News Roundup while I Try To Revive

Sounds way too familiar to me:

(From: Texas woman claiming abuse as child by Parma Ohio, priest wants diocese to remove plaque story broke June 5, 2011)

She also asked that the diocese actively seek out other possible victims of Monaghan and offer them counseling. She said the diocese refused all three requests. The nun said to me, 'That would scandalize the parish,'" said Johnson. "They told me, 'We cannot verify your story so it would be wrong to do this to his name.'"

A December 2008 letter to Johnson from the Rev. Lawrence Jurcak, then the diocese's Secretary and Vicar for Clergy and Religious, reads: "We cannot meet all of your requests.

"I trust that you can appreciate the difficulties that we face with an allegation of abuse that occurred more than fifty years ago, and where the accused died more than forty years ago . . . Please know that you continue to be in our prayers."

Like mine, abuse that happened more than 50 years ago. There's more:

PARMA, Ohio -- A recent story about a 65-year-old woman who says she was sexually abused by a Catholic priest when she was a schoolgirl growing up in Parma has prompted other women to come forward with similar allegations against the priest.

Since the story appeared last week, four women who attended grade school at St. Charles in the 1950s and '60s have contacted the newspaper, saying they, too, were groped and kissed by Monaghan, who died in 1967 at age 85.

The diocese [said] the alleged abuses happened too long ago and that there was no proof ... Read entire story

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Priest Sex-Abuse Case Hits Church of Pope's Adviser

(GENOA) — The latest sex-abuse case to rock the Catholic Church is unfolding in the archdiocese of an influential Italian Cardinal who has been working with Pope Benedict XVI on reforms to respond to prior scandals of pedophile priests. Father Riccardo Seppia, a 51-year-old parish priest in the village of Sastri Ponente, near Genoa, was arrested Friday, May 13, 2011, on pedophilia and drug charges. Investigators say that in tapped mobile-phone conversations, Seppia asked a Moroccan drug dealer to arrange sexual encounters with young and vulnerable boys. "I do not want 16-year-old boys but younger. Fourteen-year-olds are O.K. Look for needy boys who have family issues," he allegedly said. Genoa Archbishop Angelo Bagnasco, who is the head of the Italian Bishops Conference, had been working with Benedict to establish a tough new worldwide policy, released this week, on how bishops should handle accusations of priestly sex abuse.

Read more: http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,2072613,00.html#ixzz1PBG6ywLt

grrrr

Oh well, it's getting better; last week I couldn't even open a news story...
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What happened to City of Angels Blog

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Every time I open a Google news alert on the subject, I get physically sick, like I can't read another story on the subject of pedophile priests. This post might explain what happened, describing a dream that I had on May 19th. It seems to be the last thing I have in me to write about the scandal:

Tsunami Dream explains what happened to City of Angels Blog
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I almost didn't survive. I knew I was putting myself in danger but it was my job. I’d known in advance that the wave was going to hit, from reading the news, from paying attention. But still I went to my job that day, in a building right down by the beachfront. In the minutes before the wave hit, I was running around the house trying to find my stuff- my backpack, my bags- and I’d find one thing then lose it while I was looking for the other. Out the window the wave got closer. Others in the house (it was an Afro American family) were going, cool, look at that wave, and I was trying to get out of there, but I couldn't get out, so became resigned, thinking I was going to die there.

Then to rescue me a ride came through, literally a ride, like a theme park ride, and I jumped on, and the ride kept taking me higher and higher up the hill, so we'd escape just as the wave was hitting, wiping out everything below us. Just as the ride was about to go back down the hill, I jumped off, onto this structure with hallways and coves and stairways. I took a stairway and went higher and higher and it seemed that just as the wave hit just below me, I’d always find another way to get higher.

I realized there was a power, a spiritual presence, angels, something rescuing me, steering me always to a safer higher place.

There were other people climbing the structure, but as the waves kept hitting, fewer of us would make it to higher places, until finally it seemed to be over. At one point I was riding in a boat, a motor boat, we realized and were grateful as we started the engine. We saw ducks and huge sea creatures, and were grateful knowing we would be able to find food.

In another stopping-off point I was given a camera, a complicated thing with a long telephoto lens. I took pictures right away, capturing images of people finding ways to survive, but then more waves hit and I had to drop the camera and keep climbing higher.

Finally at the top, we realized that the few of us that were left were now on what was like a new shoreline. I was walking barehanded, wearing what I was left with, grateful to have what I had.

Altar Boys go a Different Direction

At one stopping off point on another ride climbing to the top, there were all these young boys, and I didn't want to end up there with them, so I got off and took a detour. I knew later that the boys had all survived also, but I was glad that I didn't have to spend the survival time, recovery time, rebuilding time, with all those young boys, and I got a sense they were altar boys…

Instead I ended up all alone, at the top of the structure, walking and walking with the few people that were left, also walking. I wasn’t communicating with anyone yet, but knew I would be later. I was just walking, almost like floating, dazed, looking out at this lush new ocean, our new beachfront land, walking like a survivor following Jesus through the Middle East as he preached in the days before he died...

I was wearing this dress that was loose and straight like the shift I got in Thai town in L.A. that I now wear when I'm sleeping. Then I heard noises and woke up here in the fourth floor room where I'm staying one last night before moving into an apartment two flights down in the back of this building.

Realized that ride from one place to here in the dream was like the ride I got here from Albuquerque; realized as I re-set up homemaking now here in this new place, I've survived something, and there has been a spiritual power that's carried me and kept me alive all this time.

City of Angels Blog is over

Realized the dream was telling me I survived the pedophile priest information wave, now it's time to start rebuilding. Realized that in the dream, the area full of young boys that I didn't want to be around was like the time I've spent with priest rape survivors and it's over now, I can let it go and move on to the next thing. Realized even the camera I had for a while in the dream that was beyond my ability, was like trying to keep up with this whole story on the blog, beyond my ability, so it was okay to let it go and start over something new cleaned out with almost nothing.

Just like here in this new place, in real life, I just have a few things with me.

Awake now, I got up and walked in my Thai nightgown into the bathroom in the same floating dazed manner in which I was walking at the end of the dream. Looked out the window at the new town I've landed in without knowing anyone here or why I landed here, I'm just here, and realized I am a survivor, I'm going to keep going, and it's all fine. I have been “carried” in a way, by a spiritual power, to this point and I made it.

I survived.

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Now I can empty out, and fill up with something new.

So long
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