Hen’s Teeth

Everything Is Stories

History, Personal Journals, Society & Culture

4.8 • 606 Ratings

🗓️ 18 June 2024

⏱️ 73 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

*This episode contains strong descriptions of sexual abuse. Listener discretion is advised. Susan Pavlak is at work hospicing the Catholic Church, and after spending her youth in the crosshairs of a sexual predator, found solace in forgiveness and truth. Pavlak describes how she reconciles her history of abuse with her continued faith in the Catholic Church and the goodness it provides - and how that faith would lead her to Gil Gustafson. A former priest, Gustafson has become Susan’s unlikely partner in a quest to shine light on the church's darkest secrets. In this episode, both describe their troubling experiences on opposite sides of abuse, how they came together as friends to heal, and their push for accountability. --- Produced by Mike Martinez, Tyler Wray, and Grace Heerman. Music by Mike Etten. Sound design by George Drake, Jr. Originally produced by Stephanie Lepp for her podcast Reckonings, this episode has been re-edited and expanded to include all new audio and sound design. For more about this story, including photos by Casey Steffens, visit everythingisstories.com. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	The comfortable way to deal with these stories is to say they are about them.
0:10.0	The way to understand these stories is to say they are about us.
0:14.0	No, no.
0:16.0	No.
0:18.0	The comfortable way to deal with these stories is to say they are about them.
0:22.6	The way to understand these stories is to know they are about us.
0:28.6	The way to understand these stories is to know they are about us. This episode contains strong descriptions of sexual abuse.
0:47.3	Listener discretion is advised.
0:59.8	70 times seven. the scriptures is what Jesus says.
1:01.2	How often must I forgive?
1:05.5	Well, in the first place Christians can't have enemies.
1:06.2	It's forbidden.
1:11.6	You can have people with whom you engage in various ways. We can't have enemies because enemy denies the divinity in the human creation of the Creator.
1:18.6	The person who tells the story is ejected and dismissed.
1:24.6	So the institution exists to perpetuate itself, and the institution exists for the many,
1:31.3	not for the few. And it exists for the many who hold the power, not for the few who don't.
1:39.8	Is there a way to reform the church while also maintaining the hierarchy that exists that has its benefits?
1:50.1	No.
1:50.5	There is no way for the church as it is currently constituted as sort of a Roman Empire model of hierarchy to reinvigorate itself without completely dismantling those
2:09.9	structures. I think of the work that I do as hospice, hospiceing the church, which doesn't even know it's dying. The people who have
2:21.9	stock in what the church has effectively offered over many, many thousands of years, the sweet
2:32.2	basket of goodness that exists even in the dying Hulk.
	...

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