Update Sunday April 24, 2005         
             ~ it would seem another typical   
               silent-slap of Mother by the bishop~      

            ~ yet one more disgusting example ~

 

This is another example, anecdotal evidence of a sort, of how sleazy-seedy-hotel-dirty, and vicious, the victims of sexual abuse in our church can find their bishops' hardball tactics to be:

 

Since Mother's diagnosis and surgery and chemo, we have had to shut down the kennel until after she recovers from the last chemo. We only earned $5000 from the kennel last year, but the business was growing and we live frugally. Nonetheless, there will be no income from the kennel this year. 

 

At the same time, most of the monastery's benefactors have ceased to send donations. (Please, we remind all survivors NOT to send us any money; we cannot and will not accept it.)

 

Because of the financial situation, Mother has, between doctor and chemo and bloodwork appointments and between prayers and chemo-required-sleep sessions, been sending a fundraising letter to various philanthropic foundations. She has explained the situation and asked for a one-time modest donation to help the monastery through this year. (You can read that funding letter at the top of the Helping Hands page of the website, listed to the left toward the bottom of the navigation bar.)

 

We took a walk today to check for the tom turkeys who often graze in the field and to check for yesterday's mail. We had received a response from the National Religious Retirement Office, one of the foundations listed in the funding book.

 

It contained these paragraphs: "Our procedure in instances such as this is to contact the diocese for clarification. I did speak this morning with Father J. Vann Johnston, Chancellor of the Knoxville Diocese. He explained to me that your canonical status is that of a consecrated virgin.

I am sorry to tell you that the parameters established by our Board do not allow us to include consecrated virgins in the distributions from the annual collection for retired religious. I have no doubt that your need is very real, but the National Religious Retirement Office regrettably is unable to assist."

 

What this seems to indicate is that the bishop, via his chancellor, is blocking our successfully obtaining funding that will keep the monastery "afloat" till chemo is over, by saying we are not real.

 

This, though the previous bishop, the pedophile anthony o'connell himself, wrote glowing letters about us and on our behalf to these philanthropic foundations. He himself, along with the long-time canon lawyer abbot who assisted him regarding our canonical vows, indicated that we were fully nuns and Our Lady of Little Citeaux fully a monastery. Of the Holy Roman Catholic Church.

 

Indeed, that same bishop requested his diocesan lawyer represent us, in proving we are a monastery of nuns. Is the current bishop, or his chancellor, now indicating that the previous bishop and his diocesan lawyer were lying? Not just to us. But in a court of law of our country?  Actually perjuring themselves? 

 

How pathetically petty it appears that the gossip is perhaps being spread that we are not really nuns and only think we are. Sortof like  we were in the Special Olympics and thought that meant we had won the International Olympics.

 

If that is one of the current tactics to pressure us into abandoning the website, how petty, how unethically hard-ball, and how immaturely little-boy it appears.

 

What is chillingly sinister, though, is that it would appear the bishop via his chancellor is literally trying to interfere with our very survival. That wears the sinister flavor of evil.

 

Surely it is not indicative of a loving Jesus.

 

All that viciousness to silence the Truth on our website for victims. 

 

Survivors of church sex abuse, who turn to their bishops, for help from their despair, are sadly un-surprised at the bullying being perpetrated upon Mother at her most vulnerable.

 

            ~                                ~                                ~

 

Update 4/19 after chemo number two—at 100%

 

Thank you, from my heart, to all of you who email to ask after MoV and to send your prayers and advice and hopes and caring, and to voice your outrage at how she's being bullied. You are family to us. You show the face of God to us. We are grateful.

 

Mother had her second chemo yesterday and did well with it. The nurses are so compassionate and so skilled in that chemo infusion unit. It is such a comfort, for one does not need to watch-dog and double-check to be sure things are as they should be. One does not have to wonder and worry about some detail she doesn't understand, but simply ask and they know the answer, know how to teach the concept involved, and are graciously-giving about it.

 

i suggested MoV ask her nurse why the first infusion of chemo had been at 75%. It was a perfect example of what i said above about the nurses having the answers to smooth the way so healing can happen. They also, unappreciated by most doctors, can save the very skin of the unsuspecting doctor, on occasion…

 

At the last post-op doctor visit, (and keep in mind that her doctor is our absolute hero; actually she has two doctors and both truly are our heroes.) Anyway, happenstance would have it that he said to her that he had started her chemo a bit earlier than usual so that the chemo could kill the metastasis to her lung so the fluid would not build up so she would not need to undergo more thoracenteses to aspirate the pleural fluid so that she could breathe.

 

i noted her nearly imperceptible nod, yes, good ol'-doc-sweeney would be expected to be able to handle chemo earlier than normal. She does most things bigger, earlier, and heartier, than the norm. So when her surgeon said he'd started her chemo a tad early, ol'-doc-sweeney concurred with his medical wisdom.

 

Then he added that he'd ordered that first dose at 75%. He is sharp, but he didn't catch her nearly imperceptible stiffening. i stepped back a bit from the exam table. Her gaze, fixed on some point in the room, shifted focus sharply to his face. The chemo-induced ruddiness of her cheeks paled and i stepped back a bit further, sort of easing toward the doctor, in case he should need me. She glanced at me about this Seventy-five-Percent. i smiled sickly. She eased down and i prayed thanksgiving. 

 

i hoped that perhaps during the few-week-duration between this office visit and the next one, she might forget about the 75% thing. But as soon as she'd been seated in the infusion unit yesterday for chemo #2,  before her nurse even had time to push the benadryl and pepcid, ol'-doc-sweeney asked, "Did he order the hundred percent this time?" and i knew then she would die at 123 years old without forgetting that 75% thing.

 

Not because she thought it meant she was getting less medicine than she needed. It had nothing to do with appropriate care.

 

It had to do with her doctor thinking she could only handle 75% of the norm. 75% is average. Average. 75%. Sweeney…not. The surgeon who had literally excised the cancer-enemy away, the doctor who had literally seen her guts, must think she could only handle ¾ of the norm. Seventy-five percent.

 

So when she asked her nurse about that 75% and the nurse had explained that because the doctor had trusted her to do extra-well as she had all along, he had started her chemo earlier than normal. (i noted the almost imperceptible nod…).

 

Her nurse explained further that, since MoV had not had time for her cells to entirely heal from surgery, the chemo at 75% allowed for the post-operative healing to complete while still giving chemo to attend to the cancer cells—earlier than the norm.

 

One saw ol'-doc-sweeney smile. And one knew that her nurse had possibly just "saved the neck" of her doc. And one knew neither one of them would ever even realize it….

 

Then her nurse added that indeed this dose had been ordered at 100%. One saw ol'-doc-sweeney smile larger yet.

 

And then, when one would think that smile could get no larger, through the door yet another nurse, carrying a menu, with which MoV was invited to select lunch. "Oh, I get lunch again this time?" she asked through a smile so large that one knew chemo-#2-day-at-100%-with-lunch-even, would be one of the extra-extra-good days this April.

 

Nonetheless, it is ironic that a two-hour trip—to a city—to a hospital—for  chemotherapy—for metastatic cancer, can be an experience to which we look forward.

 

It is, i see on reflection and analysis, a matter of love. There are folks there who love her.

 

There are folks there whose words of caring are matched by their actions.

 

When actions match words, truth is obvious. When words stand alone, unsupported by actions, usually the words are just façade, a smoke screen to mask the truth. When words stand alone, actually contradicted by actions, truth is not. There are folks at that hospital whose words of caring are matched by their actions.

 

It seems ironic that just as the bishop, priest, and a few parishioners are beating the hell out of her, kicking the dog while it is down, as down as a cancer-fighter-weakened-by-chemo can be, and just as most parishioners sit complacently by and allow it or, in some cases, actively support it as they flock to the hems of the hierarchy, we find the love of God at Memorial Hospital.

 

In the folks of every department there, we find the love of God. We have been there enough by now to have received care from nearly all of them i think.

 

There are gentle men cleaning the corridors, who smile or speak with gentle respect not just to this old nun who is fighting the battle for her life. These gentlemen, who nod and speak to the patients who go by, make up for the parish priest who told her that he no longer respects her.

 

There are willing volunteers, one of whom wishes her a "sparkling day", truly meaning it. These volunteers who, for the most part, are happy to see her, make up for the ill-actions of the parish priest and bishop.

 

There are a few men and women at that hospital who know of the commitment we've made to God to advocate for church sex abuse survivors and they do not hate MoV for it, but respect and love her.

 

They love her all the more for it, not despite it.

 

Digression: what a statement of horror that makes: if there are those who hate us this much for advocating for survivors, to what degree must they hate those poor survivors themselves? Those types are precisely why survivors so often say how shamed they are made to feel, for having been a little kid victim of a nun's or priest's psychosocial sexual perversion perpetrated upon them. When they were too little and too young and too vulnerable and too innocent to even comprehend what was happening to them. Still the question remains: why is it that these pro-sexual-abuser-types so devoutly defend all those adult sexually predatory criminals and hate their innocently unsuspecting child victims? It's all so psychotically and evilly backwards.

 

At any rate, a patient could hardly feel hated at Memorial where folks make it easy to see the face of Jesus. These visibly-Christian people are the professional, paraprofessional, and non-professional regular-folks, the type persons about whom one says, "he is good people" or "she is the salt of the earth". These are the people because of whom hope can grow.

 

Those folks do not hate MoV for our website. They don't make a point of telling her that they disrespect her. They don't make a point of disrespecting her. They don't try to make her recovery from cancer more difficult. They don't figure she "deserves it", for our website for victims of priest and nun sexual abuse. They don't abuse her.

 

They love her. It is the most healing thing about Memorial Hospital. The love. God is love. And from my observations, at Memorial, Love is God.

 

The actions match the words.

 

So, we have been led to Memorial at a time when we can no longer go comfortably to our own long-loved parish church, because the priest has said he does not respect Mother, because the priest, either alone or "in concert" with others, indeed stripped her of being Eucharistic minister and Lector, as retaliation and punishment for her praying aloud for victims and to bully her to stop the website. (Sad deduction: It would seem these guys will find a way to strip and rape the innocent at their most-vulnerable, one way or another …)

 

We can no longer comfortably go to our chosen parish church because the leader of the little flock there accused her of giving scandal, for her prayer at the Prayer of the Faithful "that the Church show the compassionate face of Christ to those it has abused", and because it would seem, he then judged her guilty of…what? And because it would seem, he then sentenced her for it, and likewise it seems, carries out his sentence week to week. Mass to Mass.

 

And because, other than the folks who have sent cards of prayer and do immense acts of kindness to make her chemo phase easier, most folks do not indicate they care what the parish priest is doing to her, simply because they don't. (That is the sort of sad reality that the poor church abuse survivors experience most days of their lives, only worse by far, magnified as it is by the immense numbers of those uncaring. We have learned that at most Masses, victims and survivors are devoutly-not-prayed-for as much as they devoutly-are-not at our little parish church.)

 

So, ironically, at a time when the much-needed love of one's parish-family is sadly overshadowed and choked-down by these actions of the parish priest and his devotees, just as love there seems at a twelve-year low-ebb, unexpectedly, in the compassionate provision of Providence, at Memorial Hospital, we find God really is, with his most-healing gift, Love.

 

      ~                          ~                      ~

 

 

April 03, 2005 Update:

Second Sunday of Easter ~ Divine Mercy Sunday

 

At the Easter Vigil last Saturday, the priest did not put on the beautiful white and gold chasuble to celebrate the Resurrection of our Lord.

 

As far as i could discern, he also did not put on Christ.

 

Today, as i recall, we did not hear about Resurrection nor, for that matter, about the Lord of the Resurrection.

 

We were told, however, that the-Holy-Father-Never-Changed-Church-Doctrine and we were told, further, that no-pope-ever-will.

 

That declaration was sealed with the priest's arrogant: "And you might as well get that through your heads."

 

Does loving Abba speak that way? Does Jesus speak that way?

 

We do read in Scripture that He spoke that way to the religious leaders of the time who were not doing their jobs…..

 

Did we ever hear Jesus, the Divine Mercy Incarnate, speak to his flocks of hungering thirsting thousands, like that?

 

March 29th Update:

 

Nope. Mother was not re-instated as a Eucharistic minister to distribute the Precious Blood of our Lord, nor was she permitted to read Scripture. 

 

Three hours after i begged the priest to allow that, the bishop called, saying he had heard indirectly that perhaps Mother was having some health problems and that he "stood ready".....

 

i begged him too, to re-instate her. He said that he doesn't appoint Extraordinary Ministers--he only approves them. i went directly to the point, and begged him to allow what was needed for her good. 

 

At one point, he said he would "reflect on our conversation" and perhaps speak with the priest. His voice sounded sincere and i said that to him. i then added that i was probably just being a fool once again to believe that. Sure enough....Angela the Fool.

 

Folks at Easter Vigil Mass came up to me afterwards to tell me that they had decided i was wrong. Others who used to support our advocacy for survivors told me that they now believe the bishop wants to help Mother.

 

All of this would go smoothly, all-of-a-sudden, one suspects,if our website in advocacy for survivors and victims of sexual abuse at the hands of priests, nuns, and the bishops who facilitate and hide them, were to be discarded.

 

Mother, who had her first chemo yesterday, says to tell you, dear and beloved Survivors, we will not sell out. She will not sell out for the thirty pieces of silver and she will not kiss your cheek with betrayal, as Judas did our Lord. She will not betray her Lord and she will not betray you.

 

Today is the anniversary of her solemn vows to the Lord. She gives you that gift for her anniversary.

 

Holy Thursday, March 24th Update:

 

If anyone can help us, we will appreciate it.

 

On January 5th Mother prayed at the Prayer of the Faithful during Mass that the Church show the compassionate face of Christ to those whom it has abused. Shortly later, at the hand of the priest or the bishop and priest or the bishop-and-priest-and-one-or-more-parishioners, Mother was forbidden to be Lector to read Scripture at Mass and we were both stripped of our Eucharistic Ministry to the parishioners. All without a word spoken, in typical Church Hierarch slinking slimey silence. Sleazy.

 

On Ash Wednesday Mother sought medical help for what we thought was pneumonia with shortness of breath. In a matter of days, she had over two quarts (2200 cc) of fluid removed from her lung and we were advised it was likely cancer.

 

Within a week or two of that, she was diagnosed with likely adeno- carcinoma of the ovaries. Shortly later, surgery done in the best hospital in this country, by the best surgeon in the country, and probably in God's whole earth, revealed stage four cancer of the ovaries with positive nodes and metastasis to lung.

 

More than one of her health care providers said to me that while it did not cause the cancer, this persecution by the priest, bishop, and perhaps some parishioners, certainly did contribute to the seriousness of her disease and that it would contribute to a less than optimal outcome of the chemotherapy she is to begin on Monday after another surgery to insert the port for the chemo meds.

 

i have been contacting parishioners, hoping that since they have  loved her for over twelve years and have benefitted from her reading of Scripture at Mass and have received Communion from her hand and have consistently come to her for prayers whenever they wanted something badly or had a family crisis, they would plead to the bishop and priest that she be re-installed as Eucharistic Minister and be assigned to distribute the Precious Blood at the Saturday Easter Vigil Mass and the Sunday morning Mass.

 

It would appear that the priest is determined to secure his revenge and his solid grasp on his Power by refusing to do so. Apparently, he is more than willing to harm her to achieve the meeting of his own needs. 

 

In desperation for her to have a positive outcome, i called the priest this morning at 6:30 a.m. and said, "Father, this is Sister Angela. As you know, Mother Veronica has metastatic cancer and had radical surgery and will have surgery Monday to have the chemo port inserted so she can begin chemo.

 

We have been told that this persecution of yours against her will contribute to a less than optimal outcome of her 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 and Sunday Masses."

 

Then i began to cry so i said to him, "i am going to  hang up now, Father." and i did so.

 

If this is how a priest, a bishop, and parishioners treat an elderly and holy nun who entered the monastery in 1956 at the age of 18, are we really surprised at how they mistreat the victims of their rapist priests and nuns?

 

And yet they will celebrate with all pomposity Holy Week and not realize that as they crucify Mother Veronica, they are standing, drooling, with the crowd beneath the cross of our sweet Jesus.

 

February 10, 2005 Update: 

We recently received a letter from the bishop that will likely be posted here.The letter does not make any reference to why we were not renewed with all of the other Eucharistic ministers, nor to why Mother is no longer permitted to be Lector. Since the letter made no reference to it at all, one would think nothing really happened.

 

One would think nothing really happened.

 

That is the point of this entire thing----not the Ministries----it would seem that you are being given a demonstration of the Church doing the same thing, in the same manner, to us, as it does to those who report being victimized. We do not equate our bit of pain with the depth of soul-murder done to abuse victims. Our pain is but a droplet in all Earth's oceans, compared to what victims endure life-long.

 

As long as we keep quiet, it will appear that nothing really happened. But something did happen and the "silent secretive" not-speaking of it, appears to follow the same path sexual-abuse victims usually report having experienced at the hands of their bishops.

 

This has all been done to us seemingly "in screaming silence" "under the surface", "without speaking of it". One would think nothing really happened.

 

We are every bit as Christian, as Catholic, as UN-scandalous as those others serving the parish in these ministries. We should not have been "deleted". We should be re-instated.

 

What has been done to us?  How has it been done? Why has it been done?

Because we say priests and nuns should not get away with their rape of kids?

 

 What, in the name of God, do they want us to say instead?

 

Sunday, January 30 Update

This is an email to us with a request and our response:

Subject: help me understand

Mother Veronica & Sister Angela,

I read your update today.  I am in admiration of your willingness to apologize to Dot and John publicly, and I am equally in admiration of her graciousness in accepting it.  

Can you ask her to help someone like me understand why it is that she does not agree with your advocacy on behalf of those, like me, who have had sexual crimes committed against them by priests and other church leaders. 

Does she object to those within the church who advocate for the unborn? 

Does she object to those within the church who advocate for the poor? 

Does she object to those within the church who advocate against the death penalty and in so doing are advocating on behalf of those who have been convicted of taking the life of another?

Pass on my email to her and have her respond directly to me if she would like. 

With admiration & support,

Linda

Ah, dear Linda,

i wish i could do that, give your email to Dot, but i am afraid it might make her feel frightened or ambushed or something, and i can't risk doing that, even to folks whose loving-Catholic-ness does not extend to the over eleven thousand kids sodomized and other-ways-raped, like yourself dear Lady, by priests and nuns.

However, i ask, Linda, if you will give me your permission to put your poignant email on our web site, there at the top, where it fits in with what's been happening. i would like to put your email there, along with my email response. For, Dot might continue to look at our site from time to time and she might see your email and be moved by the Love that is the Holy Spirit, to answer you herself.

But only if it does not make you uncomfortable, Linda. If it feels exploitive of you in any way, please tell me and i will apologize and we will drop the idea. Entirely up to you. Either way, my caring and immense respect for you does not change. And you owe me no explanation.

From my heart,

Angela

Update: Friday, January 28, 2005:  
                        i made a big mistake