2Ls Dave Baron and Becky Jaffe meet with the Paulist Center’s reconciliation and outreach consultant, Bob Bowers, and Clinical Professor Robert Bordone ’97. Their mission: dialogue between alienated Catholics and the archdiocese.
The following story, “Hands On,” appeared in the Winter 2008 Harvard Law Bulletin, on student clinical opportunities at HLS. Dave Baron ’09 and Becky Jaffe ’09 were students in HLS Clinical Professor Bob Bordone’s Dispute Systems Design seminar.
For 2L Dave Baron, who is Catholic, it was the prospect of the clinical component that drew him to the class; he feels called to help his Church reach out and listen. 2L Becky Jaffe, a training director at the Harvard Mediation Program, signed up to learn more about dispute resolution. She just hadn’t anticipated how much learning she’d be doing in church.
Jaffe and Baron are both enrolled in the Dispute Systems Design seminar, in which Clinical Professor Robert Bordone ’97 introduces students to the use of alternative dispute resolution to tackle complex conflicts within organizations and institutions. It’s the first year that HLS has expanded its offerings in ADR to include a negotiation and mediation clinic, and this fall one of its five projects involves evaluating a method for promoting reconciliation within the Catholic community.
At the behest of the Paulist Fathers in Boston and the Paulist Center’s reconciliation and outreach consultant, Bob Bowers, the students are facilitating three “safe-space” dialogues for Catholics who are alienated from the Church. The aim is for participants to speak in an open and frank exchange with members of the Catholic hierarchy in Boston, including members of Boston Cardinal Sean O’Malley’s Cabinet. It’s part of a wider reconciliation effort by the National Paulist Community in the wake of the sexual abuse scandal that first broke in Boston in 2002, the closing of parish churches that followed and ongoing dissension over Church doctrine.
Jaffe is not Catholic, as she explains to each nun, priest and layperson she talks to over the course of the project, but she is trying to immerse herself. She goes to Mass with Baron. She also looks into the process details that fascinate her, such as how many people should be involved or what the opening question should be.
Baron is interested in “what theology has to say about people who feel disaffected,” and his tasks include researching Catholic doctrine on dialogue and reconciliation. They debate whether alienated Catholics will be looking for an apology. Their client, Bowers, says the answer is no; it might be perceived as insincere. Their supervisor, Bordone, too, feels it would be a mistake—a goal for the event is to help participants get at emotions and attitudes behind their alienation. The challenge, he says, is for clergy members to participate as individuals separate from their professional roles.
At the end of September, the students travel to New York City to meet others who have worked on dialogue and reconciliation within the Church. The takeaway: What they are doing is much-needed but won’t be easy. (“I don’t envy you,” one priest says.)
In Boston, they seek buy-in from the archdiocese. Sister Marian Batho, the cardinal’s secretary for regional services, meets with them for over an hour. She wants to participate and will help find others to do so. She describes the disconnect that has grown between the parishes and the archdiocese over the past five years and says it’s part of her job to build bridges, including with the parishioners who are fighting church closings. “If we don’t talk, the standoff will never end. And no one will benefit.”
Two weeks later, when Jaffe arrives at St. Jeremiah’s in Framingham, she’s early, but there’s someone inside to greet her. There’s been at least one parishioner holding vigil in the church day and night for more than two and a half years, to prevent the archdiocese from closing the doors for good. In each interview, Jaffe explains what she and Baron are attempting, and she hears about the sources of people’s hurt and anger, but also about what connects them to the Church.
One interviewee wonders how representatives of the archdiocese can call themselves Christian. But when asked about the Church’s strengths, she comes up with a long list.
Jaffe gives her a copy of a participation agreement she and Baron have drafted based on Pope Paul VI’s writings on dialogue. When she gets to being “patient under contradiction and inclined toward generosity,” the interviewee says she thinks it sounds wonderful, she wants to participate, but she doesn’t know whether she can stop herself from fighting to save her church.
Part of the students’ task is to create a model that could be used in Paulist Centers around the country. To make it more representative, they plan to involve people concerned with a variety of issues, including those—like gay or lesbian Catholics—who feel alienated by particular Church doctrines. The students hope wider representation will also mean the discussion is less likely to become a debate.
Before October break, a little more than a month before the dialogues, Baron and Jaffe say they’ve already learned a lot—about working with power dynamics and trying to get at underlying interests. “We don’t expect them to come in at 7:00 and by 9:00 they’re reconciled,” says Jaffe. But hearing the stories from both sides, they feel a heightened sense of responsibility. When people who have so much at stake are willing to give speaking and listening a try, it’s an act of faith.
-Emily Newburger