JEAN VANIER – MOURNING A
REPUTATION
Around
Easter last year Jean Vanier, the founder of the l’Arche communities for people
living with intellectual disabilities, died, aged 90, and I wrote in this
column: “Jean defined his vocation as ‘revealing the beauty of people who are
wounded’. It is the sort of sentence you will not find even in the best meaning
of our laws. In fact, many people will
not even know what you are talking about.
Yet there it is: the cornerstone of l’Arche. It is about helping people who are living
with disabilities to discover their gifts and rejoice in them and share them
with the world”.
This vision
inspired me and many others and there are now 154 communities of l’Arche around
the world. Those of us who knew Jean came to revere him as a great witness of
the gospel and an inspiration in revealing what lay hidden in the lives of
handicapped people.
But now,
less than twelve months later, another picture has emerged, one that destroys
the one we lived with for so long. After a painstaking process of investigation
by outside professionals the present leaders of the International Federation of
l’Arche have released a report which reveals that over a period of thirty years
Jean had relations with women each of who ‘report that he initiated sexual
behaviours with them, usually in the context of spiritual accompaniment. Some
of these women have been deeply wounded by these experiences’.
If we
mourned last year over the death of a great and holy man, we now mourn over the
death of his reputation. His achievements were colossal but now they have to
stand with this revision of the man himself.
How could this have happened? How could someone who was so sensitive to
the sufferings of the poor and the disabled himself inflict suffering on people
who were vulnerable? There are no grounds for saying he took advantage of
disabled people. The women were not in l’Arche and they were adults so it could
perhaps be said the relationship was consensual. This is not the view of the
women who, courageously and individually, answered the questions the
investigators put to them. They each felt manipulated by the spiritual context
of their encounters with Jean.
Only today,
by chance, I came across a letter of Jean to me in 1989. He was taking time out
in a monastery in Belgium and he wrote, ‘Tonight I feel the joy of Jesus and
want so much to give Him thanks for everything and I feel a great desire that
we may know His goodness and love.’ When I first read those words thirty years
ago I am sure I felt encouraged and shared his joy. Now, rereading them, I feel
confused and deeply sad. I cannot begin to understand what has happened.
Someone we looked up to had this secret life where he was hurting others. The report commissioned by l’Arche concludes,
‘It will take more time and work, with help from outside L'Arche, to try and
understand this part of our history and the roots of such behaviours’. Is it
possible for a person to be imaginative, generous and devoted to others while
at the same time be deviant and manipulative? What a question to try to answer.
1 March 2020 Lent Sunday 1
Gen 2:7-9; 3:1-7 Rom
5:12-19 Matt
4:1-11
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