Chalk and awe: My India teaching mission, part 2

(And you may ask yourself, how did I get here? See my previous post for background on my India teaching mission.)

Today, my first full day in Kerala, Father Gregory Gresko, O.S.B., and I began teaching our intensive course “The Indissolubility of Marriage: A Theological and Cultural Analysis” at the Indian Session of the John Paul II Pontifical Theological Institute for Marriage and Family Sciences. Our class of more than fifty students includes priests, sisters, and laywomen. All are from India or Africa, save for Father Gregory's (and now my) friend Andrea Lemon, who took the first picture below (the second was taken by a student, Sister Daisy).

Father Greg, wearing a wireless mic, addresses our class.

Team teaching: I add to Father Greg's discussion of respect with a discussion of intimacy as Father Greg looks up a reference for me.

It is a joy and an honor to communicate the teachings of the Church to this vibrant and diverse student body. I feel particularly blessed to be able to show the students an example of a woman teaching theology, as this particular branch of the Pontifical John Paul II Institute does not currently have women on its regular theology faculty (although it has had a female visiting theology professor at least once in the past). When Father Gregory introduced me as the first woman to receive a sacred-theology doctorate from the University of St. Mary of the Lake, several of the women in the class beamed.

(Updated Jan. 14:) Asking your prayers as I go on mission in India

I ask your prayers today as I leave to begin my three-week teaching mission to India. There I will be team-teaching an intensive course on the indissolubility of marriage at the Indian Session of the John Paul II Pontifical Theological Institute for Marriage and Family Sciences in Kerala with Father Gregory Gresko, O.S.B., professor of theology at the Pontifical University Sant’Anselmo in Rome.

Father Gresko, who is originally from Virginia, teaches an intensive course at the Institute each January on a theological topic related to the Institute's mission of promoting studies in marriage and family. It was at his invitation, confirmed by Institute Vice President Father Jacob Koippally, that I received the opportunity to make this mission.

As I have written earlier, this mission is for me the fulfillment of a longtime dream to use my knowledge as a doctor of sacred theology to help Catholics in the developing world, where the rapidly growing Church has a great need of teachers.

Here is the letter from Father Koippally in which he confirmed my invitation and provided details of my teaching mission.

Father Gresko and I will have about forty students in our class, including lay people, religious, deacons, and priests from throughout India and English-speaking Africa. Our course will be part of the Institute's canonical-licentiate program. (A canonical licentiate, which is issued under the authority of the Holy See, is the minimum degree required for teaching on the seminary level and is a necessary prerequisite for a canonical doctorate.) The language of the Institute is English.

Father Gresko (in white at center of back row) stands with his students at the Indian Session of the John Paul II Pontifical Theological Institute for Marriage and Family Sciences in January 2017.

In addition to teaching at the Institute, Father Gresko and I will be speaking at symposiums in Bangalore and Cochin (Kochi) about Catholic teaching on marriage and sexuality. Here is a flyer for the Bangalore conference.

After Father Gregory and I finish teaching but before we return to the States, we will spend two days with the Daughters of Mary in Kanniyakumari, who run the Stella Maris Institute of Development Studies. I am looking forward very much to witnessing their outreach to traumatized women and to visiting the Leprosy Rehabilitation Center that they administer.

Thank you for your prayers as I set out for what promises to be an exciting mission experience. Everyone who supports my apostolate in any way is in my prayers every day. God bless you!

P.S. Thanks to the generosity of several donors, I have been able to raise enough funds to cover my airfare and incidental expenses for this mission. There remain a few uncovered expenses, most notably the medical bills for the vaccines I have received for this trip. I have submitted them to my insurance and am waiting to see if they will be covered; thus far, one bill for $288 was rejected. If you would like to help me with that expense, here is a link where you may donate:

paypal.me/DawnEden

Update, January 14: I arrived safely after more than twenty-four hours of travel and all is well. Many thanks for your prayers; they helped me as I made a tight connection in Abu Dhabi after my flight from Dulles International Airport was delayed due to snow. Must get sleep now, but had to share this lovely flyer for the workshop Father Gresko and I are giving in Kochi.

Watch me tonight on EWTN's "The Journey Home"

Tonight at 8 p.m. Eastern, EWTN airs a new interview with me on "The Journey Home" with Marcus Grodi through its cable, satellite, and online broadcasts. I am grateful to Marcus and to the production staff for inviting me to speak about how I, as a survivor of childhood sexual abuse, came to believe in the truth of the Catholic faith despite the abuse crisis afflicting the Church.

If you have found this page through learning about me on "The Journey Home," you may be interested in my books My Peace I Give You: Healing Sexual Wounds with the Help of the Saints, Remembering God's Mercy (which offers Ignatian spirituality for healing of memories), and the revised Catholic edition of The Thrill of the Chaste. You may also enjoy listening to the many podcast interviews and talks available online in which I discuss spiritual healing.

Video: I participate in a panel on "Confronting a Moral Catastrophe"

From left, at the Georgetown panel Sept. 25: Robert Bennett, Karen Tumulty, moderator John Carr,  myself, and Kevin Byrnes.

I am grateful to the Georgetown University Initiative on Catholic Social Thought and Public Life for inviting me to take part in its recent public dialogue "Confronting a Moral Catastrophe: Lay Leadership, Catholic Social Teaching, and the Sexual Abuse Crisis." It was an honor to contribute to the discussion at Gaston Hall alongside Robert Bennett, Karen Tumulty, Kevin Byrnes, and moderator John Carr. A number of news outlets covered the sold-out event, including Catholic News Service, the National Catholic Reporter, and Crux.

Here is a video of the dialogue. My main contributions are at 31:20 (beginning with John Carr's questions to me) and 1:18:05.

Why would an abuse victim want to enter a scandal-ridden Church?

I discuss the abuse crisis and healing on EWTN News Nightly. Click here to watch the interview.

National Review Online's Kathryn Jean Lopez asks and I answer:

I intended to be anything but Catholic,” Dawn Eden Goldstein remembers. She grew up in a Reform Jewish household but “fell into agnosticism” in her late teens and become a rock-music historian in New York City. In 1999, she says, she “encountered the love of Jesus Christ” and became a nondenominational Christian.

Her impression of the Catholic Church was influenced by Christians who told her that its teachings were “unbiblical.” All her biases were confirmed when the scandal hit in 2002. On top of all the natural anger and disgust, her sensitivity ran deep, having been molested as a child.

And yet, today Goldstein is a professor of dogmatic theology at Holy Apostles College and Seminary and the author of My Peace I Give You: Healing Sexual Wounds with the Help of the Saints.

“I remember the moment I began to change my mind about Catholicism,” she recalls. She was at a meeting of the New York City G. K. Chesterton Society. “Somehow the discussion turned to the scandals, and I made some derisive comment about how Catholics disbelieved the reports of abuse that were then flooding the news media.” Goldstein was especially “irritated” after reading comments that tried to suggest that the scandals were really “a witch hunt orchestrated by reporters who hated the Church.” Her surprise came when the Catholics around her weren’t trying to look away from or explain away what was being revealed.

“They were angry about the abuse,” she says, “angry that such despicable and criminal acts were being perpetrated by their own priests, in their own Church. They didn’t at all want the abuse covered up, as I had assumed. Rather, they wanted it brought into the light so that abusing members of the clergy could be brought to justice and the Church could be purified.”

“It was when I saw ordinary Catholics who were furious about clergy abuse that I started to consider seriously the Catholic Church’s claim to be the true faith,” she remembers. “I entered into full communion with the Church in 2006 and have never looked back.”

Read the rest at National Review Online.

I speak on EWTN News Nightly on the abuse crisis and how survivors can find healing

EWTN News Nightly yesterday gave me the opportunity to speak about the abuse crisis and to share the message of my book My Peace I Give You: Healing Sexual Wounds with the Help of the Saints.


I will soon be undertaking a teaching mission in India. Please click here to learn more about the mission and how you can help.

Finding hope at the National Shrine of Divine Mercy

If you cannot see the video below, please click here to view it on YouTube.

Today I needed a reminder of why I, a victim of childhood sexual abuse, became a Catholic. I found it at @divinemercy.

No other institution proclaims the dignity of every human person. For the good of humanity, the Church must be purified and reformed. https://t.co/5aYiB5nxGO

— Dawn Eden Goldstein (@DawnofMercy) August 15, 2018

I will soon be undertaking a teaching mission in India. Please click here to learn more about the mission and how you can help.

In today's Catholic Herald: I write on the need for bishops to do penance

Today's online edition of the Catholic Herald features my op-ed urging the U.S. bishops to perform public acts of penance to start the healing process:

Something very important is missing from every statement issued by US bishops thus far in the wake of the allegations against ex-Cardinal Theodore McCarrick. It is something needed not only for the restoration of the bishops’ credibility but also, and more importantly, for the healing of the Church.

Given that the bishops form a college in continuation of the Apostles’ own, they need to take the initiative in summoning themselves, as a body, to public acts of penance for (1) the sins of bishops and all clerics, and (2) those who enabled or failed to act against such wrongdoers.

It is true that all the faithful need to examine themselves and repent of their role in failing to protect others, whether minors or adults, from clerics who abused their power. But if such repentance is to have its proper effect, leading to reparation and conversion of life, it needs to be modeled by those entrusted with governing the faithful.

Read the rest on the Catholic Herald's website.