NB please: Updates previous to this one have been moved to the last page on the navigation bar, entitled "Monastery Soap Opera"; to read those previous episodes of the "saga" chronologically, start at the bottom of the page and read toward the top of that page.

Please be aware that the repercussions of PTSD and other sufferings are just as horrid for those kids physically and emotionally abused as for those who are sexually abused.

August 2005 Update, per your requests    

While i find i resent time taken from survivor issues to update what is being done to us, it is all about the same thing: the abuse of Power.  i am using whatever is done to us to show the pattern of what the survivors have been experiencing since long before 2002.

Folks have asked how things are going. One person expressed concern that since i hadn't updated the site since April, she worried the website is closed. It is not closed.

One call in particular, caused me to reflect upon the past year. It was just about a year ago—mid July—that the bishop came with his chancellor/canon lawyer. They came, seeming to try to shut us down. Or to intimidate us with the seeming attempt.  As far as we have ever been able to tell, anyway.

It was just shortly after that, and because of that, that we asked a friend and fellow parishioner to read a brief paragraph to the parishioners at a parish meeting, telling them that the bishop had seemed to try to shut us down, over our website that we have in advocacy for survivors and victims (RIP) of sexual abuse by nuns and priests and the hierarchy which enabled them.

The parish priest, in a subsequent letter, expressed his distress that we had not asked his permission to address the parishioners, and especially that we had let the parishioners know at all about the problem, instead of keeping it secret from them. At that meeting, the priest then went on (and on), according to what we were told by a number of parishioners, to "decree" that "if the sisters are censored by the bishop they will no longer receive support from the parish."

We have never been supported by the parish or the diocese. There have been a handful of extremely kind parishioners who have personally helped us with projects, and sometimes food, on occasion, but those were personal gifts; not gifts from the parish.

At any rate, we were never censored by the bishop, or if we were, he never bothered to notify us of it.

But we have surely been "slapped around" as though we'd been censored. Some new form of "slap" seems to follow each update of this website, in predictable pattern.

An abridged timeline:

January 5^{th of 2005}  Mother prayed at Mass that the church show the merciful face of Christ to those it has abused, and the next thing we knew—within hours—the parish priest left a phone message saying he had been approached by a parishioner upset that we'd prayed for survivors, and that he would protect the parish from the "scandal of the nuns" by telling Mother not to read scripture at Mass any more and not to volunteer as Eucharistic minister to distribute the Precious Blood, until he had heard back from the bishop, to whom he had reported us, and from whom he was awaiting a promised return call.

Then seemed to begin the campaign to repeat-often-so-it-will-seem-true, that the sisters were "Giving Scandal" with the website. The parish priest said it a number of times and so we were finally pushed to defend ourselves from his untrue accusation. We indicated that having a website that says the founding bishop of the diocese, an admitted molester of little boys, should be held accountable, as should the whole Church for the decades- long rape of its children, was not a scandalous thing. Rather, the rape of the kids and the hierarchical cover up are what comprised the scandal. At any rate, to stop the seeming smear campaign, using the lie that "the Sisters are giving scandal", and knowing that we would not be permitted by the priest, to openly address the parishioners no matter how respectfully we might ask, on Jan. 7^th we wrote a seven-page letter.

Jan. 9^th    We distributed it to whomever wanted it, after Sunday Mass.

Jan. 16^th  We walked into Mass to find the parish priest renewing the Eucharistic ministers and installing a new one—while, by glaring omission of us, stripping Mother Veronica and myself of the ministries. Without ever even the basic courtesy of having told us he decided to do so. Just did it. Again, in typical covert-slap, they didn't even bother to notify us—just used that same pathetic Church pattern of don't-say-it-out-loud but plant that elephant right in the middle of the….sanctuary….

Feb. 9^th Ash Wed—Mother sought medical help for what we thought was "pneumonia".

Feb. 23^rd  two weeks later, a thoracentesis essentially diagnosed her with cancer.

March 1^st 6 days later an oncologist visit confirmed the diagnosis of metastatic
                  ovarian cancer

March 9^th 8 days later, she was admitted to the hospital preoperatively.

March 10^th surgery.

March18^th Mother got home.

March 24^th  Holy Thursday of the week of our Lord's Passion and Death—with her chemo to begin in but four days, for heaven's sake—there's sweet Mother at her lowest, her most "down-dog" time—just diagnosed with cancer, freshly post-operative, waiting to heal enough from the radical surgery so as to be able to begin receiving chemo, so the metastasis to her lung could be killed, so it would not make it so hard for her to breathe.

In utter desperation, i called the parish priest and said something, according to my notes,  very close to: " As you know MoV has metastatic cancer and had radical surgery and will have another surgery Monday for the insertion of a port for chemotherapy. We have been told that this persecution will cause a less than optimal outcome of chemo and i want her to have an optimal outcome. You are harming her, Father. When you had your cancer we broke our necks to help you and i am flat-out begging you to let her give the Precious Blood on Saturday night (Easter Vigil Mass) and Sunday (Easter) Masses. i'm going to hang up now."

Within three hours, the bishop called to say he "stood ready to help" in any way he could, having heard about Mother's diagnosis and surgery. i told him in my characteristically blunt manner, that the way he could help was to re-install Mother as Eucharistic minister and Lector. i told him what the medical people had said. He, in typical evasive cowardly hierarch manner, murmured and muttered that he didn't make those decisions, the parish priest made them and he just okayed them. i pointed out we all knew he was the guy's boss and could tell him to reinstall Mother if he wanted to.

Mother, to this day, is still stripped of being a Eucharistic minister and Lector. That's how ready the bishop stood to help.

On that Holy Thursday the bishop only said he stood ready to help. He never did.  He has never done a thing to help, but he has done plenty to harm us.

i hoped at least some parishioners would stick up for Mother, for what was right, and out of love for her in her most vulnerable time. i hoped that if they knew her health care givers said that stripping her of Eucharistic ministry and Lector ministry could actually diminish her chance of a successful outcome from chemo, they would stick up for her.

Gee, if not because they cared about her, if not because they had turned to her for over a decade for her prayers and caring in their hard times, then surely at least, to help prevent their priest (who had done this to her) and their bishop (who claimed to be standing ready to help) from increasing her chances of death.

That almost seems like they were aiding and abetting the Grim Reaper, almost like they were rooting for her death instead of her recovery. The priest and the bishop.

How many persons, if told they can help someone survive cancer, would do something to make things worse instead of better? It would seem there are at least two.

How many persons, fathers, Fathers, bishops, if told they are increasing the odds of an unfavorable outcome for someone with metastatic cancer, would use that opportunity to do further harm, to further punish, to further intimidate?  It would seem there are at least two.

And indeed, as those health care workers said, the petty meanness, the covert sly viciousness, might just be having the seemingly desired affect: Mother's CA125, which should have come down to normal some time ago, is still not normal. The doctor once voiced concern. We are concerned.

As those two who would not do what they could to help Mother, now read this, i wonder….if sick-smiles-of-success are slinking across their faces.

i could be absolutely inaccurate—and would be glad to be wrong—about this that follows: i don't think anybody but one friend/parishioner actually went to the parish priest, face to face, and stuck up for our dear sweet Mother Veronica. He still goes to Mass every Saturday or Sunday, as he has done all his life. But no longer to our little parish church. He goes elsewhere. Like so many others who were driven away before him, by the same parish priest.  If he notches a stick for each soul he has "run off", or even just the ones i've observed over the past decade, he'd have quite a trophy by now.

Those sorts of things are exactly what erode the Faith of The Faithful. Those are the sort of things that cause "fallen away Catholics".

This is another example of that sort of thing: Since the kennel has to be closed till after chemo, due to Mother's immune system being chemo suppressed, we applied to Catholic Philanthropic Foundations that give monetary grants for various purposes. We requested a ten thousand dollar grant for monastery operating expenses to get us through this year till we can re-open the kennel. We had an opportunity to receive one, but when the organization contacted the bishop to check on us, Vann Johnston (yes, him again, the bishop's man) blocked our getting it, according to the grant/foundation person who explained that to us.

It would seem the chancellor does the will of his bishop. If he wants to keep the job. It would seem that one of the unspoken tenets of The Good Ol' Boy Network that moved perps around to sexually abuse and soul-murder countless victims, is still alive and thriving, at least in this neck of the woods.

Some time in May or June we heard from a friend/parishioner who had heard another parishioner indicate that she didn't think Father was "going to let the parish pay for the sisters' property insurance any more".

"And the beat goes on…" as the old song says.

And the beatings go on….

Now we come to the preface of something i am embarrassed to confess. i do so, hoping to show how it seems to be, that the abuse and cover-up by hierarchs often causes the death of the survivor's Faith in the Church and, frighteningly often, it also kills their belief in God.

Everyone's Faith is tested. That's the nature of Faith. It's what Faith is all about. It's what vocations to religious life are about. It's what perseverance is about.  It's what perseverance is for. Given that, one knows that most folks, if not everyone, experience what i am about to describe. What Scripture refers to as "silver purified of dross"—our tested Faith.

This is what embarrasses me to admit: All along, i have not lost one iota, not one tittle or  dot, of Faith, even in the reading of horror story after horror story of incredibly perverted sexual abuse of individuals, many of whom i have gotten to know and grown to love. It seems i should have lost my Faith reading those accounts of such grim torture, and especially, of such typical and sociopathically remorseless hardball hierarch tactics that further victimize survivors. i should have lost my Faith, or found it severely shaken, it seems, but i didn't.

Surely i was horrified. i was, each new day, re-horrified—in the same way that the Holocaust horrifies me.

But it did not shake my Faith or my belief in a loving Fatherly God.

All of those priests making sometimes-bloodied carnage of innocent little bodies and souls. All of those brothers and nuns and sisters doing exactly the same thing.  All of those bishops and archbishops, hiding the truth, cowering from responsibility, shuffling the perps around, knowing more kids would be raped-to-ruin.

All of those non-perps who, to guard their own turf, looked the other way. Even then i held onto my Faith. Even when i saw the bishops uniting to prolong instead of shorten, the statutes of limitations on child abuse, so that they could evade accepting responsibility for what was/is their fault. No matter how much i read and saw and heard, it killed neither my Faith in the Church nor my Belief in God.

i am actually ashamed to admit that i did not feel my faith begin to be eroded until i personally experienced, (in an inestimably minimal way compared to survivors,)  the sleazy and sneaky tactics close up, from the parish priest whom i once loved, and close up from our bishop whom i once at least respected, for his "grace of state".

Not until i had long experienced and continue to personally experience their attempts to scare or hurt us into getting rid of the website, did my Faith begin to be eroded. Not until they acted toward us personally, in the same manners and patterns that survivors and their families and their lawyers have documented, are used to intimidate and demean and "slap" survivors, did i fully comprehend what is done in revictimizing victims. If one steps back and looks, it could even appear to be a purposely designed weapon that they purposefully use.

Not until the priest and bishop i personally know personally and purposely hurt Mother Veronica when she was most down, did i get an inkling of what impurely evil viciousness sex abuse victims go through, after they turn to their bishops with an account of their abuse.

Maybe that's why so few others care at a gut level about the Church's betrayal of you—because they cannot fathom it until they personally experience malice from the priest and/or the bishop they personally know, love, trust, turn to, and need, to find their way to God.

i am ashamed to admit, that all through the reading of the abuses that caused many of you to lose your Faith and your Belief in God, i have held onto my Belief and my Faith.

But now, as i experience that those two alone—the parish priest and his bishop—have all but obliterated my Faith in the Church and my Belief in God, i am deeply ashamed to admit that only now for the first time do i get an inkling of how it was that your souls were murdered, your Faith killed and sometimes even your Belief stolen, your God made no longer available for you. 

i see now how they can make that happen, no matter how desperately you need the comfort of your Faith in our Church and your belief in our God. It truly is soul murder.

Indeed i find myself wondering if i will one day join the Church-Disposed-Of in the Bone-Piles of those who mourn the loss of God, literally and precisely, because of evil done in the name of our beloved Church, because of evil conceived in the hearts of the anointed, evil come to fruition at those anointed hands of low class power-addicts, and evil perpetuated by hierarchs under the guise of not allowing scandal to show.

i am determined that my Faith and Belief survive. But if it does not, i will tell Jesus that it is entirely due to that parish priest and that particular bishop, even more than o'connell. i hope they have not lied to us all along when they taught us that Jesus will sort it all out. i am counting on that.

Somewhat of a change of topic: i think it was in April or so, just after the priest seems to have taken upon himself  the authority and power to accuse, judge, censor, and punish us, we un-invited him to offer Mass here on a particular day as had been previously scheduled. He seemed to become distressed at that.

Some time later a parishioner told us that the priest appeared to be heading toward insinuating that we were not taking proper care of the Blessed Sacrament. We figured at that time that perhaps that was a new tactic: perhaps the priest finds an excuse to accuse that the nuns are not taking proper care of the Sacrament, so that the bishop has an excuse to say he will remove permission to reserve the Blessed Sacrament. At that point, perhaps he finds it convenient to then insinuate we are not a monastery, thus attempting to accomplish what was the initial apparent-threat.

Therefore, we were not surprised to receive a letter from the parish priest—an excerpt below—in which he uses his words to appear to be trying to help us (sounding like the bishop's empty words of standing-ready-to-help while covertly doing things to harm). We were not surprised to find what seemed to be the true intent of that letter at the end of it, where he indicates he should be invited to offer Mass and renew the Blessed Sacrament, seeming to insinuate that we were neglecting the care of the Center of our lives.

The paragraph: "Finally, Sister, I am deeply concerned about the Blessed Sacrament reserved in your chapel tabernacle. I am responsible for its care. I plead with you to let me know when the last time the Sacrament was renewed. I can no longer rest easy merely assuming that the renewal takes place at least on a monthly basis. Please: phone me, or write to me, or email me to let me know about this most important matter."

It made me wonder: Did he assume Mother would refuse to let him come, and then he could say we were not renewing the Sacrament as we should?  This is the same man who had been told by o'connell, when he initially granted us permission to reserve the Sacrament, before the monastery was even built, to say Mass for us every three months, the same guy who almost never did bother with it. It didn't matter to us because there were so many priest visitors who said Mass for us, that the Blessed Sacrament was renewed far more often than "required".

Now however, we invite few priests to visit, and not until we know the priest is not a perp. At any rate, since we did not have a priest visitor scheduled, Mother was glad the parish priest could come to offer Mass. At that Mass he offered MomV the Lectionary, to read the First Reading, as she did for years as Lector at daily and Sunday Masses. Until some parishioner complained, conveniently giving the priest what he needed to "slap us into submission". Mother declined to read, for if the priest finds her so scandalous that he won't permit her to read at "his" church, how could he then find her un-scandalous enough to read here at the monastery?

The next time the Blessed Sacrament was due to be renewed, a sweet priest friend who had said he would offer Mass could not come, and so Mother contacted the parish priest and he came to offer Mass. We had invited three folks who had asked to be invited to a Mass at the monastery, but only one of them could come. A gentleman who is not Catholic—who is indeed so blatantly not-Catholic that any Catholic of mere First Communion age would notice immediately! He is so not-Catholic that when he went into chapel, he did not sit in the secular (public) chapel, but went to sit in the sisters' choir and MomV had to explain why he needed to be seated in the other seating area.

Now i digress to explain that multiple times at Sunday Mass at his church over the years, the parish priest has embarrassed me when he saw folks he did not know in the pews and felt it necessary to all-but-stop Mass to explain that they should not come up for Holy Communion if they were not Catholic. He usually did it in such a way that it sounded to many of us like he was telling lepers to call out "unclean  unclean".

The way he made them seem so unwelcome, so soiled, so un-Catholic that they are not welcome at our Lord's table, is what embarrassed me. The demeaningly unchristian manner in which he told them not to come for Communion was what embarrassed me those times. It was the harshness of the delivery of the message that hurt and was embarrassing.  This is not just my opinion; many parishioners bemoaned their distress to us over that very thing, far more than one time. All that most of us wanted, was that the priest (who reflects upon the rest of us Catholics) make his point tactfully and gently instead of so rudely, that he embarrassed those visiting, and us.

One time a child visitor, non-Catholic in a group of Catholic kids visiting from out of town, accidentally did go unnoticed and did go up with his little Catholic buddies and accidentally received Communion from Fr's hand. i feel sure God could cope with it, but Fr. later went on and on and on and on about it. He expressed feeling extremely strongly that no non-Catholic should receive Communion. At any rate, suffice it to say that Fr does not want even the chance that a non-Catholic would receive Communion. He is alert to those who should not. One could say without exaggeration, that he is hyper-alert to those not of the Flock, who should not receive our Lord at Communion.

Now we return to the account of the Mass Fr. celebrated  here, the Mass in which one of those we invited, (who has been for over 18 months, speaking at times of possible interest in joining the Church) was sitting in the secular chapel for the duration of Mass. Not being Catholic, he did not bless himself with holy water, did not begin Mass as we did by standing and blessing himself with the Sign of the Cross, did not stand, kneel, sit, genuflect, offer the Kiss of Peace, or make a single one of the verbal responses that all Catholics do automatically, sometimes almost unconsciously.

He was obviously a non-Catholic.

As Mother and i sat, eyes closed, in that most precious silent post-Communion time of  meditation, i heard the priest ask the man, "Do you want to receive Communion?" And of course the man said he did not, because Mother had explained to him prior to Mass, why, according to our Church Regulations, he could not.

The quiet offer of Communion caught my attention because Fr., who could be perceived as  just about obsessive about it, actually initiated the offer of Communion instead of having warned the guest not to come up for it. Or at least said, "if you are Catholic, would you like Communion?" 

It occurred to me later that if the man had said yes, the parish priest could have said that Mother and i are not taking proper care of the Blessed Sacrament, and perhaps then the bishop would find that a use-able excuse to threaten to remove permission to reserve the Blessed Sacrament. i hope i am wrong about all of that.

It was not till later that i realized that if that scenario was indeed accurately perceived by myself, it would indicate that the priest was actually willing to abuse the body of our Lord Jesus, as a trap, to accomplish his need to harm us.

Is it any surprise to anybody then, that priests are willing to abuse the bodies of little kids, if indeed a priest past his golden jubilee is willing to abuse the Blessed Sacrament Body of Jesus Christ to harm two old nuns because those nuns object to the priestly-pornographic abuse of kids for the wielding of their priestly power and for their sociopathic and pornographic sexual satisfaction?

Is it that threatening to the Church that we two nuns are saying that nuns and priests and bishops should not rape and sodomize and fellate kids? Or is it simply, as one observer suggested, that the priest is on a vendetta to hurt us because of what we said to parishioners in our letter of Jan. 7^th criticizing  his running parishioners out of his Church?

i cannot think of any other reason why that priest, of all priests, would pointedly offer Communion to a blatantly non-Catholic visitor, than to be able to say that the nuns are not protecting the Sacrament from them-there non-Catholics….

New Topic: As we have said elsewhere, some time after the monastery was built, the parish initiated the offer to pay our property insurance premium as a gift from the parishioners to the sisters. This was without solicitation by us. They have continued that gift each year.

Although Vatican II (i thought) indicated a parish must have a parish council, if i understand correctly, there is no parish council at our church to whom we could send an email to be delivered to the parishioners. We assume it a "no-brainer" that if we had sent the request to the parish in general, via the priest, it is not likely they would receive it. We know of no other way to officially contact the parish. Mother sent this email to the parish priest:

Dear Father.

Thank you for coming to celebrate Mass at the monastery last week.

The monastery property insurance has come due once more. The amount is $XXXX. Are you going to allow the parish to continue to make that gift to us?

God love you.

Sister Veronica

The priest's response was:

Saint Catherine Laboure Church

116 East Main Street P.O. Box 586

Copperhill, TN 37317-0586

"Hospitality is our motto"

July 26, 2005

Dear Sister Veronica,

When you ask if we are willing to pay your insurance this year,

you present me with a dilemma: If I say yes, I'm afraid I would be supporting all that you do. If I say no, I'm afraid you will interpret that as punishment.

I do indeed support your religious lifestyle; I do not however entirely support your web site. I support your defense of the victims of sex abuse but not the tone of your arguments. I especially do not approve of links that describe sexual actions in such an explicit fashion that I consider them pornographic in nature. Maybe you'll think there is something wrong with me, but I believe some of that stuff would be dangerous for a saint to read. Unless you clean up the website, I cannot in good conscience support you in any way except by my prayers. If you decide to clean up the website, let me know when it's done and I'll be happy to support you entirely by sending you the money to pay the insurance premium.

As for punishing you, I don't have the authority; besides, it's not in my nature.

In the meantime, because you have permission to have the Blessed Sacrament reserved in your chapel, I appreciate being invited to offer Mass there at regular intervals in order to renew the Sacrament.

Sincerely in Christ,

In no way did it surprise us that he refused us the parishioners' gift. But i just could not believe that letter! His: "Unless you clean up the website, I cannot in good conscience support you in any way except by my prayers. If you decide to clean up the website, let me know when it's done and I'll be happy to support you entirely by sending you the money to pay the insurance premium" made it appear to me that that the priest actually tempted the nuns to sell out our Lord and the Lord's surely-beloved abuse survivors, as well as our consciences—essentially for thirty pieces of silver. By altering the site to get the insurance premium!

It appeared that that priest offered the nuns the temptation to essentially prostitute ourselves for that "gift" of the parishioners' money, over which he has Priestly Control and Priestly Power.

By changing the site to suit the guy with control of the money.

We will not whore ourselves to the parish priest to get the money for the insurance premium.

We will not sell out God and the survivors and our own souls by changing the website to suit the parish priest and his bishop. (And if the monastery now burns down, we all know where to send the arson inspectors to look first….)    ;~/   

i was surprised at first, but then i realized that this is the same guy who appears to want MomV's chemo to have a less than optimal outcome, it is the same guy who told the parishioners not to support us if we were censored by the bishop, it is the same guy who stripped us of being Eucharistic ministers and Mother of also being Lector, the same guy who said he no longer respects Mother, the same guy who accused us of giving scandal…

We were discussing that letter with a parishioner and when we spoke of the portion saying to "clean up the site" to get "Fr's" money, the astute parishioner pointed out, "It's still all about his power. He wants to control you, Sister. He wants to control your site. He wants to control what you put on your site. He is trying to exert his power to control you so that you cannot speak negatively about priests, bishops, the Holy Father, the Church, or him. It's still all about his  Priest-power to control your freedom of speech and so to control you."    

Seeing all of these machinations—the pattern of petty and sinister attempts to intimidate or hurt us—are we surprised that survivors are treated worse now, by Church leaders who claim to be helping them, than they were in the choir lofts and sacristies, with their child-sized anuses and vaginas lacerated to bloodiness by an anointed's  pedophilically and pornographically engorged penis?

Fr. said in that letter "I especially do not approve of links that describe sexual actions in such an explicit fashion that I consider them pornographic in nature."

It took me a moment to figure out that the links he meant must be the abuse links listed in the website navigation bar:

SNAP National 
SNAP of Tennessee
Survivors First
BishopAccountability.org
ClergyAbuseInfo.com
Link Up
Voice of the Faithful

 These sites have letters and emails between o'connell and his victims, as well as U.S. court depositions by o'connell, and myriad others of like ilk, in which the victims and the perps describe the clergy crimes perpetrated against them as kids. Yes, in painfully graphic detail. Sometimes the victims try to kill themselves after the forced reliving of it all as they tell it. Sometimes they succeed. It is indeed as ugly as evil gets. Makes one nauseated. Makes one depressed. Makes one see the depth and breadth of the evil and criminality of the cover-up that's been going on and shows only hardball attempts to continue.

No, perp-depositions and victims telling the world of what was done to them is not pornography. Pornography is meant to make persons want to have sex. Zoos show human pornographic movies of adults to scientifically cause apes to breed to increase their species. They don't show them kiddie-porn.

Mother said that what those sexually abusive nuns and priests and bishops do/did to kids is what is pornographic. And their crimes force the kids to live that pornography.

No wonder it murders their little souls. No wonder it kills Faith. No wonder it kills belief in God. And still the church fights them tooth and nail, even now, instead of following the protocol they taught us for Confession: examine, admit wrong to self, confess wrong to God, repent, sincerely promise to try to do better, make concrete amends. With a "right heart".

Instead, priests and bishops and the law firms they hire to represent them, unite to fight for shorter statutes of limitations in sexual child abuse, so that more guys can get away with having raped kids, and the Church won't look bad and, perhaps above all, the bishops won't have to "lose all that money". Instead, at every step, victims and their families are further victimized. They are treated as the enemy. They are treated as dirty. They are not prayed for. The help they get is begrudgingly given, not from any form of

"right Church heart", but most often, court ordered.

My goodness, even now, after a minimum three years of observing this consistent pattern of obfuscation,  we rotely assume that hierarchs have thought about, and prayed about, and are doing what they have discerned our God wants them to do. We assume that if they are doing a thing, they believe and are telling us that God wants them to do so. If that is accurate, it would follow that that means that they are telling us that God wants them to make it harder for victims of Church evil, Church crimes, Church criminals, Church-aiders-and-abettors of Church perps, to get the help and the justice and the elements of compassion and love that they need for their lives to be restored. 

We see counter suits, we see refusals to hand over documents, we see survivors refused time to speak by orders of nuns and brothers and priests who have sexually abused them, we see them refuse to list perps' names and whereabouts; we see them further intimidate, issue slapp suits, ostracize and harass folks who are already suffering beyond what most of us even comprehend. Are we truly to believe God wants them to act this way instead of making amends?  To save money for "all the good" Catholic Charities does???

We see them doing "business as usual", exercising damage control, refusing to cooperate with the judicial system of our country, and like the parish priest, telling us there are some things a Catholic simply may not say, out loud,  especially in public, and most especially, about the almighty…priests and bishops.

Are we to believe that is God's will? Is that what God is like? No wonder survivors are losing their Faith and belief in our Precious Lord God.

The resultant outrage and anger of those victims infuriates the priests and hierarchy, the same as mine does. Those survivors are not ever going to see the face of Jesus Christ in the Catholic Church if these patterns continue. That is scandal for you.

Fr. also said in his letter: "Maybe you'll think there is something wrong with me, but I believe some of that stuff would be dangerous for a saint to read."

That seems to indicate that Fr. thinks that by reading those graphic details of, for one example, a seminary rector taking a little boy to sit before the tabernacle while they mutually masturbate each other—a saint would be endangered.

If reading that evil criminal filth would sexually arouse the "saint" then yes, i agree with Fr. that that saint's soul is in danger. But if the saint is not a pedophile, he would not be aroused by reading the graphic detail of such crime perpetrated and such agony suffered.

He would, like the rest of us, almost vomit, and then, outraged, that saint, like the rest of us, would be unable to rest until s/he had made our once beautiful Church safe enough to suffer the little children to find their ways safely, un-molested, to Jesus.

The day after that letter came, i spent the two-plus hours that i was mowing the grass, trying with all my heart and mind to comprehend how Fr. could think that such gross filth could sexually arouse a saint. i just couldn't believe he could mean that.

It finally occurred to me that maybe Fr. meant that reading those descriptions of what has/is done to kids by PowerPeople of the Church would endanger the saint because the saint's Faith in the Church would be shaken and then the saint's Belief in God would be eroded away, and then yes, the saint's soul would be in gravest danger.

i almost got hopeful at that point, because if Fr. could comprehend the danger to the saint from reading stuff that is so horrid that it could make the saint lose his Faith and his ability to believe in God, then finally at long last, Fr.could comprehend what is done to the victims. For the first time, he would comprehend the horror. And care. And help them.

Not tell the tearfully devastated me, as he did soon after i saw o'connell on TV in 2002, squirming around the admission of what he did to those kids, that "your problem, Sister, is that you care entirely too much about these victims."

i don't know which Fr. meant about the saints—that they would lose their Faith over the horror or become sexually aroused and desire to lure and grab a kid to rape.

The only thing i could think of, other than those two, is that perhaps he meant neither and was just setting the stage to be able to spread the rumor, not this time that the sisters are so scandalous that they are a danger to parishioners, but linked to sites so graphic he decrees them pornographic, so that he can spread the rumor that the sisters are even a danger to saints. Perhaps it is just another rumor to be started, like "the sisters are giving scandal" only now it's escalated to "the sisters link to pornography that would endanger the saints".