An apology is in order                   

In the Jan. 20th entry below, i referred to a lady who had complained to Father that MoV had prayed for victims. i said, "Further, it could be perceived to have been rewarded with, not only the removal of the nuns as Eucharistic Ministers, but also the bestowing of that ministry, upon  her hubby, the newly installed Eucharistic Minister."

i was wrong about that lady and about her husband. She was not the person who complained to the priest, as i had been told she was by two persons. i was wrong. i was inaccurate and i was, in my opinion, wrong to not have asked her  myself instead of relying on others' statements. In that i erred and hurt her feelings and her husband's feelings.

Further, i detracted, in my opinion, from her husband's first time as Eucharistic Minister. i took their happy time, their special time new to the Ministry, and through my error, brought sadness to it. To them. For that i was also wrong and apologize.

That lady came to us after Mass this morining and told us, with infinite class and gentleness, that she was not the person who complained to the priest. When i began to apologize, she waved it off. She was gracious, classy, merciful, without hostility, and touched me with as beautiful an example of a Catholic Christian response as i have ever experienced.

i apologized to her and she explained that she did not agree with our advocacy for victims, but that she does not judge anyone and did not complain to the priest. She did not demand, suggest, or even request an apology.

Having experienced this lady's "depth of Catholic-ness" and her Christ-like kindness this morning, how i wish she were an advocate for survivors. How loved they would feel and how greatly they would benefit from her prayers.

In the interest of doing what we think is right, and since the priest has objected to our doing things without his permission, MoV sent him the following email request and received the email response below it:

Further Update: We have been contacted by a canon lawyer and thank all who
                                helped us to find him.

 January 20, 2005: An S-O-S of Sorts…

Is there a canon lawyer who will help us? We cannot pay in full up front, but we can pay an initial sum and then make monthly payments till our bill is paid.

This is what we think is the situation: we think that the parish priest and some  parishioners are saying that we give scandal so that there will be canon law clauses that can be abused to get rid of us. That sounds paranoid, but you will see it is not if you learn about our hero, Father Tom Doyle, a “case in point”.

When the bishop came to meet with us last July, he said, “You get yourselves a couple of canon lawyers and, Father Vann Johnston, will you be the canon lawyer for the diocese?” (VJ nodded).

We did not know any canon lawyers who would care to help us and we did not fully comprehend what was, perhaps, “being set up”, so we did not seek a canon lawyer.

At least once, prior to Wednesday January 5^th and again on that day, our parish priest accused us of “giving scandal”. We recognized then that he might be helping to “set up” or “implement” a plan by the bishop to “un-nun” us, based on that false-accusation that we are giving scandal.

We have been advised by those who understand the Church’s typical “modus operandi” in “drumming out” a person, that the use of a canon law principle, when there is nothing valid to use, usually starts with accusing the person of  “giving scandal” or “giving offense” or  “not living a good Christian life”.

The pattern appears to be recognizably followed in what happened after

we indicated to the parish priest that accusing us of “giving scandal” is tantamount to defamation of character, which is illegal in our country. He subsequently substituted the phrase, “giving offense”, such that in the context used, it indicated the same thing as “giving scandal”. Subsequently he seemed to infer that we are “not leading good Christian lives” when, at the ceremony for renewal or installation of Eucharistic ministers, he said, (as we were not called to come up to be renewed),  “To be a Eucharistic minister, you have to lead a good Christian life.”

We have feared that this “drumming out process” was occurring and that some of  the parishioners were being used to “set it in motion”. We have since been advised that such is common.  It has been told to us also that often, parishioners are prompted, coached, rewarded, or manipulated into making the complaints “needed” so that it is not obvious that it is the agenda of the hierarch that is being accomplished.

It is therefore, interesting, that the person who complained against the nun who prayed for victims, could be perceived to have provided the “required precipitating complaint”.

Events surely seem to follow the pattern of which we were advised and which we have described to you above:

First the bishop said he found the website offensive.

Then the priest told parishioners that the bishop might censor the sisters.

Then the priest used the phrase “giving scandal”.

Then, the person complained to the priest that MoV prayed for victims.

Then the priest reported the sisters to the bishop.

Then, in a phone conversation, the priest accused the sisters of “giving scandal”.
Then, just a bit over a week later, the nuns walked into church, to find themselves being stripped of their Eucharistic ministry, all without so much as notification.

              Accused, judged, and punished. Nearly “in absentia”

Actions are being perpetrated against us as though we were giving scandal when we have not done so and are not doing so. By virtue of taking those actions against us, the bishop and the priest and some number of cooperating parishioners are, in a very real sense, saying it anyway, deciding it is true, and punishing us for it. All, it would appear, done typically, “in silencia”.

By not speaking out, we could be misconstrued to agree that we are giving scandal and to be accepting punishment for it. We do neither. To fail to object is to be complicit by our silence. We have not given scandal. We have not ceased living a good Christian life. We should not have been accused of giving scandal. We should not have been removed as Lector and Eucharistic ministers.

By keeping silent regarding what is being perpetrated against us, we would be assisting in whatever the next steps might be, in the “drumming out” and “un-nun-ing’ of us, if that is what is occurring. Hence our need for a canon lawyer.

             A Sunday Sabbath Shunnin’; A Subtle Slap Schlepped Upon the Sisters

i dreaded whatever way the priest was bound to wield his power, or wield the bishop’s “delegated power” at Mass in response or retaliation or intimidation or punishment or harassment for our letter to parishioners last Sunday, and more to the guts of it, for our 

advocacy for victims via our website.

As we drove, I suggested to MoV, “Say that folks were suddenly faced with a catastrophic scenario such that they knew that in five minutes, they and all their family members except the kids, would be annihilated, like that horrid tsunami did to folks. And say all their family-friends and anyone who knew their kids, would also be gone. Say the scenario is such that the only thing they could accomplish in that last five minutes was that they could guarantee the lives and future safety of their kids. By placing the kids with any one of three non-abusers. i truly do wonder where in that frantic last five minutes,  in order to most guarantee their safety,  they would opt to put their kids: with one of us or Father or the bishop.

We walked into Mass a couple of minutes late and saw that Mass had not begun, and that a ceremony was already in process. It was the same ceremony in which we and other parishioners had first taken part over a decade ago, when we were made Eucharistic Ministers by the child-abuser-bishop. Periodically the ceremony was repeated as our ministries were renewed.

i saw as i genuflected upon entering church, that they were already in the middle of the ceremony and realization dawned: So this was the tool to be used as a not-spoken-aloud response or retaliation or intimidation or punishment or harassment for our letter of last Sunday to the parishioners, but at a more basic and more unspoken level, for our stand and our website in advocacy of survivors and victims.

About that time i heard Father explaining to folks that only persons who led good Christian lives could be Eucharistic Ministers. Those “on the inside” and “in the know” knew that the insinuated message was that the sisters were being “deleted” because speaking aloud of sexual abuse of kids, and praying for these victims, was not to be tolerated and indeed, is to be silenced, even if it meant saying the sisters were giving scandal and even if it meant insinuating that in speaking of the abuse and advocating for victims, the sisters were leading such unchhristian lives that they would no longer be permitted to minister to the parish. One of the persons who wants us to be silenced turned fully around just then to look at us, i guess to see if we got the point.

It struck me forcefully how demoralizing and how sad it was that the the beautiful ministry of lay Eucharistic Ministers had been selected, to be used as the weapon with which to slap us. How cheapened, the Sacrament. Anyone who understood what was really going on, under the guise of the ceremony, knew that the renewal of Eucharistic Ministers would not have taken place today except that there were those who were intent that the nuns had to be smacked.

And told obliquely, and un-spokenly, but purposely publicly, that they were not leading good Christian lives. Another way to say giving-scandal.

So now we won’t distribute Communion to the parishioners any more. And it is pretty much, as someone commented to us, “a no-brainer that Sister Veronica is not going to be assigned to read at Mass any more either.” So, who loses? The parishioners.

So that a few persons feel good that they made their point, the rest lose. So that the elite few can wield their power, the rest pay. Those in charge of the distribution-of-Power, wield their power to “take away” what they perceive as Power, from the nunnies, and then they distribute it elsewhere, thus wielding their Power yet a second time. That type of misuse of power means “a buzz” for a few elite, but the rest lose. The little guys always lose.

The few elite feel vindicated and, as always, the rest lose. i was noticing sadly, that this pattern seems to be more common in our faith-tradition than many have the courge to acknowledge, that a few at the top wield their Power against those whom they want to silence, while the rest lose.

Just then the lovely wooden church door opened and one of the Eucharistic ministers hurried in with two of her beautiful grandbabies and when she saw that she was supposed to be up in front with the group being “renewed”, she gently steered the babies in our direction and made eye contact with us and mouthed, “watch them, okay? I have to go up.”  And i nodded. 

We had said: October 18, 2004: Something is happening...We are not sure just what it is. We feel as though we are being pressured to shut down the website www.freewebs.com/thenuns/ , which is the site with which we stand with victims and survivors of sexual, physical, and emotional abuse by priests, nuns, and other church-persons.

January 13, 2005

The information below seems to be "the next step" in whatever is "going on" or "happening still". The "steps" (and letters and explanations) that preceded these January events, are now accessible from the last entry, "Monastery Soap Opera", on the navigation bar. We entitled it that, not because we find it humorous, but quite the opposite.

On the Jan. 5th Wednesday Memorial of American bishop St. John Neumann, as is often the case at daily Mass, MoV was the Lector who read the First Reading from Scripture.

In our parish, the Lector also prays the Prayer of the Faithful. The petitions are prepared by our priest, or someone, and read on Sundays. During the week, if MoV is the reader, as she usually or often is, she prays the petitions ad lib. If the Lector is not comfortable doing that, the priest, instead of the Lector, leads the Prayer of the Faithful.

On that day, to gain the intercession of a sainted American bishop, MoV prayed something very close to: "That the Church may show the face of the compassionate and merciful Christ to those they have abused."

Later that day we found a message on the phone machine from the priest requesting that MoV return his call and that, if they did not get the opportunity to speak, she should "refrain from volunteering to read at Mass until we do speak". 

MoV returned his call immediately, greeting him with a solution she had already worked out, that would make him comfortable. She said, "I imagine your call is in regard to my petition at Mass this morning. Therefore I suggest you do the Petitions when I read just as you do for all other readers."

The priest said something close to, "That will do for now, but I have a call in to the bishop. People are coming to me asking why you are being permitted to continue reading and giving Communion, and I don't want to handle it, so I have a call in to the bishop and have been told I am on a list of persons he will contact." 

In that conversation, the priest said for the second time, that MoV and i are "giving scandal".

It seemed we were being moved around a chessboard, so to speak, but we could not tell by whom. We could not tell whether it was due to someone's desire to do the bishop's apparent bidding to silence us, the priest's bidding, the bidding of a small group of  parishioners, or the bidding of most of the parishioners.

So we prayed about it, thought about it, discussed it, prayed further about it, and made a decision.

We decided to write a letter to the parishioners in which we would adamantly state that we are not giving scandal and should not be accused of doing so, and in which we would ask the parishioners to let us know plainly if they want us to leave their parish church family.

Since the priest had not approved when we had one time asked a parishioner to read a letter from us to the parishioners at their monthly parish meeting, we knew we would not be permitted to read this letter to them at a parish meeting, so we decided to hand out the letter, from the public street outside our parish church after Holy Mass Sunday January 9th.

We started the letter with a "heads-up" that the letter was explicit and blunt, so that the reader could decide not to break the double seal and read the letter, but rather, could discard it if s/he might find it offensive to read.

The next day, on Monday, we found a letter from the parish priest in the mailbox.

It would appear that from Wednesday when MoV prayed for abuse victims, till Monday after handing out the letter on Sunday, the two nuns who have been in the parish church family since October 1992, have been summarily "smacked" with the taking-away of Mother's ministry to the parish as Lector and our service to the parish as Eucharistic Ministers. From Wednesday to Monday was all it took to "smack" the nuns. Six days.

Who benefits from the fact that MoV will no longer read the Scripture at Mass? Who benefits from the fact that MoV and i will no longer distribute Communion? Could it be that nobody benefits? But at least the nuns are smacked and some have been able to wield their Power?

We find it a significant statement that nuns and priests and bishops are still being assisted in getting away with sexual abuse of kids, while two old nunnies who speak publicly about it, are punished in less than a week's time.

Our letter to our parishioners:

January 7, 2005

This letter, to those of you with whom we attend church, bluntly speaks the truth. Please be advised that if you already don’t approve of that, then you should not read this letter. Throw it away. If you object to our website, then this is your heads-up that you would not like this letter either. In that case, we respectfully request that you do not read it. Since we have paid you the courtesy of telling you that this is a blunt and explicit letter, we respectfully ask that you return to us the courtesy to not read it anyway and then take offense.

This letter to you has resulted because twice at least, the last time being Wednesday, Father has accused Mother Veronica and me of giving scandal and has added something close to, "And as long as I’m here, I won’t let anyone give scandal to my parishioners."

If someone walks up to you and says, "You are an arsonist," your normal response would be, "I am not!" with some degree of indignation or outrage in your voice/affect. If you don’t respond that way, some of us at least wonder.....

If someone walks up to you and says, "You’re a morally loose woman," again, you would indignantly, at very least, deny that. If not, again, at least some of us, would wonder.

If someone walks up to you and says, "You cheat on your wife," you might not hit him. But you get my point.

In our Church, when someone walks up to you and says "You are giving scandal," it is a very serious accusation. It is tantamount to defamation of character.

To have the priest then announce that he will protect the parishioners from whomever is supposedly giving scandal, further suggests that the scandal-giver is so spiritually dangerous to the parishioners that they need to be protected. If Father or another parishioner walks up to you and tells you that you are giving scandal, that you are spiritually dangerous to your parish family, how will you feel?

We don’t let persons falsely accuse us. And we most indignantly and outraged-ly reply to Father’s accusation that we are giving scandal: "We most certainly are not a spiritual danger to our parish family! We are not giving scandal! Do not defame our characters! Do not use insinuated threat to our reputations as a means of intimidation of us."

Father also said "people"are coming to him, to do something about us. If we understood Father correctly, a good number of you can barely stand our presence and you find yourselves in need of his protection from whatever spiritual danger Mother and i supposedly pose you, by supposedly "giving scandal".

Therefore, i am going to go ahead and speak entirely openly about everything to you. You will, if Father speaks accurately, not-want-us all the more. That is a very sad thing to contemplate, but i will not keep silent this time. It might save one of your kids from one of those not-to-be-spoken-of, (at risk of giving scandal) "accidental little touches".

Neither MoV nor i, in speaking on our website about the serial rape of thousands of kids and vulnerable adults, have done anything immoral or spiritually threatening. The scandal is the rape and cover-up; not the fact of two old nuns speaking bluntly of it. Pretty words should not be used for ugly realities. As MoV told the bishop when he was here this past July, pretty words for ugly realities are but lies.

Leaders who would cover-up, as many of the hierarchy and leaders of orders of priests and of nuns have done, would indeed want us to think that speaking aloud of it is scandalous. For, how else do they get away with it? We should not be accused of giving scandal, for we are not the ones perpetrating the evil and criminal sexual assaults, or making it possible for others to do so.

We are not giving scandal; we are speaking aloud of the scandal.

Why could anyone think it wrong, immoral, scandalous, for women to try to protect the Little Ones from predators?

Why could anyone think it wrong to speak the truth aloud? NOT speaking aloud is how this evil and criminal element has fulminated in our beloved holy Church, to the point that not just a few of the abusers do so using known satanic rituals or with elements of satanic worship in those "sacristy events".

We should not be coerced to be silent by accusing that we are giving scandal if we do not keep silent.

It is logical that speaking the truth aloud seems wrong to those who want the predators to continue to have access. It is logical that it seems wrong to those hierarchs who want their Power to continue without having to be accountable, most especially to those of you in the lay state, for evil mismanagement and criminal abuse of that Power.

Where exactly is the scandal in this picture? Is the scandal really with the two old nuns who say that even if a priest or monk or nun must go to prison, the kids’ safety should come first?

Is it a scandal that a nun says a predator-bishop should go to prison?

Or is the scandal that the predatory priest preys on children?

And, that power-addicted bishops know about "the problem he has with little boys" yet still, and clandestinely nonetheless, moves him to greener pastures to feed?

Are you aware that our current bishop tried to hide the priest La Prad in our retreat cottage in January of 2002, claiming he had, "A priest who needs a place to stay", a priest with a "wellness- issue" What if we’d let him live there, and then one of the kids from our parish had come to visit? And Sister had said, "Sure, go spend time with Father."

That attempt by the current bishop occurred just two months before the Church crisis was made public and we saw our founding bishop at a TV news conference, admitting that he "might-have-accidentally-one-time-as-a-counseling-session-sorta-touched-maybe-one-little-boy. Or maybe two..". The count has long-since passed two and was still rising the last time we heard.

Is the scandal the fact of nuns talking about abuse and cover-up or is the scandal the abuse and the cover-up?

New Topic: It has become uncomfortable for us to attend Mass at St. Catherine’s because Father says that you "have come to him" and asked why MoV and i are being permitted to continue ministering to you with MoV’s reading of Holy Scripture and as Eucharistic ministers who give you the Chalice of His Most Precious Blood and who, on occasion, take Holy Communion to the sick.

He said he does not want to handle this and so he called the bishop. It looks like, from what he says, you folks do not want us at your church and that you are urging him to do something about us and that he is finding it such a big problem that it warrants his having to call the boss. And report the nuns to the bishop.

We were grateful that a few of you might care about the victims for whom we advocate and be glad that we do so, but we have never asked you to do a single thing for them. We knew also, that some of you would be against our attempts to help the victims, since it is unpopular with your bishop, and we have tried to be most sensitive to your feelings, even to the extent of trying to avoid putting you in a position where you might even have to say "hi" to us. It is hard for us to go to church and say hi to the folks who want us to and try not to say hi to those who don’t want us to, and not be able to know for sure whom we might be offending with an un-wanted hello and whom we might be accidentally hurting by skipping a hello.

We have continued to attend Mass and to love you, even when Father said he no longer respects Mother Veronica. For Goodness sake! It is difficult to attend Holy Mass and to go to receive Communion from a man who said, "I no longer respect you." How will you feel if Father says to you that he used to respect you but no longer does? Are you going to trust that he has your best interests at heart? Are you going to trust your frailties to him in a confessional? Are you going to trust your salvation to a priest who states he does not respect you?

And now, whether he intended to or not, our Father has made it seem like you are pushing him to get rid of us. It seems hard to believe, but perhaps you are. When we thought it was a matter of some folks wishing we would not advocate for the victims and some folks not minding that we did, we did not push our victim-advocacy on you.

Now, however, in view of Father twice accusing us of giving scandal and in view of his seeming to say that you want to be rid of us, we are doing something nuns and priests have not often done. We are turning to you as though you were level-headed thinking adults capable of reasoned thought and gently suggesting, "you decide". If you don’t want us attending your church, we respectfully suggest that perhaps you might join together in a parish meeting or a parish-council meeting to decide. If you don’t want us any more, we need for you to tell us plainly.

Otherwise this is where we will be. We will not be silently and conveniently run off.

We won’t allow ourselves to be run off like J and A, the T family, the C family, the M family, , the other M family, the other-other M family, the S family and the others we’ve seen run off over the last fourteen years, making a farcical parody of the scripture lesson of Jesus going to retrieve the one lost sheep.

paragraphs of personal nature between parishioners and sisters omitted

Are you aware of the thousands of victims of sexual abuse by nuns and priests? They are almost never even prayed for, at our church at least. i know this because in solidarity with victims and survivors who are unable to go to Mass or Communion i sacrifice the joy of receiving my Lord in Holy Communion on days when we do not pray for them at the Prayers of the Faithful. Silly as it might sound to you, i offer up my missed Communion, asking God to give the Graces to one of those survivors who is unable to step into a church or walk up to receive our Lord in Holy Communion.

That is how i know how rarely we pray for them. If you wonder why so many victims cannot go to Mass or Communion, it is because of the flashbacks that happen to them when they try. (Many of them were told that the priest’s ejaculate during the abusive sex act was the "Real Communion" to be consumed.) It was such a mind-assaulting trauma for those children that a great many of them are medically-diagnose-ably shell-shocked and have flashbacks, reliving the abuse, like war vets relive immense traumas in their flashbacks.

Are you aware that, back in 2003, one of the victims of our former bishop asked to come to speak to our parish? i relayed that request to our parish priest. That request for hospitality was not even considered as far as i know, unless he called a meeting of parishioners or of the parish council to put the request before you. I recall that it occurred at a time when i had a heck of an injury. Father conveyed to MoV at Mass one morning that he would be glad to anoint me (give me the Sacrament of the Sick, formerly "Last Rites") and when she gave me his message, i called him right away.

i told him that i felt i certainly needed Anointing and would be grateful for it. i then said that i would like to be anointed but that if he would not extend hospitality to the victim who had asked to come speak to the parish, i did not want the Sacrament of Anointing from him. Needless to say, he did not anoint me. And the young man, who tried to kill himself, never was welcomed to our parish, the parish whose motto is "Our motto is hospitality."

The following anecdote reflects an attitude that is something you should know about: There is a fellow in our community who is friendly to everyone he sees and he greets everyone playfully and folks always look uplifted from the interaction. One day he playfully startled MoV and they had a good laugh over it. The next time we ran into him was soon after the bishop had been here, seeming to insinuate he would shut down the monastery and un-nun us, if we continued our web site in advocacy for the survivors. The fellow said playfully to me in reference to MoV, something like, "Do you think she’s scared today?" to which i replied, "She might oughta be, our bishop was here and seemed to be threatening to shut us down and un-nun us!"

i was the one startled then, because the pink drained from his cheeks and his facial muscles became like iron and he said, "What’s he doing that for?" to which i said, "i guess he doesn’t want us talking out loud and on our website about all these kids getting sexually abused by priests and nuns". "You know what that tells a fella, don’tcha?" he asked, and before i could answer he continued, "tells a fella that that bishop’s doin’ the same sorta stuff then." Again i was startled, and i murmured, "Oh, i wouldn’t go that far...." i was left with a gentle, "I know you wouldn’t, but the rest of us do."

Folks keep saying to us, regarding our founding bishop, "It is awful for you to be this way, after all he did for you." Father made that statement to us at least once. A nun who is no longer a friend of ours also said it. This is what is disturbing about it: That concept in that statement conveys that i must not hold a child molester accountable for the children he raped because he had been good to me at some point.

Is that the price of a twelve year old boy? That a pedophile bishop need only be very good to us, to be "owed" that we will look the other way over his sexual abuse of those children? That clergy-above-the-law-attitude, and that cowardice, are part of what got our Church into this mess.

At least five decades ago our beloved Church got into this mess. Longer even. A lady recently pleaded to be heard by the Sister-Superiors of the Leadership Conference of Women Religious. She was sexually molested, criminally sexually abused, by a nun. She was but six years old and now she is 82. That occurred more than five decades ago.

Never have we asked you to read our site, www.freewebs.com/thenuns/ . If we had, we’d have suggested, "Read what Janet Patterson said after her Eric killed himself. (Eric and four other little boys molested by the same priest, all five killed themselves later.)

You would read what Janet said about the mom who still has the settlement check from the diocese of the perpetrator who raped her son, her precious little boy who then killed himself. That mom still has the check. She says, "I never cashed it. After all, how far does $10 go?"

Surely i should not ask her to pay that price so that i can have warm fuzzies when the bishop comes to visit and remembers my name as one of his Loyal-Ones?

If you were tired of Janet, then you might read what the tough ex-cop, Steve, says about the nun who started prepping and grooming him, before his little-boy voice even began to change.

Are you aware that a usual scenario is that a devout couple discover their little boy had been sodomized repeatedly for years in the sacristy where he prepared to serve the Mass. Or their little girl had been raped at the rectory where she’d been sent to deliver something during CCD class. The parents go to the bishop and tell him. He either says it never happened or that he will see to it the guy does not do it any more. The parents later find out that nothing was done and kids have still been available to the predator pedophile. So they finally bring a lawsuit, to force the bishop to apologize, and to force him to keep other kids safe. At that point, it is not uncommon that the bishop’s lawyers counter-sue the parents for child neglect for allowing him to serve the Mass or for dropping her off to attend CCD classes. It’s called, i think, a SLAPP suit.

Are you aware that the reference "the Holy Innocents" applies to more than Herod’s murdered martyred children to whom we pray on the Dec. 28^th Feast? It refers also to a group of persons, some of whom are now in their seventies, whose daddies are priests. There are thousands of these folks. In some families the last so many kids in line do not share the paternal DNA that they, and the dads raising them, always thought they did.

Are you aware that some of the priests have groups of women, some as many as thirty, whom they "visit regularly" for years and years? i was told of one lady who was finally able to break the hold Father had had over her all these years, when she saw him eyeing her little daughter the way he had eyed her, before raping her, when she was close to that age. That man, under the guise of an outstanding upstanding monk, has been to our monastery. We pampered him. Only years later, after he’d been here, did we learn that he had sexually abused about ten little ten-year-old-girls.

We have met one of the ladies one of those little girls grew to be. She sat on our porch and apologized for becoming tearful as she related just what his crime had done to her body and to her mind and to her soul, and to her Faith.

No kids were ever at our monastery when Clarence was here. But he’s still right there, in his home monastery. He’s still around. Watch your kids.

Are you aware that orders of priests, brothers, and nuns, are even harder to track and to hold accountable for their pedophiles, than our poor parish priests and their bishops?

Are you aware of the hero priest, Father Tom Doyle? Please pray for him. He is so good.

paragraph omission 

i will leave the end of this letter to Eric’s mom, Janet Patterson, who said it better than i can, in "Sexual Abuse, The Church’s Millstone"

She asked these questions:

"In the scales of justice, is a child’s or adolescent’s life less valuable than that of a priest?"

"When a bishop states that he forgives his fellow priest, wouldn’t the person doing the forgiving have to be the victim?"

"If a crime is committed against a person, do the friends of the criminal have the right to ‘forgive’ his actions?"

"Does this forgiveness erase the damage done to the child or the adolescent?"

Then, like a true mom, from the midst of her own unimaginable pain, Janet reassures us, "Catholic laypeople can collectively insist that no child or adolescent be "sacrificed" to this evil. By speaking up, laypeople can help the Church regain its image as a Church of Truth and Salvation."

Letter from the parish priest:

January 9, 2005

Dear Sister Veronica,

I have a copy of the seven page message which I am told you and Sister Angela distributed to some of our parishioners after Mass this morning. I am very disappointed that you continue to work behind my back in this way. I have more than once offered to meet with you in an amicable manner to discus [sic] our apparent differences.

As I told you last week, I have put in a call to the bishop to seek his advise [sic]; in the meantime, I am sending him a copy of the message you distributed this morning as well as a copy of this letter to you.

Until I have heard from the bishop, I ask that you not volunteer to serve as a reader nor extraordinary minister of Holy Communion at our Masses. This is not an attempt to admonish you in any way but an effort to avoid giving further offense to some of our parishoiners while we attempt to find a way to solve our differences.

Let us pray for each other.

Father Paul A. Hostettler
Parish Administrator

 As we said at the top of this "missive", we do not know for sure, but we feel as though we are being pressured to shut down the web site. We cannot, in good conscience, do so. We feel, in conscience, that for us to do so would be to "sell out" the survivors in order to feel more secure about "our future", our "position in the Church", our "well-being". Our only agenda is to be true to Christ by standing in support of victims and survivors, from the heart of Holy Mother Church, where lives her Son.

We ask that any of you who care to, pray for us to remain true to God.