Dr. Jedidiah’s Diary
Dr. Jedidiah is a psychiatrist who loves traveling, meeting new people, and exploring different cultures. As a single father who lost his wife to drug overdose 10 years ago, he has not been his old perky self for the last decade. During those hard years, he has met hundreds of, thousands of people from various walks of life around all over the world. Meeting new people and listening to their stories outside his office have given him different feelings from the ones through the formal encounter groups or support groups for therapy. These people he has accidentally come across were the paths through which Dr. Jedidiah could look back on his own life, being truly honest with himself. Here is Dr. Jedidiah’s monologue that has left him with some food for thoughts in life….or a fodder to justify his own mistakes in the past.
Episode # 38. Cloak of Confidentiality
I remember and see those two years as the most shameful and bizarre experience in my life as a psychiatrist. Every Wednesday, my afternoon was fully occupied by this meeting with Father Newman at his request. He had been in this small Roman Catholic parish for more than 5 years. Each time we had the afternoon get-together, I was feeling not only close to this honest and down-to-earth Father, but also impressed by his candid criticism about corrupted priests and ministers of some old churches. Father Newman seemed to be the most kind and soft-spoken person in the world who would give his everything to redeem anyone sinned or persecuted in the dark.
It was a cold winter night that I got a call from my friend Will, who worked as a human right activist in an anti-abuse group. He sounded a bit drunk that night but pretty clear with his point to make on the other side of the phone. “Hey, you might think I’m nuts, but…. listen. We need you to help us. More than a hundred and fifty Catholics here in this church should be saved from this evil Father Newman.” Since I knew that Will was not the kind of guy who would cook up a malignant story to slander somebody, I became all ears to his desperate voice. I interrupted him there. “Where are you, Will? Are you at home? You want me to come over to see you now? Well…guess we’d better meet up tomorrow when you are sober.” Will was way too adamant to avoid the serious talk that night.
The church was like a haven in the community where a lot of people in need or in pain from life come to pray any day, any time of a week. As might be expected of any religious group of people, the church was like the last resort for those helpless souls to turn to, and their precious Father Newman was the one and only ‘divine being’ that could jawbone each and every person there into living their lives in God’s providence. No one ever doubted their deep-rooted faith and belief in Father’s Newman numinous presence in their lives. Until my friend Will brought up the issue that night when he called me, never had I questioned Father Newman’s sincerity or integrity as a priest. However, what Will said to me that night had been heavily weighing on my mind for months and months. “It’d be another sin if I kept quiet about this filthy truth. You remember Father Lopez who got excommunicated from this church a year ago? I was devastated to see him being expelled like that just because he disclosed the sordid secret of Father Newman that had been pent-up for a long time here in this church.”
Since Father Lopez had to leave the church as he revealed what happened to more than a dozen people there, those in trouble also started to leave the place one by one over the years. They were the very ones who went to confession about how Father Newman had railroaded them into falling a victim to his own evil course. For years, I had been an important part of their lives to stay sane back to their mental weal. My friend Will was no longer attending the church either. Thanks to his active support, those innocent people victimized by Newman were able to turn their cases and the information about clerical sexual abuse claims over to the lawful authorities. Although it may take some time for this change in clerical policy to be applied retroactively to all other former cases, I felt relieved to hear that Father Newman was defrocked.
I still feel so ashamed of being deceived by Father Newman. It’d still sound so lame and cowardly if I said I was just giving the man the benefit of the doubt, because nobody there at the church raised the issue or spoke up about it.
Expressions
1.
last resort: a
final course of action, used only when all else has failed
2. to jawbone
somebody into doing something: to speak forcefully and
persuasively to
3. numinous:
supernatural/
mysterious/ appealing to the higher emotions or to the aesthetic sense
4.
to keep quiet about something: refrain
from disclosing information about something; keep something secret
5. sordid: dirty/
involving ignoble actions and motives; arousing moral distaste and contempt
6. pent-up:
closely confined or held back
7. to go
to confession:
8. to railroad
somebody into doing something:
9. weal:
(antonym: woe) well-being
10.
retroactively: with
effect from a date in the past
11. to defrock…: deprive
(someone) of professional status or membership of a prestigious group
(*source of picture: Irish Times)
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