OMG What Did I DO?

I think I goofed, or Providence stuck its finger where the sun don’t shine in me!

While doing a Google search for new articles, I came across this…

http://ncronline.org/blogs/ncr-today/victims-abuse-nuns-speak-out

So I read the article and its comments. In the comments were a couple of people, just like us, who caught the whip and hadn’t much talked about it.

Thusly inspired, I wrote this and tried to add it in as a comment:

There are incredible numbers of people who have been abused by Catholic Nuns. The priest scandal is BARELY the tip of the iceberg indicating a core sickness in the basic execution of the Catholic Church.

The Church, by not facing its underlying problems, like a child-molester, should be banned from having any contact whatsoever with children. There is NOTHING that has changed in the way they do things to indicate our children are safe in their care. Every piece of evidence shows avoidance of responsibility while minimizing the financial impact on their institution.

But that’s only my point-of-view, and it’s part of a much larger movement who’s time has come.

In 2009 I wrote a piece for my “a firetender’s blog”. It was just meant to vent a bit of my pain, having been a victim of what I understood to be a “cultural reality” of my times; the license granted to nuns of the Catholic faith to physically, psychologically, emotionally and spiritually abuse children. This was my reality and like so many of my peers, I’ve spent my LIFE sorting through, facing, and working through the traumas.

Something like this happened; one morning, I checked in to my barely used blog and I found 50 comments, including MANY stories of similar abuses! And SO many of them were my brothers and sisters, my peers, now somewhere in around their Sixth Decade on the planet, talking about this stuff FOR THE VERY FIRST TIME!

This thing is growing and we need your help. Here’s why: We haven’t really had permission to share our stories. They are so unbelievable and we’ve had to build up so many defenses around them that the only people who could begin to grasp the impact these influences had on our lives are those who’ve suffered through it themselves.

But this ain’t about suffering!

Please visit and contribute! The blog has grown into a resource AND safe-haven for the expression of honest feelings and experiences. Its purpose is to provide a venue for people to make their experiences real and begin talking about them and working through them. It offers new perspectives and — not by my design but by its natural evolution — is becoming a place where people come to help each other!

That is the fire I’m getting called on to tend.

I realized this site is not about protest or vengeance on the Church or anyone. That’s an energy-suck. But I’m from Brooklyn and I always have a hidden agenda; I figure if we put all our focus and attention on helping each other, MANY MORE of us will show up, WORD WILL GET OUT, PEOPLE WILL LISTEN and the next step will be revealed to us.

Everything else will take its proper place from there. I have faith in it.

And then I tried to get it posted but something, I don’t know what, screwed it up, or no confirmation came through or maybe, it actually went through.

The first thing I realized is I forgot to put in the URL for this blog, I put in my firetender.org URL, but that’s okay, they can probably Google us!

THEN, scrolling to the top of the article to see if I missed anything, I saw the name of the on-line publication I tried to put this in to:

THE NATIONAL CATHOLIC REPORTER!

We may have just parachuted into enemy territory. And then again…