[ Marcel Văn and Clerical Abuse | Introduction | Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9 | Part 10 ]

The title of this article is in many ways a shocking follow-up to Part 2 and Part 3 that came before it in this series on Marcel Văn and clerical abuse. In those articles I dealt with the grace of resilience in surviving abuse, then the grace of resisting abuse and everything that supports it. Various psychological and spiritual dimensions were involved, but in the moral sphere, the main intersection was with courage. Now, all of a sudden, I want to have a word about childishness of all things!

The pivot is deliberate. While Marcel is, I believe, an exceptional example of what the cardinal virtue of courage looks like lived to a heroic degree in the non-normative context of clerical abuse, he is also a very simple, gentle soul. Part of his idea of resilience—the psycho-spiritual counterpart to courage, expressed as “changing suffering into joy”—is a gentleness with oneself, a simplicity of heart, to move in little steps from acknowledging that suffering doesn’t own its victim, and the victim is a survivor, towards a full gift of self to self with Jesus who is joy. This primordial gentleness doesn’t exhaust all his interpretations of the grace of psycho-spiritual resilience. But it is a part of it.

Marcel is also a very childish person in many ways. It is easy to ascribe this to temperament alone. I think, however, that this would be a serious mistake, and it disconnects such a prominent characteristic of his writings—particularly the Conversations that Marcel has in some mystical way with Jesus, Mary, and Thérèse—from the clerical abuse that marks so much of his actual life story. In other words, thinking about natural temperament alone makes childishness more of an accommodation of Jesus to diverse human natures, whereas, if the childishness is in some way connected to Văn’s survival of abuse, it is part of his moral fibre and his virtuous character. Tying this childishness into Marcel’s experiential theology of survival, it takes on a meaning—of some sort, to be determined exactly what—for others, particularly others who have a share in similar situations and sufferings to his own.

I announced in Part 1 my intention to actively reconnect all the spiritual experience of Văn to his personal experience of clerical abuse, so without any further argument on the topic, that is what I am going to do.

What we’re seeking to explain

The prevalence of childhood in the mental world of Marcel Văn is hard to miss. It is not only true that Văn thinks he has a “mission” to be “apostle of souls and the special apostle of children” (Conv. 346–347).[1] He also lives in a realm of spiritual childhood. This is true as to the essential. He even goes beyond the normal meaning of “spiritual childhood” and has an imaginative world of childishness.

There is no need to document in detail the childish atmosphere of the Conversations. I don’t think anybody has ever read the book and missed it. Readers are far more likely to find the childlike world jarring than to overlook it. Suffice it to just give a couple of examples. These can remind us of how pervasive the childishness is.

First, take the notions of a young, child Jesus taking apart the things he plays with, which is imagery that borrows a lot from Thérèse (e.g., Ms A, 64r–64v, 85v; LT 34, 36, 74, 78, 176).[2] The language of broken playthings occurs frequently enough in Marcel. For a very dense usage, consider these words spoken by little Jesus, that is, Jesus imagined as a child:

Even if I pluck you to little bits, even if I cause your petals to fall one by one, fear nothing since these petals will fall nowhere but in my hand. And after having satisfied my curiosity, I will reassemble them again and, then, the little flower will only become more beautiful. Then, because my childlike nature likes change, each time I repeat this action, I will enrich the little flower with a new colour. Isn’t that fortunate, little flower? (Conv. 240)

Jesus’ “childlike nature likes change,” so even when he plays with his favourite toys, he tends to fix them up again in a beautiful way. This is a remarkable statement about the merciful love of God for us, and about what John of the Cross would call the “dark night”—but the familiar song is played in a starkly childish key. It also gains notes of “liking change”—surely reminiscent of “changing suffering into joy,” i.e., psycho-spiritual resilience.

In the Conversations, we also find the prevalent idea that, when the consolations of God disappear, it is as if little Jesus went to sleep and stopped talking with us, his friends, his nature companions, his favourite toys—another theme that can be traced back to Thérèse (e.g., Ms A, 67r, 75v; LT 144, 160; PN 42.4). I quote one of the more striking versions of this motif in Marcel:

Are you not afraid that your little wren will end up getting tired of seeing you sleeping? Little Jesus, continue to sleep. As for me, I am about to take a siesta; since you are sleeping. I am going to sleep also. You are sleeping in Mary’s arms and I will sleep in your heart. During your sleep you hold a toy in your hand but I, I must hold the cross. Tell me, little Jesus, which of the two is the more privileged? (Conv. 244)

In addition to these two instantiations of childishness, one might also note the way children talk in the comparative. Marcel does this a lot. For example, he claims, speaking with Mary, “I love you twice as much as little Thérèse loves you, I would even say three times, since I love you also with my sister Thérèse” (Conv. 249). It’s hard not to smile at this. It is so childish, yet so pure if thought of from the perspective of a child, not an adult.

Of course, the childish atmosphere extends beyond the Conversations. Marcel can employ it charmingly in any context, e.g., in correspondence. An endearing example occurs he explains being sent to Saigon (from Hanoi) and needing to renounce meeting a friend:

I consider myself as being the toy of little Jesus, and consequently, always ready to let him play with it as he wishes. That he leaves me in one place or throws me far away, I must accept everything cheerfully to please him. (To Sáu, 28 Apr 1950)[3]

There are plenty of other ways to illustrate the atmosphere of the Conversations and Marcel’s writings as a whole, but the picture, I hope, is plenty clear from these examples. The world Marcel inhabits is characterized by a kind of sacred childishness.

The question is why.

Theories to reject

In the first place, it should be noted that at the time of writing down the Conversations, Marcel is seventeen years old and has been with the Redemptorists for over a year. Not to mention, he moved away from home a decade before that. I don’t think anybody in any time period has ever expected seventeen-year-olds to be as childish as the Conversations. It just doesn’t explain anything to say that Marcel was a child. He was indeed a minor by our standards. But a minor and someone this childish in daily life are two very different things. The first theory to reject is that Marcel is being met by Jesus, in his grace, where someone of his age would normally be.

Another hypothesis explaining why the Conversations have this playful, childish environment is that Marcel will become an apostle to children by his writing, prayer, and sacrifice. That this apostolate exists is impossible to deny. Marcel notes a naturalness with children that he lacks with others: “I do not know why, in the presence of children, my heart feels joyful, while in the presence of people of the world, I tremble and I feel my limbs freeze” (Conv. 473). He says that “my soul is, in all things, like those of the children of the whole world” (Conv. 347). Jesus tells him: “Marcel, do not neglect to pray a lot so that children can understand my Love and give themselves entirely to it. The world kills the souls of children before my very eyes and I, what can I do?” (Conv. 377). And again: “Marcel, your apostolate must be directed toward children. I wish you to draw children to me. I love them dearly.” (Conv. 375) To this end, “you must learn to be joyful; without that it is impossible to become the apostle of children” (Conv. 415).

Yet this hypothesis also seems to fail—or at least not explain everything. Immediately after having a discussion about being an apostle to children, Marcel asks Jesus, “But, little Jesus, why do you make me speak in this manner as if I were your ‘little brother’ [em trai or em]?” And Jesus responds, “The reason is that I wish it so.” Since Marcel seems upset, Jesus elaborates: “I simply wish to show you that I am always pleased with you. That you are so weak, little brother, is not important.” (Conv. 416–417). Indeed, “this weakness is entirely in me,” held in Jesus, hidden there (Conv. 420).

In other words, it is a divine mystery why the childishness is used by Jesus to communicate with Marcel. The reason is patently not (just) because Marcel will be an apostle to children, because Marcel would be able to grasp that reason in its fullness, particularly right after having talked about it (cf. Conv. 415–417). Rather, it is because Jesus wishes it to be that way. In fact, Jesus wishes it to be that way because Marcel is very weak. And that should be enough for Marcel. I think it should be obvious at this point that it’s enough for Văn because Văn doesn’t really understand in a conscious, conceptual way why he is so weak. If he understood, then Jesus could offer that reason, too. He doesn’t.

Moreover, I don’t think there is any exclusivity in Marcel’s assigned apostolate to children. There is plenty of evidence that the world of the Conversations is highly symbolic. People can be children in many ways. The relationship between France and Vietnam is sometimes, I think, symbolic for that between clerics and laypeople. Things are not necessarily one-note and straightforward. Passages can be polyvalent and symbolic. The Conversations is a surprisingly rich text. In the present case, I would note the fact that elsewhere Marcel says that Mary’s maternal “function is to occupy herself with her infants from the corporal and especially spiritual point of view” (To Sáu, 25 May 1947). From this, it also stands to reason that Marcel’s apostolate to children applies, not just to those who are so physically, but also those who are children, weak, small, and little spiritually. There’s no need to limit it to a physical meaning.

My suggestions

To be honest, I think the hypotheses covered in the previous section are ultimately pretty convoluted. They seem simple on the surface, but they generate endless problems and restrict horizons. In response, I would suggest a simple idea. Marcel has trauma. In fact, he has developmental trauma.

The clerical abuse Văn endured starts as he is just barely past the age of reason (see Part 1). This means that he has very little experience of what is “normal” before he was subjected to shock, pressure, and deformation that required of him resilience and resistance. It is an unfortunate, horrific truth that people with developmental trauma note that, unlike other trauma survivors, they have no easy access to a return to what things were like “before.” There is no “before”—or if there is some amount of “before,” it only exists in a realm before adulthood, sometimes even before adolescence. The benchmark is missing. The baseline is nonexistent.

Văn is one such person. He doesn’t know what “normal” is, except for the “normal” of his life before Catholic school (A 8–108).[4] In Marcel’s case, he actually has a remarkably intact set of memories of his toddler years and the years right before admission to school. Of course, this is not common. Văn’s memory is precocious. Most children’s memories are not so intact. In this sense, Marcel has a gift. For someone who met developmental trauma at such a young age, he has more of a benchmark than most would.

Bearing all this in mind, I think the explanation for the childishness is very simple. It is the work of grace accessing a place of “normality” that is gentle and simple and which affirms, as resilience must do, that the survivor is good and desires goodness.

Of course, in Marcel’s case, this grace is offered in an extraordinary way. He has visions and mystical conversations. That’s not normal. It’s not normative. Usually, as Marcel well knows (e.g., Conv. 753–755; OWD 4–6)[5] and as Thérèse too teaches (e.g., LT 147), extraordinary graces are given as a confirmation of some teaching about God and for the benefit of others, not for the benefit of the one receiving them. If Marcel is given such graces, it is to make sure that something is not lost—that collective memory doesn’t let some truth necessary to the present situation slip through the cracks. We humans are pretty stupid. We’d likely never stumble on some things without a little intervention. And as regards the things we do stumble on, we’ll all too easily forget them when we jump up to observe the next squirrel that runs across the patio.

The grace that is here, however, need not have such extraordinary phenomena associated with it. The nugget can be captured without that. We can still find a truth that applies universally.

It is actually, I think, no surprise that God brings Văn back to where he started. This isn’t even something unique to him. It also occurs in the journey of Thérèse. That life-path, too, in some sense and to some degree, causes the one walking it to reacquire “the same dispositions” of the early childhood before her trauma (Ms A, 11r). The Little Flower’s trauma is to a large extent that of losing maternal figures (Ms A, 13r, 17r, 25v–27r, 41r–43v). It’s not a result of abuse. Yet there is clearly a history of trauma in Thérèse’s life. Her journey is to recover “the same dispositions” that existed before all the problems took hold. She, of course, doesn’t regress. She assimilates the later experience with the earlier, then grows. But she expressly tells us that she also, nonetheless reacquires “the same dispositions.”

This reacquisition of “the same dispositions” is probably part of what Dawn Eden Goldstein, writing under the name Dawn Eden, calls “the proper role of memory” that “Thérèse shows us,” namely, that memory “is not to be feared,” but rather “is to be purified in the white heat of divine love.”[6] The theme is broader than a return to the healthy dispositions before trauma—much broader. Yet this is part of it. We are talking about Christianized memory here, just as in Part 2 we were talking not just about psychological dimensions but also spiritual relationships and courage. There are key features of Christian anthropology involved.

At any rate, Văn likewise needs to come back to something that he had in early childhood before all the trauma took hold. This should come as no surprise whatsoever. It is never surprising when Văn is like Thérèse. As Marcel himself asks: “Thérèse is the flower, and I being the petal of this flower, how can I not resemble her? (A 8). As he says upon first reading Story of a Soul: “Thérèse is a saint who corresponds totally to the idea I had in my mind of holiness” (A 572). What is always more surprising is when Marcel manages to differ from his “model” (A 8). In the present case, there is indeed similarity. Both return to “the same dispositions”—Văn more extremely, perhaps, but nonetheless, we have essentially the same movement of return and recovery.

Extracting the universal

There are ideas lurking here that must go beyond Văn. When I say repeatedly, Santo subito, dottore subito! it is because I think Văn’s experiential theology is a gift for the universal Church in the abuse crisis. He isn’t just saying something particular to him. God chose him for a mission.

Once we abstract from the extraordinary grace of visions and mystical conversations, two distinct things seem to me to be at play regarding the childish milieu of the Conversations, and it is important both to acknowledge them and not to confuse them.

In the first place, there is that journey back to “the same dispositions.” There is the rediscovery of life before trauma. This is not something purely psychological. As we saw in Part 2, it is also a manifestation of moral courage, via the psycho-spiritual dimension of resilience. The act of “changing sadness into joy” is courageous, and it happens much of time, especially through the most violent winds of the mountain treks, and as tectonic forces shove the mountains under our feet again and again, when the survivor continues on, exercising gentleness with themselves. Whatever “the same dispositions” were, they have to be found and affirmed in their goodness. This is moral virtue itself. And a simple, gentle courage is an example of that. God is loving. He meets us in that simplicity and in that gentleness. He loves the oppressed and downtrodden, who are picking up and carrying on one day at a time.

Not everyone, though, has such dispositions to go back to. Some people actually suffer trauma that stretches back to before all their memories. Others may have numerous memories prior to clerical abuse trauma, but if they are converts, they may have no memories of Catholic spiritual life before the trauma, while cradle Catholics who may have only started to take their faith life seriously at around the same time as suffering abuse trauma will have an analogous problem. Such adolescents or adults have much holistic psychological health to return to in their memory, but specifically in the psycho-spiritual sphere, their situation creates essentially the same barrier as developmental trauma. Developmental trauma and what we might call “spiritual developmental trauma” are both real. Not all survivors are as fortunate as Văn. Does he still have anything to offer them?

I think yes, though it is of course with much more hesitation that I say so.

Văn doesn’t just go back to the same dispositions; he also affirms the value of childhood for recovery and survival. I don’t mean the childhood each of us had. No one’s was perfect. No one’s is normative. No one can live in their own past. I mean rather the childhood of Nazareth, childhood with Jesus, spiritual childhood lived in that backwater of Galilee. There is something healing in that imaginative atmosphere, not just for Văn because he needs to go back to his toddler years where he knew “Jesus Child” (A 46–51, 56–57, 69), but in the most general terms.

A similar intuition is express by Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger (future Pope Benedict XVI): “Advent’s intention is to awaken the most profound and basic emotional memory within us, namely, the memory of the God who became a child. This is a healing memory; it brings hope.”[7] Marcel says roughly the same thing—or rather, he lives it and demonstrates it. He doesn’t say it. For Marcel, the time extends to later years. It’s not just the Nazareth of anticipation and the Bethlehem of arrival. The “healing memory” is also the Nazareth of the years of childhood.

In Nazareth, Jesus sanctified childhood, and it was a time before his death, and preaching, and the desert, and the workshop. There was just childhood, play, tenderness, joy. In the Christian message, this is sitting there for everyone. It’s lying there. It’s waiting. We can pick it up at any time. It seems to me that Marcel offers this too. Mental prayer with little Jesus of Nazareth is healing. The healing value must exist for any meditation on the mystery, but as the prayer moves into a slower, more love-based than thought-based presence of Lover and Beloved, which we call contemplation, more layers of healing will surely be added again.

When it comes to the childishness of the Conversations, there are, then, two sides of the coin. There’s the return to the same dispositions. There’s the spiritual childhood of Nazareth. If Marcel was given an extraordinary grace that contained both, it is because both are gifts for others. Of course, for some, even the first gift is out of reach. But even then, the other gift remains to be given to them from the hands of “little Jesus,” sitting on Mary’s lap and picking up the toys of nature and human manufacture in Nazareth, smiling and chatting with us, his childhood companions.

That, at any rate, is my non-professional hypothesis. I think it does a lot better job than the other hypotheses on the market, and it has the merit of not disconnecting Marcel’s Conversations from his extensive history of clerical abuse. It leaves open connections to other interpretations, such as the apostolate to children. But it doesn’t treat of them exclusively and abstracted from our author’s personal history. What my hypothesis lacks is a professional background that would make it more credible. I’m neither a professional theologian nor a psychologist. But then again, neither was Marcel. He speaks from experience, and that is where I speak from here too, as well as I can.

[1] Conv. = Marcel Van, Conversations, trans. Jack Keogan (Complete Works 2; Versailles: Amis de Van Éditions, 2017).

[2] All references to Saint Thérèse of Lisieux using the system in Œuvres completes (Paris: Cerf / Desclée de Brouwer, 2023), with translations my own.

[3] To = Marcel Van, Correspondence, trans. Jack Keogan (Complete Works 3; Versailles: Amis de Van Éditions, 2018).

[4] A = Marcel Van, Autobiography, trans. Jack Keogan (Complete Works 1; Versailles: Amis de Van Éditions, 2019).

[5] OW = Marcel Van, Other Writings, trans. Jack Keogan (Complete Works 4; Versailles: Amis de Van Éditions, 2018). Additional system for abbreviations explained on page 14, e.g., OWN = notebooks; OWV = various writings.

[6] Dawn Eden, My Peace I Give You: Healing Sexual Wounds with the Help of the Saints (Notre Dame. IN: Ave Maria Press, 2012), 75.

[7] Joseph Ratzinger, Seek that which is Above (San Francisco, CA: Ignatius Press, 2007; orig. 1986), 16.