Several years ago I wrote in my paper ‘The curse of the choice’:
“I am convinced that many disorders have in their very beginning a double bind of the choice between good and evil, life and death presented by the closest attachment figure, mother or her viceroy.
The formula of the “original choice”: a quadruple bind
abusive mother
to stay = death to leave = death
----------------------- child -----------------------
to stay = life to leave = life
The upper line: To stay with an abusive mother means to die (it feels like it to a child; it is always the spiritual reality and sometimes the physical reality as well) but to leave her also means death for a child according to her primary instinct. It is the first double bind which forms the basis of the future persistent darkness in the life of an individual, along the line “there is no exit” out of any life situation which involves a relationship with other(s).
The bottom line: To stay with an abusive mother means to live (the security that a child needs) but to leave her means also to live (this is the voice which grows stronger as a person grows older; a mother will defend herself against it via inducing shame and guilt into her child, crushing her personality and thus keeping her on a “baby level” psychologically). This is the second double bind which is “a fake light of hope” in the life of an individual, the “secure passivity” of never growing aided by the dreams of something better which are never realized.”
Further in that paper and in several others I explored the effect of the parental abuse on the relationships of a grown abused individual with God. I established that in the beginning of her relationship with Jesus Christ such a person inevitably relates to Him as if He was her abusive parent, reincarnating a parent in Christ, so to speak. Paradoxically, the perceived love of God triggers an automatic response, a fear of inescapable doom that is always attached to “the love” she knew before.
If a person perseveres, with time she will gain enough experience of being with Christ to realize that He is Love that cannot contain even the slightest trace of evil or darkness – therefore the quadruple bind in which she has existed for all her life begins dissolving. There is still a choice but now it is a choice between evil and good, between Satan and Christ – not between “good evil” and “evil good”, between “evil God” and “Divine evil”. The accumulating new experiences of Love untainted by the evil will eventually cause a psyche of a believer to make a hundred eighty degrees turn, from the vector of fear i.e. inwards (the habitual mode of relating to others formed by the quadruple bind) to the vector of trust, outwards.
I will note here briefly that it follows from the definition of God as light in Whom there is no darkness that anyone who wishes to be with Him must get rid of the darkness in own soul. The less darkness is in the believer the fuller is his union with Christ, the most desirable state for a Christian soul and the sole purpose of her life. Only a desire to be with Christ can enable a soul to endure her “undoing” by Him, from the evil that the abuse had incorporated in her very structure. The words are inadequate to convey what is at stake even if a very legitimate parallel with an attachment to a human person is employed because Jesus Christ, while being a perfect human, is immeasurably more i.e. He is God; His divinity raises this attachment and everything that involved to the level of the absolute, life or death, all or nothing. It is all about the taste of the meaning of existence of a soul at last – justification, redemption, deification – in one word, it is living through, not just reading, the Gospel story, with Christ, the story being applied to me, the concrete me. It is the experiential knowledge of the truth of Christian revelation, something a believer gets to know in the biblical sense of this word, soul, spirit, and body.
The objective reality which a believer discovers experientially: Jesus Christ, the Son of God, is Love and He cannot change. The believer then is always perfectly safe with Him; this safety is the foundation of her path to Him, something that initiated her restructuring. Christ is the Head of the Church and the Church is His Body, according to the Christian teaching. A believer then, abused or not, has all rights to expect the Church of Christ to be the safest place for her or for him.
Unfortunately, it is not always so. I do not mean what is much talked about nowadays, the child sexual abuse within the Church, although its principals and effect are in essence do not differ from what I am about to describe. I am interested here in a more subtle manifestation of the same phenomenon, namely a situation when a victim of a narcissistic abuse in childhood later in life finds Christ, learns to trust Him, comes to His Church and then one day out of blue suddenly beholds her abusive mother being reincarnated in the Church, in a sight of a priest holding the Eucharistic Cup. I am very interested to understand what is there that makes an adult, a firm believer who knows the Love of Christ on her own experience, to feel as she was thrown back into her abusive childhood and even further back, into hell devoid of hope to escape – all those feelings I repeat reaching a pinnacle while she is watching a narcissist priest to bring forward the Cup with Christ, her Beloved.
Let us consider again the dilemma of an abused child, a Quadruple Bind-I:
to stay [with mother] = death to leave = death [without mother]
------------------------------------------ child ------------------------------------------------
to stay [with mother] = life to leave = life [without mother]
Compare it with Quadruple Bind-II:
to stay [with Christ]= death to leave = death [without Christ]
--------------------------------------- believer -----------------------------------------------
to stay [with Christ] = life to leave = life [without Christ]
They are identical, with one small difference: in the first case it is the mother who is considered and named and the actions of a child are in relation to her; in the second case a narcissist priest is considered but the actions of a believer are in relation to Christ. In a case of a mother it is “staying with mother – separation from mother”; in a case of a narcissist priest it is staying with Christ – separating from Christ (we are considering here a case of a believer whose primary reason for coming to the Church is to be united with Christ, in the Eucharist; he feels that he cannot live without communion with Him).
The way out of Quadruple Bind-I (mother), the diagonal lines:
to stay [with mother] = death to leave = death [without mother]
------------------------------------------ child ------------------------------------------------
to stay [with mother] = life to leave = life [without mother]
i.e.:
to stay [with mother] = death and to leave = life [without mother]
or
to leave [without mother] = death and to stay = life [with mother]
Those two lines are representations of two mutually exclusive realities, “an abusive mother, a murderess” and “a good mother, a life-giver”.
The way out of Quadruple Bind-II (narc. priest), the diagonal lines:
narcissist priest [“source” of Life (communion=Christ)]
to stay [with Christ] = death to leave = death [without Christ]
-------------------------------------------- believer ---------------------------------------------
to stay [with Christ] = life to leave = life [without Christ]
i.e.:
to stay [with Christ] = death and to leave = life [without Christ]
or
to leave = death [without Christ] and to stay = life [with Christ]
Those two lines are representations of two mutually exclusive realities, “a narcissist priest, a murderer” and “a good priest, a Life-giver”.
Compare now the first and second lines of two binds, of mother and of priest.
The second lines are identical and straightforward; they represent normality:
to leave [without mother] = death and to stay = life [with mother] – “a good mother, a life-giver”
to leave = death [without Christ] and to stay = life [with Christ] – a good priest, a Life-giver (Christ)
But the first lines present different pictures:
to stay [with mother] = death and to leave = life [without mother] – “an abusive mother, a murderess”
to stay [with Christ] = death and to leave = life [without Christ] – narcissist priest, a murderer
It is possible to come to a conclusion that the mother is a murderess so the line makes a sense (albeit unbearably painful).
It is impossible though to reconcile oneself with “to stay with Christ in communion – death and to leave Him – life”. Impossible. It would be very straightforward if we connected death with the one who spreads it, not with Christ:
to stay [with a narc. priest] = death and to leave = life [without a narc. priest] – narcissist priest, a murderer
makes a perfect sense and there would be no question whether to leave or not if there was no Christ involved – not just “a good priest”, a mask a narcissist priest wears but Christ in communion, the omnipotent God.
To a believer, Christ is huge and overweights a priest (and a mother as a matter of a fact; this is why the healing is possible). Yet, they are joined via the Holy Communion (a priest as a consecrator and distributer); the bind works in proportion with the faith of a believer in the Real Presence. The more a believer is attached to Christ the more she is likely to stay. The more she believes in His omnipotence the more she is likely to disregard the narcissist abuse and its effect on her. Paradoxically, in a mind of an ardent believer, to leave is “to make Christ smaller than a narcissist priest”. Ultimately, to leave means to betray Christ.
Hence here is the real “hook” of the whole situation: if I leave I will give to a narcissist priest (a human) more importance than to Christ (God); if I stay I will reinforce that a narcissist priest (a human) does not matter and Christ (God) can nullify every evil. If I leave I deny the omnipotence of God.
Staying though erodes a soul and a body and works as a “proof” that faith in Christ (God) is futile. From here follows that the phenomenon of a narcissist priest in the Church of Christ turns upside down all teaching without altering anything dogmatically: staying in the Church for the sake of Christ, because I love Him, inevitably ruins a believer and his faith.
[I consider here the situation when there is no other church around available (i.e. a place where one can receive communion). Yet, the same dynamics work when there is a choice because of the very nature of the narcissistic abuse i.e. invisible, mind-clouding, gas-lighting and so on (as I stated before I am not considering here the sexual or physical abuse but emotional and spiritual which a narcissist seem to radiate naturally; this phenomenon was explored in ‘Antipriest’ and ‘The heart of the New Testament’). For example, a believer may reason that “Christ will protect me – why should I leave my congregation?” or “to run away is cowardice, Christians should not be cowards”, etc.]
To add blur:
to leave = death [without Christ] and to stay = life [with Christ] – a good priest, a Life-giver (Christ)
to stay [with Christ] = death and to leave = life [without Christ] – narcissist priest, a murderer
are in fact not two entirely opposite realities. To leave Christ, the Ultimate Life, is always death regardless who is a priest, good or evil. To stay with Christ is always life, regardless who is a priest, good or evil. It is so metaphysically speaking. Psychologically speaking, it is death to stay with Christ if the evil (a narcissist priest) is a compulsory attachment to this staying – not because Christ “is not powerful enough” but because a believer, a human being, is not strong enough to withstand the evil without consequences. Contrary to the Church teaching about the validity of the Sacraments, the evil priest is capable of destroying communion – not metaphysically but in the mind/soul of a believer. Or, better to say, he is not destroying the One Whom he gives, Jesus Christ in communion – he destroys the receiving end, a human being so eventually there is no one to receive. Hence the Church’s teaching is true, nothing changes the validity of the sacrament per se, objectively speaking – if the communion was not to be received, not to relate to – but then of course it would not be called communion.
I would like again to highlight quite unthinkable: more ardently a believer (abused when he was a child) wishes to receive Christ more damaged he will end up. More vivid and conscious is his communion with Christ, more damage from a priest he will suffer. An argument, that the holier is an individual the easier for him to withstand the evil, does not work in this particular case in my opinion because of the perceived “impossible mix”, of the good and the evil (shadowy, zero) distributing Good (infinite, the Source of all). It is akin to the shiver and shock one experiences when one reads about a murderous mother. If the evil was scattering the Hosts on the ground and pissing on them it would not be shocking at all. So it is the perception of unthinkable what screws up a believer’s mind and soul returning him back to the beginning of his life, but this time the abuse is multiplied by the infinite component, God, attached to it. I propose that “the unthinkable”, the perceived mix of the good and the evil is the real trigger of the emotional flashbacks and the most powerful weapon the evil can get, over a soul.
Hence the formula of re-traumatisation in the narcissistic true i.e. possessing the true Holy Communion church:
to stay [with mother] = death to leave = death [without mother]
------------------------------------------ child ------------------------------------------------
to stay [with mother] = life to leave = life [without mother]
a conclusion:
to stay [with mother] = death and to leave = life [without mother]
to stay [with Christ] = death to leave = death [without Christ]
----------------------------------------- believer ---------------------------------------------
to stay [with Christ] = life to leave = life [without Christ]
a conclusion:
to stay [with Christ] = death and to leave = life [without Christ] – narcissist priest, a murderer
I will put them together:
to stay [with mother] = death and to leave = life [without mother]
to stay [with Christ] = death and to leave = life [without Christ] – narcissist priest, a murderer
And, if one tries to engage in “a rational action” of separating Christ from a priest it becomes even more all-embracing (all things are coming together here making a perfect parody), especially if one recalls the normal Christian definitions, theological as well as psychological, of a priest as a father and the Church as a mother:
to stay [with father, narcissist priest] = death and to leave = life [without father, narcissist priest]
to stay [with mother, the Church] = death and to leave = life [without mother, the Church]
to stay [with Christ, God] = death and to leave = life [without Christ, God]
What is left then?
“When I see the heavens, the work of Your hands,
the moon and the stars which You arranged,
what is man that You should keep him in mind,
mortal man that You care for him?
Yet You made him little less than a god;
with glory and honour You crowned him,
gave him power over the works of Your hand,
put all things under his feet.”
(Psalm 8)
As it was said above, a narcissist parent makes her child to partake the knowledge of “evil good and good evil”, “evil is always a part of good; good serves to trap” etc. incarnated in her own person. I tend to think that even when God is healing the soul this knowledge remains present (albeit consciously rejected), hugely in unconscious, breaking out in a form of irrational fears and nightmares which lessen with a progress of healing.
When such a person comes to a narcissistic parish, a narcissist priest activates this unconscious knowledge just like the ancient mysteries did it, using symbols. Or as Christian sacraments, the Baptism for example: we are buried with Christ (the immersion) to rise with Christ (emerging from water to the new life). Similarly, in the Eucharist we receive the Body and Blood of Christ to become one with Him. In a case of the Church with valid (true) sacraments and the faith in the Real Presence the communion is not just symbol – it is the real Christ. An extreme narcissist priest then, being flesh and blood = the en-fleshed (incarnated) evil = being totally controlled by the evil holds the Body and Blood of Christ = the Absolute Good = God, in the Cup and distributes them. He thus, in his action, is acting out = activates the rejected and now unconscious knowledge of an abused by a narcissist parent parishioner, that the Good exists only to trap him. Hence Christ, in his mind, being in the Cup, is a trap. It is impossible however, for a believer in God, to think that Christ, God i.e. the pre-existent, is being used by the evil (a shadow) hence the natural end of this activation of unconscious is “Christ = God made evil to trap me” – that is, of course, destroys the Christian knowledge of God. Hence a believer is presented with two unthinkable: “God is a tool of Satan” and “God uses the evil” – all this while approaching the Cup with a firm conviction that “it is truly Christ, my Lord and my God Who sacrificed Himself for me”.
This is how the childhood experience of the narcissist abuse is raised, in the narcissist church, on the metaphysical = eternal level and acted out, the believer being forced – not by God of course – to participate in the upgraded “mystery”, of symbolic undoing of everything the Incarnation of Christ has done (if the Incarnation understood as an event which enables humans to choose between good and evil and to resist evil, being free from ancestral sin).
An important development: while the abuse in childhood is overwhelming there is typically a hope, a dream about “a rescuer figure”. Hence there is now, of the torture, which is clouded/obliterated by habitual depersonalisation/derealisation but there is also an escape in a dream about the future.
The sacraments and the Mass in the Christ’s Church are beyond time, they are eternal. The Sacrifice of Christ, on Golgotha, happens now, during Mass and in eternity. It is the eternal now and a believer is included in this eternal now, of the Kingdom of God which is, in Eucharist, is already now, the eternity now. Hence the power of a narcissist priest: by the means of his inclusion into that eternal now of the Church – the inclusion which is not due to God but to human perversion – he adds to each of his actions the dimension of eternity. Thus the re-experiencing the childhood abuse now has eternal dimension. A believer is reliving his abuse in eternity, having a full impression that God ordered it this way and there is no escape, ever. It is not the eternal Kingdom of God but eternal hell, Christ being swallowed by Hell. The “rescuer figure” of a childhood is a fake. And, if a believer already has some experience of Christ being omnipotent and a Rescuer indeed he is even more broken, unable to reconcile the two.