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A Reconciling Gift: Priests and Post-Abortion Ministry

by Vicki Thorn 

Two years after Roe v. Wade, the U.S. bishops laid out a prophetic vision in their first Pastoral Plan for Pro-Life Activities, calling for a three-pronged response within the Church to the legalization of abortion.

The first element was education on the sanctity of all life, from the moment of conception until natural death. The second involved empowering the people in the pew to become active participants in the legislative process. The third challenge was to provide compassionate care to those facing crisis pregnancies and to provide ministry for those who had been involved in abortions.

The bishops’ foresight to care for those wounded by abortion was especially striking, because virtually nothing was known then about the aftermath of abortion. But the bishops were all confessors, and in confession, women and men had bared their souls, revealing the pain and confusion that follow an abortion. The bishops knew in their pastoral hearts that something had to be done to help these people heal.

Project Rachel was developed in response to that call, and at the heart of our post-abortion ministry is the Sacrament of Reconciliation. Yet in this Year for Priests, it’s important for all of us to recognize that a priest’s ministry in the confessional also brings many blessings to him.

When I began to contemplate founding Project Rachel, the first group I consulted within my diocese after receiving the archbishop’s blessing was the priests. I asked a number of priests I knew the following question: “Have you ever encountered abortion in the confessional?”

Each and every one of them said yes!

My second question was, “Did you feel you were able to really help her?”

Again their answer was unanimous, and it was “no”!

Every one of them felt there was something they didn’t know that would have helped them to be of more assistance, and a large number of priests from the diocese attended Project Rachel’s very first seminar.

In the beginning, it was interesting to me that women who called seeking help did not want to begin with a mental health professional but rather with a priest to deal with the spiritual issues they were facing. From the beginning priests, were at the heart of this work.

Over time, having trained many priests to do this work here in the U.S. and in other countries, I am always touched by the commitment of the priests to do this work and their willingness to go out of their way to help wounded women and men, even making house calls.

Conversely, in their ministry to these men and women suffering after an abortion, the priest in a deeply personal way encounters the powerful grace of reconciliation and healing. He is reaffirmed in his priesthood. As some have said to me, “This is what I was ordained to do!”

One priest shared with me that he had hit a dead end in his ministry. He was confused and lost and had decided to leave the priesthood. His letter to the bishop was finished and ready to be delivered the next day when the telephone rang. It was a woman who needed to reconcile an abortion loss. The priest agreed to meet her the next day and then decided he should walk with her through the process, not wanting her to feel abandoned by him leaving. When they finished, he tore up his letter – he had rediscovered the gift of his priesthood.

Another priest wrote that his involvement with Project Rachel “has taught me how to be a priest.”

“It informs every aspect of my ministry, it sheds real light on every sacrament and liturgy,” he said. He continued:

It has let me see and brought me to know the healing presence of Christ; no longer for me a belief, nor a desire but a fact. It has taught me how to seek, receive and impart the peaceful, restorative comfort of God’s love, and also how it is that we can really live in holy communion. I have also seen it repeatedly bring clarity and strength to the lives and endeavors of the other people who are involved in its work.

In a time when the priesthood is under attack, the priest’s grace of being a confessor in such difficult situations is especially affirming.

Pope John Paul II eloquently described the confessor with the following words:

Just as at the altar where he celebrates the Eucharist and just as in each one of the sacraments, so the priest, as the minister of penance, acts “in persona Christi.” The Christ whom he makes present and who accomplishes the mystery of the forgiveness of sins is the Christ who appears as the brother of man, the merciful high priest, faithful and compassionate, the shepherd intent on finding the lost sheep, the physician who heals and comforts, the one master who teaches the truth and reveals the ways of God, the judge of the living and the dead, who judges according to the truth and not according to appearances. …

This is undoubtedly the most difficult and sensitive, the most exhausting and demanding ministry of the priest, but also one of the most beautiful and consoling.

The priest is gift to the penitent and is himself gifted in this encounter with the Father of Mercies.

How blessed we all are by this gift.

 

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(The views expressed in this column are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the positions of Headline Bistro or the Knights of Columbus.)