My response to LCSB Abbot Cuthbert podcast.
I listened for about ten minutes before becoming "Triggered!!!" (and I'm not listening again for accuracy or chronology in this response, so from memory...)
Ironic considering that was the excuse LCSB safeguarding used for taking down my comment on their facebook that relating in the briefest of terms my unfortunate experience of said Abbot when we were in formation, might be triggering to others!
I wonder if they will now remove the podcast? I hope not. Being "Triggered" is a cross I am happy to bear if it saves anyone becoming a victim of the institutional church. So.....
Here he goes again talking about being 18! He was 20 when he joined F'bro and had already been to university.
I remember talk of Ushaw, but not Carmelites. I don't recall he went to Quarr while "Nibbling" He may have started at Minsteracres but was studying Classics, I believe in Liverpool University and living in a Passionist Monastery in St Helens. Word is, he was kicked out for innapropriate behaviour and so I assume was indeed looking for a "Better Fit" Yes, he is a Benedictine! In the worst sense!!! To say he liked the family feel of F'bro made me want to cry! Yes I now realise F'bro was not the Idyll I imagined...ever...but I nurture that imagining as inspiration, what F'bro should have been...and could have been....and maybe still can be? But F'bro was to get alot worse, for it was fairly relaxed and warm, though flawed, made up of sinners, like us all of course, but lacking the "Good Men" of Fr Magnus imaginings and memory ....so what Cuthbert saw was not a warm family to fit in but a vulnerable community ripe for manipulation and usurpation...which is what he has done, destroyed what was good and built it as a shrine to his vanity and opportunity to his whim and destroyed vocations and damaged Souls along the way!
Perhaps that is not entirely fair. Perhaps he did see a warm and friendly family but through nature and nurture was unable to react other than from the fear perspective and therefore was pressed by a strong sub conscious drive to control it and possess it. Thing is, love cannot exist in that paradigm, it has to be given with one hand and received with the other. If you try and cling on to it and control it's outcome, it atrophies and dies. I believe this is what has happened with Cuthbert and the Communities (Prior, Novice Master, Chapter, Congregation) failure to exercise the surgeons knife, resulted in the poison affecting and destroying the original Community (Though admittedly there were tensions extant, but to what extent these were a part of Cuthberts machinations I can only think that they certainly didn't help build bridges! If the Community imploded, he might hope to benefit but others might know more for certain?) and every iteration of Community since. His frustrations are revealed in his bullying and unkindness and he takes comfort, not in healthy relationships, but in the perpetual fancies and fantasies of a teenager and he inflicts much damage upon those who genuinely love(d) him. (Mea Culpa at this point in that I recognise my sexuality is stunted or most likely will always be at this point too, but I pray I have the insight to avoid hurting others with promises or demonstrations that I cannot sustain or fulfil)
I remember that boy with the deep brown eyes, who waxed lyrical his love for the Monastic life juxtaposed with the sudden change to a bar propping bitchy old queen, and again to someone who could be deeply hurtful and have no realization that they had been, or not care...or not appear to care?
Will the real David Cuthbert Brogan please stand up?
To some extent we are all a mixture of vying personalities but if we do not become the Charioteer in control of the team, we cause mayhem, personally and to others.
The church affords Cuthbert a half life. A life of superficiality.
It can only become real if he would acknowledge or takes steps through psychotherapy / Counselling to gain insight into how he hurts himself and how he hurts others.
Stepping into his authentic true nature would, as it does for everyone from Jesus Christ to Ourselves, involve swimming against the worldly tide, perhaps at great worldly cost. But it is the journey of the true human soul, it is the journey of perfection, it is the revelation that god became man that man might become God.
I pray we may merrily meet again in Heaven...in this world or the next!
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