Dallas – SIMCHA FISHER

What I saw at a Byzantine Divine Liturgy

This Sunday, I was visiting some friends near Dallas, and we went to Divine Liturgy at St. Basil, a Ruthenian/Byzantine church in Irving, TX.

I’ve been to Masses in many languages, including Novus Ordo in Latin, and I’ve been to several Tradentine Masses, but this is the first time I’ve ever been to a Byzantine liturgy. I got some general advice from my friend Elisa about what to expect, and then I just resolved to keep my ears open, soak it in, and be cool. (Ruthenians are in communion with Rome, and it’s fine for a Roman Catholic to just hop in and go to Mass there. They have a metropolitan, but they acknowledge Francis as the Pope.)

We arrived in the middle of a churching, when a mother and her newborn baby are welcomed back forty days after the birth. I didn’t catch much of it, because I was dazzled by the church itself, not to mention by all the other babies who were loudly making themselves welcome.

Here is what I saw:

On the outside, it was a typical, barn-shaped Dallas building, long and rather low, with a long gable roof and a sort of portico attached to the front, with a slavic-looking steeple and cross perched rather oddly on top.

But here is the inside: The ceiling brilliant blue, the walls heavily stencilled and adorned, and the floor wood parquet, with a long carpet runner down the center, leading up to the iconostasis.

As I understand it [AND HERE I NEED TO STATE VERY STRONGLY THAT I KNOW VERY CLOSE TO ZERO ABOUT BYZANTINE LITURGY. I WELCOME THOSE WHO ARE MORE EDUCATED TO CORRECT ANY MISTAKES I MAKE IN WHAT FOLLOWS!], the iconostasis is a decorated screen or fence, with (as the name suggests) icons on it, separating the sanctuary and altar from the nave, where the congregation collects.

The iconostasis signifies the separation between Heaven and earth, and the Eucharist is consecrated on the Heaven side. But it’s not really a fence, because it has doors in it — two on the sides, which the deacon and the altar boys passed through several times, and a large central one, which the pastor went through. So during the liturgy, there is some passage or meeting or interchange between Heaven and earth.

This iconostasis has, among other things, the annunciation, the four evangelists, and two peacocks, which symbolize paradise, on the central gate.

On the wall behind the iconostasis is a huge icon of Mary Wider than the Cosmos. The blue ring with the stars and rays on it signifies the whole universe.

Much of Byzantine liturgy (and therefore iconography) is intended to correct the heresy that Jesus is divine but not really human, and so part of what’s being emphasized here is Mary’s real pregnancy with him. He was really God, but he was really a baby that was born from the body of this specific woman, so look at who she must be! [AGAIN, THIS IS ME FREEWHEELING WITH THEOLOGY A BIT! Take it all with a grain of salt.] She contains within her womb the uncontainable hugeness of God, and if you find that hard comprehend, that means you’re on the right track. Anyway, I gather that some of the friction between Byzantine and Roman churches comes from the fact that they were responding to and correcting different regional heresies, so they didn’t always agree on what needed to be emphasized.

On the ceiling is a huge icon of, if I remember correctly, Christ Pantocrator (“ruler of all,” all-powerful) or Christ the Teacher.

You can see the four evangelists, four angels, and clouds. The red means divinity and the blue means humanity. You can see that He has taken on the blue cloak of humanity and wrapped it around Himself. The book He is holding is the Gospel, and His hand is in a gesture of blessing that spell the name of Christ and also, with three fingers, signify the Trinity, and also, with the fingers touching each other, recall the joining of the human and divine in the Incarnation! I think maybe the clouds are just clouds, though.

There were numerous other icons on the walls, and the walls were painted. There was also an ornate chandelier with icons all around the outside and also the inside

There were no pews. There were chairs lined up along the walls on both sides, for old people and mothers with babies. The room was very full of people of all ages, some in jeans and t-shirts, some in long skirts. Some women wore head coverings, some did not. There were a few ultra-modest trad types and a few folks with blue and purple hair in asymmetrical cuts and funky glasses, but the majority were utterly average-looking suburbanites.

The first thing I noticed was that the entire congregation was in motion. At first I thought this was because there were so many babies, and so many parents were rocking and jiggling their little ones; but then I saw that people without babies were also swaying and weaving and shifting a lot, possibly because it was just a long time to be on your feet, but also because there was just a general sense of liveliness. That is the best I can explain it.

The liturgy invited much more participation from the people than the western liturgy I am used to. Just about everything, including the scripture readings and the intercessory prayers, is chanted or sung (I’m not really clear if there’s a difference), and the people chant right back at the priest or deacon all throughout the hour and a half.

Some people were loud and bold; some murmured; some kept their peace; some went in and out; a few sang in harmony; and there was an incredible noise of babies and children throughout the entire thing. It was a sort of two-layer Byzantine cake, the foundation being a vigorous population of happy, confident children and toddler who expected people to walk around them, which they did. You really couldn’t call it disruptive, since it was just part of the liturgy. Everything was loud, the chanting was loud, the babies were loud, even the censor had little bells on it, and they used a ton of incense. It was a lot! It wasn’t cacophony, and all the sounds were good sounds. But it was a lot.

The only time I really felt overwhelmed and wanted everyone to just stop for a second was right after receiving communion. I am very accustomed to being able to return to my seat, kneel down, and pray in quiet for at least a few minutes, and it was jarring and a little upsetting not to have that, but just to witness the continuous weltering stream of chanting and wandering around continue. That would take some getting used to.

You also cross yourself constantly. Just dozens of times. I never quite figured out which words triggered a sign of the cross, but there seemed to be several! I gave up trying to keep up and just did my best.

There were at least a few occasions when the priest and altar boys came out from the altar area and processed around the church. The altar boys carried some kind of long poles topped with icons framed in golden sunburst designs, and at various times during the liturgy, they moved these in particular ceremonial ways. This was fascinating and I need to learn more about what it all means. I also noticed people reaching out to touch the vestments of the priest as he went by. I believe this must be an echo of the woman reaching out to touch Jesus’ garment for healing (not that people expect healing, but the vestments are so close to the Eucharist), but I am not exactly sure.

When it was time to read the Gospel, all the kids streamed up to the front of the church. It wasn’t a big deal, and they didn’t do a special kiddie participation Q-and-A session or anything. Everyone just made room for the kids, and it was excellent. At other times, the kids went where they wanted to, including crawling around on the floor with icon coloring pages and little boxes of crayons. None of the kids were out of control or obnoxious, but they weren’t expected to be deathly silent, so they weren’t.

When people got tired of standing up, they simply sat down on the floor. When they felt like getting up, they got up. When they needed a break, or wanted to be in a different spot, they simply wandered over somewhere else. This did not create an atmosphere of irreverence, if that’s what you’re imagining. I love the Tridentine Mass, but every TLM I’ve ever been at has been an extremely different vibe from this Byzantine liturgy. Latin chant at its best tends to produce an ecstatic, elevated sensation that sort of puts you on your best spiritual behavior. Not in a bad way, but that’s what it does for me.

I don’t want to read too much into one, uneducated experience and say “this is what Byzantine liturgy is like” after a single visit, but I got the impression they kind of started with the idea that God loves them, and went from there. It’s just kind of inescapable. Everything about the liturgy is saturated with the assurance of the closeness and tenderness of God. It wasn’t necessarily an emotional experience, either. It’s just that everything they said and did proceeded from an assumption that God is close. At least that is how it seemed to me.

And this is weird, because one thing you’ll notice is that the congregation is constantly begging for mercy. Dozens of times: “Lord have mercy . . . Lord have mercy!” all throughout the liturgy. It was explained to me that this mercy is less “I’m a disgusting sinner, so please don’t punish me like you probably want to” but more “give us some more of that sweet kindness that you love to give to us.” There was mention of being harshly punished by God, but I think I recall it was in the context of a kind of slavic shrug, as if we all agreed that life is just like this. I guess you can tell that culturally, what I saw and heard made instinctual sense to me, even if I didn’t catch every theological detail.

The one part I can remember that was spoken, and not chanted, was the prayer before communion, and it really got me. I looked it up:

O Lord, I believe and profess that you are truly Christ,
The Son of the living God, who came into the world
To save sinners of whom I am the first.

Accept me today as a partaker of your mystical supper, O Son of God,
For I will not reveal your mystery to your enemies,
Nor will I give you a kiss as did Judas,
But like the thief I profess to you:

Remember me, O Lord, when you come in your kingdom.
Remember me, O Master, when you come in your kingdom.
Remember me, O Holy One, when you come in your kingdom.

May the partaking of your Holy mysteries, O Lord,
Be not for my judgment or condemnation,
But for the healing of my soul and body.

O Lord, I also believe and profess, that this,
Which I am about to receive,
Is truly your most precious Body, and your life-giving Blood,
Which, I pray, make me worthy to receive
For the remission of all my sins and for life everlasting. Amen

O God, be merciful to me, a sinner.
O God, cleanse me of my sins and have mercy on me.
O Lord, forgive me for I have sinned without number.

As I understand it, this is the equivalent of the “Great Amen” that we say in the Latin Rite. I may print this out and bring it with me to Mass, because it really resonated.

The bread they consecrate for the Eucharist is leavened bread. Little cubes of the bread are added to the chalice, and when you approach the priest with your arms folded across your chest, he places a tiny portion into your mouth with a spoon (post-covid, everyone gets their own spoon!). Children and even babies also receive.

And then everybody wanders back to their spot singing, with quite a lot of gusto, as they should:

We have seen the true light
We have received the heavenly Spirit
We have found the true faith
and we worship the undivided Trinity
for the Trinity has saved us.

My friend pointed out that a lot of the liturgy speaks from the point of view of the already-risen Lord, from whose point of view our salvation has already been accomplished. Here we are, stuck in linear time, still trying to work out the details of how we make it through our life; but in truth, the end of the story has already been worked out, and it’s kind of only a matter of whether we want to be there or not. The doors are wide open.

The dismissal prayer got me, too. The priest says:

“May Christ our true God have mercy on us and save us, for Christ is good and loves us all.”

Can we . . . is there a way we can make that be part of the liturgy in every rite, and maybe part of every sacrament? I know there are people who just straight up don’t know this, and need to hear it.

So that’s what it was like! Also, someone rode a horse to liturgy, because it’s Texas and why not.

If you have the chance to go to a Byzantine liturgy, I heartily recommend it! It was fairly easy look around me and get the general idea of what I was supposed to be doing, and I never once felt like people were looking at me and wondering what I was doing there. I think this is typical of a Byzantine parish. They also had a very nice coffee hour afterwards, with babies galore, and lots of people brought extra snacks and homemade coffee cake and all kinds of things.

If you are Byzantine, I’d love to hear more about some of the things that went over my head! And please never forget how lucky you are! I do love my church, and I’m grateful for our excellent pastor, but I would give an arm to have a Byzantine church in driving distance.

Victim says Legion lied to police about her abuse

Legion falsely told police the victim didn’t want a criminal investigation;
classified criminal sexual abuse as “boundary violations”

By Damien Fisher
The Legionaries of Christ have published a list of credibly accused priests, and they claim they are open to hearing testimony from more survivors of abuse. But what happens when a victim does contact them with a complaint? Are the allegations taken seriously? How accurate is their list? Do they tell the truth to law enforcement about allegations of criminal abuse?

Ashley (not her real name) thought she could help the Church when she made the agonizing decision to come forward in 2015 and tell authorities about the sexual abuse she suffered from a Legionaries of Christ priest as a middle schooler in the 1990s.

“I wanted to protect anyone he might still be hurting,” she said.

In September of 2015, Ashley and her attorney, Tom Brandt, met with Legion priest Fr. Peter Hopkins and another Legion priest to formally report that the Legion priest assigned to the Highlands, a private Legion school she attended in the Dallas area, repeatedly groomed and molested her in the confessional. The abuse she suffered, as she described it, rises to the level of a criminal offense. But when the diocese released its list of credibly accused abusers last year, Ashley’s abuser wasn’t on it, and he wasn’t on the list the Legion published in December.

Both the Legion officials we spoke to and the Dallas officials we contacted called the criminal abuse “boundary violations.”

Dallas Diocesan Chancellor Mary Edlund, who used that phrase in a letter to Child Protective Services, was not at the meeting. “The diocese refused to send a representative to our meeting,” Ashley said.

Ashley thought coming forward would protect other young girls. She thought that reporting her abuse would alarm the Church, pushing them to investigate further, root out corruption, and reform the Legion. She expected someone to pursue her abuser.

“I was an optimist,” she said.

When Ashley saw the records, she realized the Legion apparently lied to police about her case, and about her alleged abuser.

“They really are not reformed,” she said.

Ashley agreed to tell us her story on the condition of anonymity. The alleged abuser has yet to be criminally charged, and so we are withholding his identity at this time. He has not responded to our requests for an interview. According to the information we have obtained, he is no longer a priest. He is the subject of an active police investigation, as recently as last month.

Ashley went through years of self-doubt, guilt, and shame before she finally came forward. For years after her abuse, she didn’t understand that what she had endured was abuse.

“I didn’t realize there was a crime committed,” she said.

“If your mom asks what you are doing in here, tell her ‘spiritual direction,” the priest said.

The priest spent months grooming her when she was a middle school student at the Highlands, mostly in the confessional. The assaults took place in 1993 or 1994, around the time Ashley was 12 to 13 years old, according to the statement she gave to the Legion, to the Dallas Diocese, and eventually to police. The priest was a family relation of school officials, and he celebrated mass and heard the confessions of the students, according to her statement. The Highlands School in Irving is a private pre-K through grade 12 school that is part of the Regnum Christi network of schools. Regnum Christi is the lay apostolate of the Legion.

Ashley was going to confession every two to four weeks during this time, usually after school. After one confession, she went around the confessional to thank the priest, and that is when he first forced her to sit on his lap, she said in her statement.

“He somehow pulled me down into his lap. He did not verbally ask me if I wanted to sit in his lap, but somehow I ended up there,” she said in her statement.

Ashley was made to feel she had a “special friendship,” with the priest who obligated her to sit in his lap after each confession. Sometimes he would stand and embrace her, and whisper things into her ear, she said.

“At one point while embracing me, whispering and nuzzling my hair he said ‘If your mom asks what you are doing in here, tell her ‘spiritual direction,’” Ashley said in her statement. “I assumed that he was telling me the truth, that this was in fact spiritual direction.”

That spiritual direction seemed to be taking a different course during her last confession, she said in her statement.

“The last time I remember confessing to him, afterward while embracing me he pressed his body up against me. I could feel his erection touching me through his cassock,” she said in her statement. “I was very uncomfortable with this and had no frame of reference for what was happening or how to respond. So I did nothing and after several minutes he was done embracing me and I left the confessional.”

Ashley started going to a different priest for confession after that, and her alleged abuser cooled toward her in their interactions outside the confessional, she said. In one instance she tried to give him a hug when there were other people around, and he brushed her off.

“I was hurt and couldn’t understand why his behavior was so different in public,” she said in her statement. “After that I decided that he must have decided that I wasn’t his friend anymore, and to avoid awkwardness I did not return to confession with him.”

It wasn’t until years later, when she had children of her own, that she realized what had happened, and that her alleged abuser had been grooming her and encouraging her to lie to her mother about what they were doing alone.

Legion and Archdiocese both soft pedal criminal abuse allegation

When she was ready to tell her story in 2015, Ashley got an attorney and informed the Dallas diocese and then the Legion that she had been abused. With her attorney she pressed these Church officials to contact police, and to contact the Child Protective Services about the priest. She wanted to see some justice done.

“I did tell the diocese and then the Legion that a police report needed to be filed, and if they did not file one, then I would,” she said.

A report was made to the Texas Child Protective Services department by Dallas Diocesan Chancellor Mary Edlund. The letter Edlund sent provides only scant details from Ashley’s story, and Edlund downplays Ashley’s encounters with the alleged abuser.

“Although this does not appear to be something which must technically be reported to your office, I am doing so out of an abundance of caution,” Edlund wrote.

A Legion priest spoke to police October of 2015. The name of the priest making the report is redacted throughout the police report we obtained, but he is described as the “head priest” at The Highlands at the time. His account to the police is full of inaccurate statements.

The head priest also downplayed Ashley’s story when he spoke to police. He said it was some “inappropriate” behavior by a former priest at the Highlands. He also told police that Ashley “recalled within her statement feeling what she thought was an erection.”

Legion falsely claimed victim did not want criminal investigation

Strikingly, the Legion priest making the report told police that Ashley did not want to pursue criminal charges.

“According to [the head priest] during his meeting with [Ashley] she didn’t detail that she wanted to pursue any charges,” the police report states.

Ashley said after reading the report that she realized the priest didn’t tell the truth to police about her meeting with the Legion. When she reported the abuse to Legion priests, she told them she did want a legal investigation pursued, but indicated to them she was not interested in pursuing a lawsuit against the Church.

“I stated in the meeting with Tom Brandt and the Legionaries that my intent in bringing this forward was justice, accountability, and protection of future victims, and that to that end I wanted to see that things were properly reported on the civil and ecclesiastical side, as well as to know that I had done what I could to prevent future victims at his hands,” she said during follow up questions we asked her.

At no time did she state to Legion officials that she did not want to pursue criminal charges, she said. She told them she wanted an investigation. We have made several attempts to speak to her then-attorney, but he has so far declined our requests for comment.

Legion falsely claims there were no other allegations against priest

Further, during the October 2015 police report the unnamed Legion priest made to police, he told the investigators that there were no other allegations against the alleged abuser.

“I asked if there were any other allegations against [the alleged abuser], and [the head priest] stated that no other complaints or reports had been made against [the alleged abuser]” the police report states.

Ashley said that’s not true. She said that the Legion priests she met with, along with her attorney, also claimed that she was the only person to claim abuse at the hands of her alleged abuser. She said she knows now of at least one former Highlands student who had been abused.

“That’s what I thought was so crazy,” she said. “I don’t remember their exact words, but they definitely said something to the effect that this is the first that we’ve heard of him having issues. I knew that wasn’t true.”

We contacted Legion spokeswoman Gail Gore last year, and she said that Ashley’s case is one of a “boundary violation” and not sexual abuse. Gore has not responded to our recent request to discuss the specifics of this case, including questions about what the Legion told police.

Not on any list

Ashley’s alleged abuser is nowhere to be found either on the Dallas list of credibly accused priests, or on the Legion list, because he is considered to have committed a “boundary violation.” According to the Legion’s own code of conduct, put out in 2019, a boundary violation is “an infraction of the Code of Conduct that is significant, but does not rise to the level of sexual abuse of a minor or sexual misconduct with an adult.”

After she made her report, Ashley never heard from investigators with the police or the CPS as she expected. Instead, a representative with Praesidium contacted her. Praesidium is the outside firm that the Legion hired to conduct a child safety audit and to help develop its code of conduct.

The Legion, which was founded by notorious sexual predator Fr. Marciel Maciel, claims that there are only four credibly accused priests or brothers in all of North America, following their own in-house investigation. However, the order claimed in December when it released the investigative report that there may be more information about “boundary violations” made public at some point in the future.

“In November 2018 we also asked Praesidium to conduct a full review of all our territorial files, this should be finalized soon. Should new information arise we will update the list accordingly. The list does not reflect unsubstantiated claims, open investigations or boundary violations. We are in the process of reviewing our policy on when and how we communicate about boundary violations,” it said in a statement.

After Ashley came forward, her report apparently hit a dead end. She did eventually get a letter from Fr. John Connor, then the Legion’s territorial director for North America, in May of 2016, six months after the police report. He apologized to her for the “boundary violation.” Connor’s letter indicates the Legion took it upon itself to see an “investigation” was done into her allegation. The Legion apparently concluded that the appropriate response to their investigation was an apology, and no more, because what had happened to Ashley wasn’t technically abuse.

“As you know, the Legion asked the safe environment firm Praesidium to investigate. They found what you said very compelling. They concluded that it was clearly a very sad violation of boundaries, totally unbecoming of a priest,” Connor wrote.

That would have been the end of it, until May of last year.

Raid on Dallas diocese brings Ashley’s case back to life

Ashley’s case came alive again shortly after Dallas police raided the Dallas diocesan offices as part of an effort to uncover information police say was hidden from investigators.

According to the Dallas Morning News: “The Dallas Police Department’s Child Exploitation Unit last year (in 2018) assigned Detective David Clark, a 20-year veteran, to the full-time job of looking into cases of sex abuse involving minors within the local diocese.

After Clark felt stonewalled by the diocese and its lawyers for months — issues he detailed in a search-warrant affidavit — police officers and FBI agents seized files from the Dallas diocese Wednesday as part of the ongoing investigation into sex abuse allegations.”

In the weeks after the Dallas raid, Ashley contacted Dallas police with her story. Soon, investigators sought her out for an interview about what had happened to her at The Highlands. The police wanted to know if she knew of other victims. She did.

“They told me they are building a case against [the alleged abuser], and they have met in person with another woman who was one grade ahead of me, but was there at the same time,” she said.

We have confirmed that police were investigating Ashley’s alleged abuser as recently as January and are looking to build a case for prosecution against him.

Connor is no longer the North American territorial director, but is now the superior for the worldwide order. He was announced as the next superior for the Legion last month, and soon stories came to light in which Connor, as territorial director, allegedly mishandled a case of “boundary violations” involving a Legion priest, according to the Catholic News Agency.

“The Legion paid them off. I’m free to speak.”

Ashley said she throughout the course of the ordeal in reporting her abuse, she has actually met many good Legion priests. She’s also met many victims of Legion abuse, victims who are not willing or able to come forward.

“I know far too many people who have stories to tell, but they can’t tell them because they signed a non disclosure agreement because they desperately needed the money and the Legion paid them off,” she said. “I’m free to speak.”

An Italian court case alleges that victims have been paid off and told to not tell their stories, or in some cases to lie about what happened. The family of a Legion victim was reportedly offered 15,000 euros in exchange for the recanting his testimony against his abuser, according to Crux.

Though there are Legion priests she respects, Ashley knows what a Legion priest did to her, even if the Legion continues to minimize the criminal abuse she survived by calling it a “boundary violation.” Now that she has seen how the Legion seemingly covered up her abuse, she is ready to see the order die.

“I would like to see the order suppressed,” she said. “I don’t think this is a legitimate order, but some of the vocations might be legitimate. Highlands should not be in my diocese, and I would like to see the Legion not be in my diocese and not be anywhere.”