionate he was and how caring he was,” O’Bryan said. So O’Bryan called Nichols for a follow-up appointment, and “I’ve been going to church ever since.”
The suit has been dropped — “They’ve recognized the things that they’re responsible for, so really we’ll get on with the rest of my life,” O’Bryan says — but the outreach continues:
O’Bryan said he received “a nice, handwritten letter” a few years ago from the Rev. John Burke, the priest at St. Cecilia [where O’Bryan was a parishioner as a boy], expressing regret over what happened to him.
Burke said in an interview that news of O’Bryan’s reconciliation with the church is a “wonderful story of healing.”
“I felt like he was by extension one of my parishioners (and wanted to) reach to him in some way,” he said.
Amazing that it can take just one person to shatter your faith — and just one person to help restore it. Of course, a lot has changed in 80 years:
O’Bryan has had to get used to how Roman Catholics have been worshipping for more than 40 years since the Second Vatican Council: in English, with more simplified rites than those used in the past.
“I don’t know the liturgy,” he said. “I’m used to the Latin Mass.”
I’m sure Father Nichols and Father Burke would be happy to lend a hand.
[H/t Mollie at Get Religion]