This morning in the coffeeshop I talked to a young man who is researching his family’s history for a project. He told me that he’s uncovering some really interesting things, such as the fact that one of his ancestors was a bootlegger. His grandmother is in a tizzy about the things he’s finding out. “We’re not supposed to talk about things like that!” she says.

We had a good conversation about the power of the secret, and how families, communities, and other groups conspire to Not Talk About Things, because if you talk about it, who knows where that might lead? Maybe things will fall apart. Maybe people will leave home/leave their marriage/lose their faith/quit enduring/etc. In her cancer fight, my sister told her best friend that she had to make an act of will not to think about her chances of survival, because if she went down that road, she feared she would lose her will to resist. I understand that feeling, and certainly don’t judge her for it. She was arguably making a coldly accurate assessment of her situation, and how best to deal with it.

The problem is, this strategy can be deployed to protect bad people, defer justice, avoid pain, or in some sense come to a full reckoning and purification, which is the precondition of healing. I’m thinking about the Catholic writer Mary DeTurris Poust’s anguished reflection today on the news about how the Archdiocese of Chicago covered up for child molesters for decades. Poust writes:

As I read the news story today, I could feel my heart sinking and then hardening and then breaking. I couldn’t decide if I wanted to cry or scream or walk away, or possibly all three at once.

Every once in a while I hear from people on the “outside,” non-Catholics who can’t figure out why some of us stay in the face of such evil, especially when you pile more evil on top of the original evil for good measure. And sometimes – especially on days like these – I ask myself that very same question. Why am I still here? Why are any of us still here?

And I thought that today, when maybe you might be thinking the very same thing, it was time to talk about it for a few minutes, to let you know that you’re not alone and that it’s okay to feel this way. More than okay. Many of us haven’t stayed, and maybe if they – and we – had talked more openly about it, they’d still be here with us, working to change things for the better, hoping and praying for the day when those of us who had nothing to do with this horror and scandal will be free of the stain and the association and the pain, although it’s hard to imagine we’ll ever really be free.

If you read the whole thing, she’s absolutely not saying that she’s going to leave the Church or that anybody is. But she is saying that people who remain in the Church aren’t helping it or themselves by not talking about what happened. I don’t know how true this is, or what there is left to say about the Scandal. One of the reasons that pushed me over the brink into losing my faith was the unwillingness of so many in the laity to face full on what had been done. There were some church liberals who would, and some church conservatives, but mostly, in my recollection, people just didn’t want to think about it. It was too ugly. Too painful. Let’s move on. Let’s pretend it didn’t happen, or it wasn’t that bad, and anyway, the Church is dealing with it. God forgives; why can’t you? Et cetera.

True, not everything that can be said should be said. But I can think of one situation I was involved in decades ago in which facing down a secret led to the instant collapse of decades of lies, and the reunification of a family. It can happen. I’ve been witness to situations outside the Church in which a lot of craziness and bad stuff has been protected by a code of silence. You see this stuff and sometimes think: Why won’t somebody say anything? Who do they think they’re protecting? The main thing they’re protecting is their own peace of mind. That’s human nature. It’s human nature in the government, in the military, in corporate America, in schools, in families, and, of course, in churches. In an effective exorcism, the first beachhead the exorcist establishes in the fight to reclaim the lost soul is to force the demon to say its name. There’s truth in that.

I don’t want to restrict the combox conversation to the Catholic Church situation. I’d love to hear from readers who have personal experience with secrets, lies, and fear of the truth in all areas. If you are Catholic, though, and have remained in the Church, please talk about the role that talking about the Scandal — or not talking about it — over the past decade has helped or hindered your ability to affirm the Church in the face of the awful revelations. Again, I’m not interested in people throwing blame around; I’m just interested in hearing your stories.