BRIDGEPORT—Seventeen years ago, when the clergy sex abuse crisis began hitting the news, a prison chaplain at the Danbury Federal Correctional Institution approached Father Lawrence Carew about developing a healing retreat for victims of abuse, to help lead them out of the darkness from what seemed were wounds that could never be healed.
Father, who had a healing ministry in the prison system, undertook the project with Methodist minister Dr. Gail Paul. What they created was a six-session retreat titled, “Disregarding the Shame, Reaching Out for the Joy,” which has touched hundreds of victims of not only sex abuse, but also physical and emotional abuse, and is being used in Latin America and other parts of the United States.
The retreat is based on a simple creed that says: “Jesus Christ is not only able to heal the wounds and scars of sexual, physical and emotional abuse, but longs to, right here, right now.” In this moment. And whenever he gives the retreat, Father Carew has seen evidence Jesus is doing just that.
“The healing ministry of Jesus, which he exercised during his three years of ministry and also in the early church with the apostles and missionaries, was always meant to be a central part of the mission of the Church,” Father Carew said. “From time to time, healing prayer gets lost in Church tradition, but then it gets renewed and revived. We live in a period where it is getting renewed and revived.”
That means Jesus is today healing people of what some consider “ineradicable wounds.”
“Starting in 1996, the Lord brought me into some experiences of his healing presence, which left me with a whole new trust in his desire to bring deep and lasting healing in the lives of the sexually and emotionally abused in the here and now,” Father Carew said.
One of the first experiences occurred when he was asked to assist Rev. Gail Paul, chaplain of the Danbury facility. She called down to the cellblock, and a half-hour later, a man in his 60s entered the room. He barely looked at the priest. The inmate had been repeatedly sexually abused as a boy. They asked to pray with him so “the Lord could do something fresh and new in his heart to release him from all the pain and woundedness that had been there for so very long.”
Rev. Paul placed her hands on the man’s shoulders and they prayed quietly for ten minutes. Then, he looked up and said, “Chaplain, I feel connected to you, and I haven’t felt connected to anybody since I was abused as a little boy.” He turned to the priest and said, “Father Carew, I feel connected to you too.” He felt the same for the 700 or so people in the facility and then said, “There are people in this chapel we can’t see, and I feel connected to them.”
Several more times, they prayed with the man, and during one session he had a vision of the priest who had molested him. The priest was on his knees, weeping for what he had done.
“That was an invitation for him to pray for this priest, which he did,” Father Carew recalled. “He prayed for forgiveness for him.” Within three months, the survivor of abuse returned to the Church.
“That was the first amazing experience of witnessing Jesus’s profound healing in somebody who had been so terribly betrayed and abused,” he said.
Father Carew, a native of Boston, grew up in Stamford and was ordained in 1966. He then went on to serve as parochial vicar at St. Peter Church in Danbury, St. Teresa’s in Trumbull, St. Joseph’s in Danbury and Christ the King in Trumbull, where he was pastor until his retirement in December 2016.
He has been active in the Catholic Charismatic Renewal since 1971 and was named spiritual adviser to the renewal in 1997. He has also served in several leadership positions in the national Catholic Charismatic Renewal.
He continues to be involved in voluntary prison ministry and spiritual renewal outreach, including serving as spiritual adviser to the diocesan Magnificat ministry and offering masses of healing and hope as well as inner healing workshops.
He is the author of the book “Healer of Hearts, Healer of Minds,” and several healing workshops, including “Six Simple Steps Into Healing Prayer” and “Healing the Shepherds” for people in full-time ministry.
Father Carew says that through healing prayer we invite Christ to the places inside of us that are in pain, physically, emotionally and spiritually. It is based on a trust that the Lord cares about those things and that there can be a solution through our relationship with him.
Father said that an estimated 90 percent of inmates were seriously abused in childhood and that the majority of cases he has encountered were not abused by clergy but teachers, Scout masters, people in authority and family members.
“When I meet with victims of abuse, I will talk with them about how healing prayer is a part of Christ’s help and I will pray with them, and they almost always have a sense that the Lord is there, blessing them, and that something good is happening inside of them.”
At the end of the session, he tells them that he has no power of himself but he is asking Christ to use his prayer and the touch of his hands on their head to be a conduit of his healing love. He also encourages them to spend five or ten minutes every day to talk to the Lord about their hurt and ask him to pour his healing power more deeply into them.
The retreat, which is on DVD, is based on six talks, followed by six healing prayer exercises, a period of music and opportunities for individual prayer.
“Disregarding the Shame” can be presented over two or three days or one session a week for six successive weeks.
Father said, “‘Disregarding the Shame’ is a tool. Presenters will need to rely primarily and persistently on the Holy Spirit, and not the text.” (For more information about the retreat and to obtain a DVD and manual, visit communityofthecross.com.)
Some people do the retreat privately on the recommendation of a therapist and Father Carew has given copies to inmates in his prison ministry.
When he developed the retreat, he consulted Dr. Timothy Lock, a Catholic psychologist with a practice in Brookfield. Dr. Lock, who is on the faculty of Divine Mercy University and has expertise in the area of sexual abuse, said, “I found that he had a tremendous insight into the human heart from a spiritual and psychological perspective and has been able to understand the pain these folks have gone through.” He regularly recommends it for his patients and gives copies to victims of abuse, including clergy.
“This retreat is part of the answer to the wounded Church,” he says. “Father Carew’s talks are inspiring for anyone. When people hear the talks, there is a sense that this is really medicine for a broken heart. The Lord works through him, and it is a healing balm for those who experienced abuse.”
