Dutch Women who Sleep with Priests (6 of 7): Story of a Woman.

From Tineke Ferwerda’s “Sister Philothea: Relationships between Women and Roman Catholic Priests” (1989; translated 1993) (p. 165; paragraph breaks added for clarity):

I must now think back to the 1950s, when I was working in a home for unmarried mothers.  I did the administration as an assistant to the social worker.  One of my jobs was to put all the facts on file.  Even at that time, when no one dared to think about it, let alone talk about it, girls were being admitted who had been made pregnant by a priest.

At this time the tendency was also to make unmarried mothers give up the child they expected.  These women were put under pressure and received no guidance.

I often involuntarily think back to this, all the more since ten years later I saw some of these women back as patients in the psychiatric institution where I was working as a counsellor [sic]...

. . .

Dutch Women who Sleep with Priests (5 of 7): Even Yet More Story of a Monastic.

From Tineke Ferwerda’s “Sister Philothea: Relationships between Women and Roman Catholic Priests” (1989; translated 1993) (p. 145):

[During the 1960s on an extended visit in Italy b]y preference I looked behind the scenes at times when I knew that people had to be involved in the offices or in church life.  Above all during the Sunday High Masses when there were many strangers (and thus also women) in the monastic churches, you could take it for granted that ninety per cent of all male inhabitants of the monastery would be in church.  I stayed both with the Benedictines in Rome and with the Cistercians here and there in Italy on such occasions, even in the cells of the fathers, to be able to compare them with those in Holland...

I saw in Rome how a young priest monk shyly dodged into one of the college halls with a twelve-year-old boy when I went in almost noiselessly, and how in Frossinone another young monk disappeared just as skilfully [sic] behind a closed door with a small mass server into the luxurious garden on the hillside.

. . .

Dutch Women who Sleep with Priests (4 of 7): Yet More Story of a Monastic.

From Tineke Ferwerda’s “Sister Philothea: Relationships between Women and Roman Catholic Priests” (1989; translated 1993) (p. 140; paragraph breaks added for clarity):

Then something incredible suddenly happened.  On a sunny noon in the autumn of 1948 there was a sudden invasion of the monastery by pot-bellied church dignitaries.  They were foreigners.  Rome intervened directly.  Classes were forbidden, the telephone was cut off and until further orders everyone had to stay in his room.

The prior was seized in T, where he was staying with his family, and taken abroad in a car from an abbey in Belgium.

Over the following days and weeks everyone in turn was put on the mat for interrogation by a church tribunal about the homosexual and paedophile tendencies of the prior.  It was a disconcerting time.  A completely different governing body for the monastery was set up which existed merely ‘pro forma’.  In fact a Belgian prelate appointed by Rome was the one who held sway.

. . .

Dutch Women who Sleep with Priests (3 of 7): More Story of a Monastic.

From Tineke Ferwerda’s “Sister Philothea: Relationships between Women and Roman Catholic Priests” (1989; translated 1993) (p. 137; paragraph breaks added for clarity):

I was proud of aspiring to an authentic monastic community.  Of being friendly with the superior, who had my special affection, as he was my father and mother at the same time.  He always kissed me on my mouth.  I didn’t like these wet kisses and kept my mouth shut.  He was always disconcertingly fond of me, really like the brother on watch..., though, small as I then was, I found something strange about this brother.  That certainly wasn’t the case with this prior.  I trusted him completely. 

Once in the very first year he asked me whether I knew where children came from.  I knew that and could tell him in detail.  And I could tell a good story, though my story was far from complete.  Especially the role of the father was not yet completely clear to me.  He filled in the missing details in such a natural and disarming way that none of this seemed particularly strange to me. 

Later I told him when I had had my first “wet dream” and had thus become a man, something that we both celebrated with a glass of sherry. 

I also talked to him about my sin of unchastity with a girl.  He then looked very serious and concerned and wanted to know all the details.  I told him that at home at my suggestion I had once watched a girl-friend from next-door making a puddle before my amazed eyes and I had looked at her in an extremely interested way.  He burst out laughing, slapped me on the shoulder, and said disarmingly, “But that’s not unchastity, boy!  Our dear Lord made girls and boys that way.” 

When I asked him what unchastity really was he gave me vivid examples of it: rape and incest, no more.

. . .

Dutch Women who Sleep with Priests (2 of 7): Story of a Monastic.

From Tineke Ferwerda’s “Sister Philothea: Relationships between Women and Roman Catholic Priests” (1989; translated 1993) (p. 136):

At that time [in boarding school] the brother on watch would come round to my room regularly in the evening, bring a sweet or some cake for me, sit on my bed and begin to stroke me all over, in a particular order: my face, my neck, my back and chest and finally between my legs.  Finally the order got shorter and in the end he fumbled especially in my crotch.  He did this very lovingly and gently.  He kissed me.  He always put his breviary behind my head on my pillow.

He whispered in a heavy Brabant accent.  It was about temptations to unchastity and had to do with my penis.  It had become clear to me that if this became erect it was a temptation to unchastity.  But how could that be with this holy brother, for I found that his gentle fumbling in my underwear, in which he touched my penis in a very effective way, gave particular pleausre [sic], making my member stiff and erect, and that was precisely what was wrong, that was precisely the sin of unchastity.  I didn’t want it, but found it great; it was wrong, but the brother himself did it...  It was very strange and schizophrenic. 

Fortunately I wasn’t too oppressed by it and at home only said that this dear brother was friendly and very loving towards me.  Father made a very nice drawing for him.  I was happy to be able to give this nice picture of his patron saint to this brother, but found it strange that by day he didn’t seem to acknowledge me and didn’t even thank me for the nice work of art that my father had made for him.  It also seemed as if he was afraid of me.  I was tossed to and fro between guilt feelings about and not having been unchaste.

. . .