After the terrible, shocking news sank in of Jean Vanier's sexual abuse of six women at L'arche, I re-read his book-- The Broken Body: Journey to Wholeness (1988)--to understand something more about his confessed brokenness, and about his charismatic mentor Pierre Thomas Phillippe, and their faulty doctrine that clearly led them over the edge into the dark side of erotic mysticism.
A Faulty Doctrine of Jesus and Mary as the new Adam and Eve?
From The Broken Body: Journey to Wholeness (1988)
“Adam loved Eve; Eve loved Adam.
They were one body, one love, one spirit
Each one could give to the other,
Gentle communion,
gentle passion flowing one from another.
And this communion rose up as incense to God.” (p. 19)
At a particular moment
Adam and Eve said ‘no’ to God.
They turned away,
Blocking off the energy of love…
And then they discovered they were empty,
Naked, alone, and in despair.
It is this severing act which is the source
of all our experience of inner conflict.” (p. 20)
The yearning for, the memory of,
the original wholeness and communion
may at times come alive, in all of us. (p. 21)
Yet brokenness is pervasive,
it takes on a life of its own
and becomes an opportunity for the Evil One
to exercise his powers. (p. 22)
Yet God had a marvelous plan
to reveal the love that burns within the Trinity,
and to bring men and women
to an even fuller unity and glory. (p. 30)
At the center of that plan
is God’s desire to become flesh,
to take on our human condition,
to put on human nature,
so that our Creator would be touched and heard and loved,
so that our brokenness could be healed into a new wholeness,
so that we could become again one perfect body.
And the fulfilling of this plan
involved a woman
who would mother the Word made flesh…
He would become the new Adam
rejoicing in the new Eve—
Jesus, rejoicing in the woman Mary.
And they would lead a multitude
into the knowledge of the Father,
into the heart of the Trinity aflame in ecstasy,
into the wedding feast
God would repair the brutal damage
of the first Adam and the first Eve
as they turned away from communion…
Even within our brokenness
lie the seed that will lead us back to wholeness.
The plan of God is to heal and repair the damaged body,
to bring it to a new and fuller beauty,
to a new and deeper fecundity. pp. 30-31
The Dark Side of Mysticism?
The danger in Romantic Theology is the dark side of mysticism.
In 1946, the Dominican priest, Fr. Thomas Philippe, created l'Eau Vive as an unauthorized "Wisdom School" and a program of [sexual?] initiation into contemplative life. The young Jean Vanier arrived there in 1950 and, it seems, quickly fell under Philippe's spell and became his “spiritual son,” according to L'Arche's report.
Both Phillippe and Vanier used allusions to Marian theology, erotic poetry in the Song of Songs, and other Scriptures to justify their sexual initiation/abuse of women (nuns and community assistants): "This is not us, this is Mary and Jesus. You are chosen, you are special, this is secret" [a special grace]. Apparently, they thought or pretended to believe that the spiritual intimacy and erotic behavior they enacted was a symbolic, even sacramental, "manifestation" of the pure love between the New Adam and the New Eve (Jesus and Mary). This, I think, was a rationalization of self-deception, unhealthy sexual repression, unintegrated shadow side, and a sign of human brokenness. This is a dark side of erotic mysticism... which finally was exposed to the Light:
https://www.larcheusa.org/findings-of-larche-internationals-inquiry-into-jean-vanier/
https://www.larcheusa.org/findings-of-larche-internationals-inquiry-into-jean-vanier/
Also, I know that we all have shadows of unintegrated wounds and weaknesses, and as Henri Nouwen and others say: "Nothing human is alien to me." Beyond naming the consequences--that Jean Vanier did harm... to six women and maybe more--I am not his judge.
Friends of Jean cannot quite believe it:
“This is not the Jean I knew and I believe it vital to remember that … his brokenness was the wellspring for enormous good, and that the message and indeed the miracle of L’Arche is precisely the fruitfulness of brokenness. As Mother Teresa always used to say, the extraordinary achievements of ordinary, imperfect human instruments is evidence of the involvement of God.” (
"Jean may have been close to this eccentric priest, but he had left that behind...and maybe someday the full truth will come out..."
"Jean may have been close to this eccentric priest, but he had left that behind...and maybe someday the full truth will come out..."
"Hard to put together the man we knew and the man who abused the women. It’s something I can only ‘carry’ in my heart, since my head simply cannot reconcile the two things at all. I love the prayer of St. Teresa of Avila:
Let nothing disturb you,
Nothing frighten you,
All things are passing,
It is love that never changes, etc…
Let nothing disturb you,
Nothing frighten you,
All things are passing,
It is love that never changes, etc…
Truth Before Reconciliation
According to the L'Arche Report and Historical Timeline, leaders reviewed a credible testimony from a woman who accused Jean of abusive conduct in May, 2016. Jean acknowledged the relationship, which he had believed to be ‘reciprocal’ and initiated a request for forgiveness... Inquiries and investigations continued. The following year, 2017, Jean seems to have made a written, general confession (but note the lack of specificity required for a full confession, absolution and amends):
"During my entire existence, I also had to struggle with myself, I have lived a large part of my life with injured people, but also with my own weaknesses and mistakes. I have my own sensitivity and needs to love and be loved. I am a person like any other, who can experience empathy for some... and who can also rule over others. I was able to hurt some people. At the end of this book and at the end of my life, I want to ask them for forgiveness from the deepest of my heart. In Calcutta, at the last General Assembly of the Ark where I went, in front of so much beauty from the Ark, beauty that amazed me so much, I felt the need to ask forgiveness for all my weaknesses and mistakes [2008] Again, at the big night of my life, I ask forgiveness.[2017]. Sometimes I was humbled by my own weaknesses. Yes, I feel pride in myself when I look at my life, struggling to fully accept my mistakes, my mistakes. I believe in the mercy of God who has led so many events in the history of the Ark, through my own weaknesses. I give thanks to God for his faithfulness, for my poverty have not stopped his work from being accomplished. I realize more and more that the Ark, with its development and the deepening of its spirituality, springs from the mercy of God who chooses the weak and the fools for the realization of his plan. " (Jean Vanier, "A scream is being heard", 2017. Computer-generated rough translation from French)
"During my entire existence, I also had to struggle with myself, I have lived a large part of my life with injured people, but also with my own weaknesses and mistakes. I have my own sensitivity and needs to love and be loved. I am a person like any other, who can experience empathy for some... and who can also rule over others. I was able to hurt some people. At the end of this book and at the end of my life, I want to ask them for forgiveness from the deepest of my heart. In Calcutta, at the last General Assembly of the Ark where I went, in front of so much beauty from the Ark, beauty that amazed me so much, I felt the need to ask forgiveness for all my weaknesses and mistakes [2008] Again, at the big night of my life, I ask forgiveness.[2017]. Sometimes I was humbled by my own weaknesses. Yes, I feel pride in myself when I look at my life, struggling to fully accept my mistakes, my mistakes. I believe in the mercy of God who has led so many events in the history of the Ark, through my own weaknesses. I give thanks to God for his faithfulness, for my poverty have not stopped his work from being accomplished. I realize more and more that the Ark, with its development and the deepening of its spirituality, springs from the mercy of God who chooses the weak and the fools for the realization of his plan. " (Jean Vanier, "A scream is being heard", 2017. Computer-generated rough translation from French)
Reconciliation Beyond Death's Door?
“What happens to us after we die?” a reporter in England asked Jean Vanier. Without hesitation, and with bold confidence, here's what he said:
“When you die, you fall asleep. And you wake up, and there’s a very gentle peace. You feel well. And then you discover the face of God coming through that ‘wellness’. Of course, we are outside of time, so it’s not sequential. Seeing Jesus’s face we suddenly have a feeling of having hurt him—we realize we could have done much better, we’ve done wrong. We are not being judged; we judge ourselves. But then comes the realization that we are loved just as we are, in our darkness. So, there’s a meeting with God, who loves us in our poverty—and this we can hardly believe. That meeting brings an immense desire to be closer. That desire becomes a place of desire—I think of Purgatory as “the place of desire”—and its painful. When you have desire and not the object of desire, it’s very painful. But then the desire augments, and there is a moment of explosion, and then we are in communion with God.”
“But what about Hell?” asked the reporter.
“I can’t speak about hell, but wasn’t it John Paul II who said that, even it hell exists, it may be empty… When we die, it’s not a question of what we’ve done, but how we’ve loved.”
(Interview with John Vanier by Maggie Fergusson, pp. 6-7, The Tablet, 26 August 2017)
“When you die, you fall asleep. And you wake up, and there’s a very gentle peace. You feel well. And then you discover the face of God coming through that ‘wellness’. Of course, we are outside of time, so it’s not sequential. Seeing Jesus’s face we suddenly have a feeling of having hurt him—we realize we could have done much better, we’ve done wrong. We are not being judged; we judge ourselves. But then comes the realization that we are loved just as we are, in our darkness. So, there’s a meeting with God, who loves us in our poverty—and this we can hardly believe. That meeting brings an immense desire to be closer. That desire becomes a place of desire—I think of Purgatory as “the place of desire”—and its painful. When you have desire and not the object of desire, it’s very painful. But then the desire augments, and there is a moment of explosion, and then we are in communion with God.”
“But what about Hell?” asked the reporter.
“I can’t speak about hell, but wasn’t it John Paul II who said that, even it hell exists, it may be empty… When we die, it’s not a question of what we’ve done, but how we’ve loved.”
(Interview with John Vanier by Maggie Fergusson, pp. 6-7, The Tablet, 26 August 2017)
John Vanier (1928-2019)—May he find, even in Purgatory, the true Object of his intense desire...
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