Monks suffer with abusers in the family: in a `dark night of the spirit,' St. John's Abbey contemplates uncertain future with fear, hope: last in a two-part series - Church In Crisis

National Catholic Reporter, Dec 27, 2002 by Patricia Lefevere

The shame, anger and soul-searching that have gripped much of the U.S. Catholic church in the wake of an avalanche of sex abuse scandals this year have been felt acutely by the band of Benedictines who comprise the monastic community at St. John's Abbey here.

From the shocking revelation in mid-April that one of the abbey's former abbots had abused two monks, to more recent disclosures against two former teachers in St. John's Prep School, accused of sexual misconduct with students in the 1980s, the abbey's bad news has been spread across Minnesota's media like dirty laundry hung in the picture window.

Adding to public confusion and criticism is the fact that monks accused of abuse remain in the abbey. Many in the outside World cannot fathom how the other monks can continue to live side by side with offenders. Survivors especially do not understand why the order does not chuck the abusers out. "Maybe some day they will understand," Abbot John Klassen told NCR. When Benedictine monks are professed, we take them "for better or for worse," he said.

"We are a family."

That may be the reason the monks are allowed to stay, but it doesn't make life inside the abbey any easier. The abbey scandals illustrate the tension that many Catholics feel when they try to weigh the bishops' "one strike and you're out" policy alongside the church's call for forgiveness of the sinner and for efforts to reconcile the hurting community. At St. John's, abusive monks have been removed from all parish and academic duties and restricted in their social contacts, their travel and their use of any university or prep school facility where they could have unsupervised contact with students.

Never in the history of the abbey have "we experienced a more acute awareness of the frailty of human nature and of the need for repentance, forgiveness, atonement and renewal," Klassen said.

Over the last seven months all of the abbey's 190 plus men have suffered because of past deeds of 13 or so monks, but most have also suffered compassionately alongside them. A few monks with whom NCR met in September spoke of the "low-grade depression" that gripped their household last spring, and is still around. They credited a renewed and deeper prayer life for saving them in their most despondent days. Some are looking to the future with less fear and more hope.

`Painful, devastating'

"As painful, embarrassing and devastating as this has been, it's also making us connect much more deeply," said Br. Paul-Vincent Niebauer, associate dean of students and drama coach at St. John's Prep School. "It's never going to not be there. It will come up with every prospective novice, at the dinner table, in chapter and with your biological family," said the monk who spent 13 years as a circus ringmaster before coming under the Benedictine tent.

But Niebauer believes Klassen has acted forthrightly. "He's not deflecting it or ignoring it." The abbot has handled the situation so well that Niebauer fears he may be 'transferred to another abbey or to Rome. In August the Conference of Major Superiors of Men elected Klassen as one of its three new board members. Klassen, 53, is beginning his third year as abbot; his four predecessors served an average of 12 years each.

Besides sparking anger and anxiety, the scandals call into question the future of St. John's, which includes a university, a preparatory school, a publishing house and an ecumenical institute, each of which appears in good health.

Nevertheless, "St. John's is at risk," Fr. Donald Cozzens said earlier this year after ending 10 months as a visiting scholar at the Ecumenical and Cultural Institute. Its monks--like priests across the nation and abroad--are experiencing "the dark night of the spirit," said the noted author, psychologist and visiting professor at John Carroll University in Cleveland.

Cozzens is right. St. John's risks a drop in enrollment, alumni loyalty and fundraising capability just as it is launching a $7 million drive to build a 60-bed guesthouse for visitors and retreatants. The guesthouse has been on the abbey's wish list since 1979.

Last spring the admissions departments of the university and high school breathed easier when each met its anticipated goals. St. John's. University netted 1,862 students compared with 1,860 in 2001 and its sister school, the College of St. Benedict in nearby St. Peter, Minn., enrolled more than 2,000. "I think long term we'll be fine, but we'd be foolish not to consider this may impact on the future," said Mary Milbert, dean of admissions for both colleges.

Even if the three schools can draw the same numbers in the coming academic year, attracting new monks to teach in them remains crucial if St. John's is to remain a center of Benedictine spirituality and scholarship as it has for 14 decades. Currently one novice and five junior monks

have joined the abbey.

Fr. Columba Stewart, director of formation, has received inquiries from quite a few prospective candidates--"several of them quite serious," he said. He regretted that two novices had left, one on the eve of his profession. The scandals "played a role," he said.