201-337-7596
All are welcome!
1) To give people a non-judgmental and safe forum in which they can express their thoughts and feelings about the clergy sex abuse crisis.
2) To provide healing for individuals, our parish community, the Catholic Church at large, and especially victims of abuse.
3) To develop an action plan to facilitate transparency and increase awareness of the problem and its effects.
If you wish to report an allegation of sexual misconduct, please contact the Victim Assistant Coordinator of the Archdiocesan Department for the Protection of the Faithful. You are also strongly encouraged to contact the Bergen County Prosecutor’s Office. If you suspect a child is in imminent danger of sexual abuse, dial 911.
Newark Archdiocese Department for the Protection of the Faithful:
201-407-3256
Bergen County Prosector’s Office:
201-646-2300
To report known or suspected child abuse:
The Division of Child Protection and Permanency (DCPP) 24-hour child abuse hotline:
1-877-652-2873
New Jersey Clergy Abuse Hotline:
1-855-363-6548
For the Newark Archdiocese Department for the Protection of the Faithful website, click here.
TO VICTIMS OF CLERGY SEXUAL ABUSE:
If you are the victim of clergy sexual abuse, we want to say how incredibly sorry we are that the very people who should have been your protectors and trustworthy spiritual guides have violated you and betrayed a sacred trust. There are no possible excuses for such deviant and sinful behavior. We are also profoundly sorry that some of the leaders of the Catholic Church were so remiss in their duties to confront the offending parties, take the appropriate measures to stop the abuse, and bring the perpetrators to justice. We wholeheartedly support your efforts to find, if possible, some measure of healing and wholeness, even if the abuse occurred many years ago. We absolutely decry such despicable behavior, and it is our hope that our prayers for your healing, our vocal condemnation of the abuse, and our commitment to a program like this one will let you know that we stand in solidarity with you. It is our sincere hope and intention to raise awareness, prevent future abuse, and call our Church leaders to task to remain vigilant, transparent, and accountable.
This page was last updated on July 11, 2024.
Great News!
See the article, "On the 'Disappearance' of Sexual Abuse by Clergy," to the left under the Documents and Article heading. The current trend is very encouraging, and it is proof that the Catholic Church's efforts to eliminate sexual abuse are working.
Previous News and Healing Our Church History:
The core team members who were working on presenting this program to the parish had begun meeting again in the summer of 2021 after a hiatus of more than a year that was caused by the pandemic. While we were eager to get this program up and running, we soon realized that a more pressing issue to deal with was how to "normalize" the parish again by getting parishioners back into the pews on Sunday and involved in other parish events and activities. Being a high priority, a lot of time and effort was directed to this goal. It took time for the fruits of those efforts to manifest.
Consequently, we have placed Healing Our Church on hold indefinitely. If anything changes, we will post an update here, and there will be bulletin and Mass announcements. In the meantime, we are keeping this webpage intact because the resources it contains are still helpful and relevant.
Healing Our Church is the name of a program that is part of Cardinal Tobin’s Forward in Faith Together campaign, which is described on the Newark Archdiocese’s website as “a broad pastoral program that seeks to establish a foundation for healing to help alleviate the hurt and mistrust within our community, to reinforce the changes we have begun to implement, and to provide a firm foundation for our missionary lives. This program will ensure that we thrive as a community of missionary disciples, companions of our Risen Lord.”
Both Forward in Faith Together and Healing Our Church are responses to the sexual abuse crisis that has occurred in the Catholic Church.
Healing Our Church is a small group, six-week program. Its focus is two-fold: “We identify and explore the factors leading to sexual abuse and cover-up in the Church. We claim our role in rebuilding our Church.” Each week has a specific theme and consists of a prayer for healing, a survivor’s story, prayerful reflection, theme-related Scripture, breaking open the Word, and action. The program will not only provide people with a forum in which they can talk about the crisis and its impact on them, it will also seek to motivate people to action that will contribute to the healing process not only for them but for the entire Church.
The schedule for the program is:
Session 1: Facing the Truth
Session 2: Healing Our Wounds
Session 3: Rebuilding Our Church
Session 4: Why Should I Remain a Catholic?
Session 5: We Believe
Session 6: A Way Forward
If you would like information about the program, please contact our Pastoral Associate, Joel S. Peters. He can be reached at 201-337-7596, ext. 315 or at [email protected].
On November 10, 2020, the Vatican released a 449-page document about former Cardinal McCarrick, whose story of his sexual abuse of seminarians broke in the summer of 2018. To download a copy of the report, scroll down to the Documents heading on the left side of this page.
Our Pastoral Associate, Joel. S. Peters, is preparing various informational resources (e.g., Q&A, timeline, excerpts) for use by anyone who, for whatever reason, does not want to or cannot read through the Report itself. As soon as those resources are done they will be posted here.
Who is the target audience for “Healing Our Church”?
Everyone is. We are all part of the Mystical Body of Christ, the Church. We are all affected by the scandal, and we are all in need of healing.
I am so shocked and horrified by the scandal that I have since questioned my faith and/or I have considered no longer being a Catholic.
Then Healing Our Church is precisely what you need. It will provide a forum for you to talk about your feelings, share your thoughts, and hear what others have to say. It will give you the means to process what you are feeling and thinking. More importantly, it won’t stop there. It will also involve an action plan to bring about healing and wholeness for you, for others, and for the Church as a whole. Rather than have your completely justified feelings about the issue lead to something unproductive or negative, it would be a wonderful thing to turn them around and use them instead to propel you to act in a rehabilitative, constructive way.
Please consider that renouncing your faith and participation as a Catholic will separate you from the source of spiritual life, namely the Eucharist and the other sacraments. Doing so will effectively be giving the victory to the forces of evil, who surely want to see you separated from Christ.
I don’t know if I am emotionally or mentally in a position to actively discuss the scandal.
We understand completely, but we nonetheless heartily encourage you to take part in the discussion process because we are confident that you will benefit by it and that you will have something useful to contribute to it. You might be pleasantly surprised at how much healing it brings to you and to others. You might also be surprised at how the program can bring focus to the issue for you and help you to direct your emotional energy or angst about it into something positive that can move all of us towards wholeness.
It's not my problem. After all, I didn’t cause the scandal, so why should I help to fix it?
Since we are bound together spiritually as one Body of Christ, it becomes our collective issue to address — regardless of who is at fault for creating it. It’s not entirely unlike a family dynamic in which one member acts detrimentally, yet everyone in the household suffers the consequences to a greater or lesser extent because of the bonds that exist between them. You are invited to become part of the solution to the problem because we need you to, because you are affected by it on some level, because your spiritual family members are affected by it, because staying and fighting for what we believe is the right thing to do, and because the Body of Christ will only suffer further damage if some of its members do nothing or, worse, abandon the household of faith.