Report Finds L' Arche Founder Jean Vanier Sexually Abused 6 women

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So how come nobody brought this up while the man was alive?

I am always suspicious when they wait until after the person is deceased.

A deceased person cannot defend himself.
 
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Actually, the investgation did start before he died.

@OraLabora, me too! Heartbroken, actually. So glad my beloved Fr. Nouwen is not alive to see this.
If my life circumstances were different(I.e. I wasn’t married) I would have worked with L’Arche in a NY minute.
 
I still think it’s a bit late. I do not have any particular feelings one way or the other about Mr. Vanier as I only heard of him at the time of his death, but as an attorney I think a person has a right to be confronted with accusations against him.

I also think that going forward, all these charismatic leader figures within the Church need to have much more oversight than they’ve apparently been having for decades, for the protection of everyone involved including both themselves and potential victims.
 
I don’t believe L’Arche is an “apostolate” per se. In fact, I do not believe it has any formal connection to the Church.
Jean Vanier was a lay man.
 
Which is why I said, per se
I just reiterated that I don’t believe there is an “official” connection to the Church.
 
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What’s with this priest Fr. Thomas Philippe who is also accused of doing some untoward things and seems to have started Mr. Vanier on the road to all this?

It seems like the Church actually removed the guy from ministry in 1952 but he was still allowed to run around doing some priestly stuff?

This whole thing is making no sense. In this case one apparently had a “bad priest” and the Church actually removed the priest from ministry and yet he still manages to somehow have a hand in fostering all this scandal?
 
I’ve just got back from mass and the priest mentioned this at the start of the service. He urged us to pray for those abused and those who have been scandalised by it. There was a video link sent by vanier to a youth conference I helped out at just last year. I had never heard of him maybe because I’m new to the church but certainly got a sense of how well regarded he was. What a shame.
 
As for why nobody came forward when he was alive - I honestly think they would have thought “what’s the point, nobody will believe us against him.“ The way he was spoken about at the conference I was at, was along the lines of ‘ he’s on the way to sainthood’. None of the reactions to other speakers were comparable. According to the charity, it appears the alleged abuse was explained to the victims within the context of some type of mysticism - rather like what Rasputin did. A huge psychological hold over these women
 
I genuinely gasped when I read the first article about this. Sad news.

That said, thank goodness none of the sexual misconduct was with a person with a disability, considering the people he had access to. And overall, the pattern of sexual misconduct described is pretty predictable. A single man’s sexually manipulative relationships with women ran from about 1970 – 2005, and apparently followed a pattern of sexual and spiritual confusion set by his own “spiritual mentor” (a sexually inappropriate priest: Fr. Thomas Philippe).

So… an unmarried man otherwise seeming to be working to try to do good in the world (helping so many people with disabilities), seemingly twisted by the enemy, working through a post-‘sexual revolution’ culture and a spiritually misguided priest who engaged in sexual misconduct himself, to sexual misconduct with women.

Hope these non-disabled women find the support they need. Hope the disabled individuals who currently benefit from L’Arche will continue to benefit from L’Arche. Hope this story will help other men (and women) wake up to the fact that temptations to sexual relations outside of marriage are a trap that will harm themselves and others, and possibly scandalize others even after their deaths. And hope that Jean Vanier was repentant and loved God to the best of his ability, and is resting in the beatific vision now.
 
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A couple of thoughts spring up.

One: that it is so easy for a spiritual director to fall into the trap of becoming a “guru”. I’ve seen it in the monastic world and other religious orders. It’s a very dangerous trap.

Two: we all have areas of dark shadow and of light. His treatment of the handicapped remains a shining example of giving the marginal their dignity. His sins (and we all are sinners) shouldn’t diminish his work with the handicapped. His sins just underscore his humanity.

Three: that the Church’s sexual teaching is followed far more often in the breech than it is in the observance. As the sexual scandals pile up, I wonder if the Church’s sexual teaching is really intended for humans, because it’s all-or-nothing approach and the micromanagement of each sex act seems to me more suited to angels than humans.

And please don’t tell me this is because of the “sexual revolution”. Mr. Vanier’s spiritual director was sanctioned for the same thing in the nineteen fifties. Moreover I was adopted in the 1950s off of a ward for unwed mothers.

These scandals have shaken my faith in the Church’s ability to show us the way to a healthy sexuality. There appears to be something very, very rotten at the core. The sexual teachings of the Church are very nice in theory. Reality is a different matter. Maybe as an ideal to strive for, but it seems to me to be the area of Church teaching we (humanity) have the most difficulty observing. It wouldn’t be so bad if it didn’t involve scandal at the highest level; those who are supposed to show us the way are showing us they are not much better than the “populo barbaro”.

Interestingly I read a quote from Jean Vanier that stuck in my mind; I forget where I read it but it was something like this: “Man’s biggest wound is his sexuality”. How ironic…

I’ve had some other reasons recently that I won’t go into, that have hugely disappointed me in this regard and have shaken my faith to the core.
 
OraLabora said:
The sexual teachings of the Church are very nice in theory. Reality is a different matter. Maybe as an ideal to strive for, but it seems to me to be the area of Church teaching we (humanity) have the most difficulty observing. It wouldn’t be so bad if it didn’t involve scandal at the highest level
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First, I have empathy that you are having a crisis of faith over these issues. I was bothered by this Vanier story myself, because it seems like someone in the Church actually tried to do the right thing by removing the priest from ministry back in the 1950s, but somehow he inserted himself back into ministry again and this was allowed to go on. My mind boggled at that. I still don’t understand how it occurred.

Second, there are some people who reach a point in their life, whether early or late, where the sexual teachings of the Church seem reasonably doable. At this point in my life they have been doable for a while. And I’m actually glad they are there, because they are causing me to lead a better life than I likely would be if the Church just said ah go on and don’t worry about it. They aren’t an impossible ideal for me, they make good sense. I actually shudder to think how I might be living right now without this governor on my motor. When I was 18 I could not make any sense of them mostly because society was diametrically opposed to them, and I don’t think that’s a good argument for losing faith in the teachings.

People have to get it through their minds that there are things in life more important than sex. The Church and some other religions are like the last voices crying in the wilderness about that. The fact that a priest failed to live up to the teaching, perhaps because he himself was abused during his formative years, doesn’t make the teaching any less true.
 
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OraLabora said:
The sexual teachings of the Church are very nice in theory. Reality is a different matter.
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The same can be said about a lot of teachings, such as “love thy enemy.” The path may be narrow, but not impossible. God knows what we can bear, let’s not sell ourselves short. Personally, I’m at the point where the more wicked, diabolical, abominable blows the Church is dealt, the more sense it makes that the true church of Christ would be subject to such a relentless, neverending, evil onslaught. Stand firm… do not lose hope, do not lose faith.
 
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Jean Vanier was not a priest as I understand. Not to minimize what happened, but what makes what Jean Vanier so did unusual and so surprising? Was he married? Did he use his position to coerce woman into these relationships?
 
OraLabora said:
Three: that the Church’s sexual teaching is followed far more often in the breech than it is in the observance. As the sexual scandals pile up, I wonder if the Church’s sexual teaching is really intended for humans, because it’s all-or-nothing approach and the micromanagement of each sex act seems to me more suited to angels than humans.
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As a convert to Catholicism, I find this comment very strange. It is not that I agree or disagree, I just have trouble understanding it. Being raised Christian, but not Catholic, I will say that non-Catholic Christians don’t perhaps “tempt fate” like this. I mean woman are approaching Jean Vanier who is a famous non-cleric and unmarried man (I think he was unmarried) in a non-professional setting to get life and spiritual advice…wow…Growing up, I was taught that this was tempting fate in a big way.

Growing up non-Catholic I could see that churches put cultural guards in place to make sure somebody like Jean Vanier never had the chance to be a guru to lots of woman. Just my thoughts…

To tie into to your comment. I was raised to believe some men simply would not act like angels, and you must plan for that and the religious culture was created taking that into account.
 
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OraLabora said:
Three: that the Church’s sexual teaching is followed far more often in the breech than it is in the observance. As the sexual scandals pile up, I wonder if the Church’s sexual teaching is really intended for humans, because it’s all-or-nothing approach and the micromanagement of each sex act seems to me more suited to angels than humans.
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Psychologically, we are more likely to remember bad things than good. I suppose the profound failure of one person will overshadow the achievement of the other 99.
Just because some fail to live up to these standards doesn’t mean they can’t be achieved. Many do live up to them.
OraLabora said:
I’ve had some other reasons recently that I won’t go into, that have hugely disappointed me in this regard and have shaken my faith to the core.
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Though I’m not Catholic myself, I’ve heard about L’Arche and the good work it does since I was in my late teens and the news horrified me too.
Though not getting the same treatment by the media as the Catholic Church (until last year), child sex abuse and the cover ups in Protestant churches (none I know personally) shook my confidence. It was one of the reasons I avoided church for years.
There’s a prominent advocate for sex abuse survivors in Evangelicalism (though now she’s belongs to a confessional Lutheran denomination) who went through something similar. She had doubts about her faith after her former Baptist church failed to report an child abuser. She was smeared for being critical of the handling of the case. She eventually regained her faith after seeing that the real problem is a lack of accountability and a mentality that wants to cover up rather than expose an offender for fear reputation damage or the offender is influential. Unfortunately, there are bad people. They lurk everywhere. In churches, schools and arenas. In positions of power or not. What churches need is a robust system of checks and safeguarding procedures. In our Fallen world, we can’t stop every bad thing but we can do a lot to prevent as many as possible.
 
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jack63 said:
I will say that non-Catholic Christians don’t perhaps “tempt fate” like this. I mean woman are approaching Jean Vanier who is a famous non-cleric and unmarried man (I think he was unmarried) in a non-professional setting to get life and spiritual advice…wow…Growing up, I was taught that this was tempting fate in a big way.
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I am waiting for the report to come out to see what he actually did. While clearly him having sexual relations outside marriage was against Church teaching, given that he was a single man and not under any vow of celibacy afaik, and that he was further not a priest, not a mental health counselor, and primarily focused on running an organization for the care of disabled adults whom he did not abuse, there has to be more to it than just him having unchaste long-term sexual relationships with non-disabled adult women. From what I have read so far, some of these women were his work assistants, which would make his behavior very inappropriate, and some were religious sisters presumably under vows of chastity, which would make his behavior extremely inappropriate. It also suggests that maybe these women weren’t all just flocking to him for guru purposes.

In any event, it’s just another case of a charity that does good things founded by a guy with clay feet. I saw a fundraiser for Covenant House recently which is apparently still going strong and helping youth decades after its founder resigned in disgrace amidst credible allegations of sexual misconduct. Perhaps the lesson is that people are usually not all good or all bad and that power corrupts, which makes the actual saints we do have like Mother Theresa and Padre Pio (who was repeatedly investigated for alleged improper conduct with women and nothing was ever found) to be that much more special.
 
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