What do we do when famous Catholics turn out to be abusers?

By David Mills, OSV News

The Facebook post from four years ago didn't age well. I'd written: "Jean Vanier's gift to social media: Living such a life that when he died not a single person criticized him. Not only no direct attacks, but no 'yes, but' and 'on the other hand' articles. Just appreciation. It's a joy when everyone can combine in respect and admiration for someone." He died May 7, 2019.

Friends said that they'd seen some critical posts, but the posts seem to have all been the predictably dyspeptic stuff from people who look for reasons to put down anyone being praised. No one posted anything about his secret life of sexual abuse, because no one knew about it, except the victims.

Vanier, you may remember, was the universally admired founder and leader of a movement called L'Arche, which creates homes in which people with intellectual or developmental disabilities live with others who don't have them. He began by living with two men with disabilities, which for someone with his advantages -- of family, wealth and education -- was not a good career move. His peers were out making their way up in the world. He didn't do that.

His example spread and became institutionalized, and he wrote a lot of books readers found very helpful. Eventually, he won a raft of prestigious awards for his life and his thinking. They included the Pacem in Terris Award (given to people like Martin Luther King Jr., Dorothy Day, Mother Teresa and the Dalai Lama) and the Templeton Prize (a kind of religious Nobel Prize given to people like Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, Jane Goodall, and again, Mother Teresa and the Dalai Lama).

The world loved him and to all appearances for very good reasons. He was a Catholic in public life of whom Catholics could be proud. As the news kept hammering us with stories of priests abusing children and bishops covering it up, he was a public Catholic of whom we did not worry about feeling ashamed. There, we could say, is a man who represents our faith in practice.

The public man was. The private man wasn't.

It's a haunting reminder of how little we know about public people, and how much someone's public image may be mediated to fit a widely desired narrative -- people want heroes or villains, depending. It's a reminder of how people can divide themselves, being one kind of person with some people and another kind of person with others.

Vanier's story offers a disturbing warning about how easily our admiration can be misplaced. It reminds us of how easily the first can be the public man and the second a private man known only to a very few, and many of those few victims.

And the human reality that stories like Vanier's reveals is a loss. Admiration for another who deserves it is a human pleasure and it does us good. We should look up to others, recognizing their wisdom or kindness or sacrifice, admiring in them the love for others that reflects God's love for his people, and wanting to be more like them.

I'm a better man because I've admired some people I knew, because they were admirable. Most were Christians, but some weren't. They showed goodness in action -- in real life -- and by the way they lived and the kind of people they were, they encouraged me to do as they did.

We admire the saints. We should be able to admire those among us who may be saints. But then there are stories like Jean Vanier's. Too many stories like his. And not just the big stories of national or international figures, but stories of people we know. I don't know how many times I've heard someone say, often with deep distress, a version of "I'd known him for years and I never would have thought …"

We should be able to admire possible saints, not least because their example encourages us to be saintlier. Their example strengthens our faith, as evidence of God's work in the world. There's something wrong with a person who can't admire others.

But then that person isn't always wrong.

What do we do? I think we need to learn to admire without investing. We can admire what we see but shouldn't rest our faith or our commitment to the church on the people we admire.
If we make someone like the acclaimed Jean Vanier an argument for Catholicism, we make the exposed Jean Vanier an argument against it. It's very tempting to say, "Abusive priests? Well, look at Jean Vanier!" but that could backfire, as it did.

The basic instruction God gives us isn't "admire your neighbor," but rather "love your neighbor." The one way you can love celebrity Catholics is to pray for them, and as it turns out, they may need it more than you know.