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I had forgotten a few of the basics in the last few weeks when it comes to dealing with adversarial comments. The rules are pretty simple and they should have been learned early on. Unfortunately, I find myself in the position where I need to go back and learn them over again.
1. Don’t feed the troll. Don’t bait an internet interloper into a conversation that is not worth your time in the first place. There are those on-line who would like nothing more than the opportunity to snipe at you personally as part of their own smug campaign to paint you as a fool. Their basic argument is often without merit or based on personal attack. They can attempt to claim the moral high ground if you forget yourself for a moment and say something that they can use against you. In my case, the troll is an operative for an organization that is not what it seems to be.
2. “Put down the duckie”. When it comes to moving yourself forward the best advise I have seen to date on overcoming obstacles to allow you the ability to reach your goals comes from Sesame Street: (It’s 5 minutes out of your life, go ahead and watch)
3. No one can insult you without your permission. If someone comes after you with the express purpose of getting your “Irish” up, remember they can’t succeed unless you allow yourself to get pissed off. This may be a variation on “Don’t feed the troll”.
4. Don’t accept a “No” from someone who is not empowered to tell you “Yes”. If you want the man/woman at the top to answer your question, ask the man/woman at the top the question or make your request directly to them and not to some underling or proxy who is there to be an obstacle to you in the first place.
5. If you are going through hell, keep going (Winston Churchill). For many of us, the trouble is that we have stopped along the way. Dr. Seuss called the place we stop, The “Useless Place” (Oh,The Places You’ll Go). My advise, keep moving. I have found it useful to drop some of the baggage I have been carrying along the way. It is a lot easier to move forward without all the troubles and stresses (real and imagined) weighing heavy on you shoulders
6. History is written by the winner. If you want the abuse committed by Catholic Clergy relegated to the ash pile of history, let the Roman Catholic Hierarchy win. If you want a different outcome, stand up, form up and fight.
7. Finally, to quote the Dixie Chicks:
” I’m not ready to make nice
I’m not ready to back down
I’m still mad as hell and
I don’t have time to go round and round and round
It’s too late to make it right
I probably wouldn’t if I could
‘Cause I’m mad as hell
Can’t bring myself to do what it is you think I should”
Enough said, for now.
I have completed my defection request correspondence and mailed it off to the Diocese of Brooklyn on my way into the office this morning. I suspect it will hit Prospect Park West sometime on Monday or Tuesday. I was sure to include a copy of my baptismal certificate to help the research process along, you know how these bureaucracies can grind on when all the source documentation is not readily available.
I also provided a courtesy copy of my defection request to the Victim Assistance Coordinator at the Diocese of Scranton. On the outside chance the Diocese of Brooklyn may have some questions I don’t want the folks on Wyoming Avenue in Scranton to be surprised when an inquiry comes in about Father Gibson and his taste for sexually assaulting little boys.
I am giving it a couple of weeks for an initial response. If I hear nothing, I will resubmit via registered mail.
The clock is running.
My next letter writing campaign will be to the US Attorney for Pennsylvania requesting an investigation into the long-term criminal conspiracy to cover up sexual crimes and obstruct justice by the Diocese of Scranton and the Bishops that have guided that curia.
I have come to the conclusion that I have very few options in what I can and cannot do in dealing with the Roman Catholic Church. So I am going to work on the things I can do. First and foremost, I need to make sure that the boys in Rome are not counting me among the faithful.
It seems that the Roman Catholic Church counts you as a member if you have been baptized. As I was dunked into the batismal fount of the holy mother church as an infant (without my consent) I am still on the rolls for counting purposes. It is a good scheme, claim big numbers of members because most who leave never bother to tell the church to pack sand. Take a look at church attendance today and see how many people are sitting in the pews, that would be a significantly smaller number.
I am sure that my contribution to the statistics is still going strong in the ledgers of the Diocese of Brooklyn, even though I have not resided in Brooklyn since I was 12. My time in the Diocese of Scranton, the offending diocese that supported Robert J. Gibson and left me and others vulnerable to attack, does not factor in. It seems that the only way I can terminate my association with the RCC is to go through the process of “Defection”. I am going to officially quit. Reduce the worldwide population of Roman Catholics by 1. Not a big dent in the hugely inflated number of American Catholics, but an important removal for my own personal growth.
I would prefer to be excommunicated. It would be pretty wild to be in the same club as Galileo Galilei! But, I digress…
There are large numbers of lapsed Catholics who have left the RCC for other faiths. Some decided the Sunday Morning Magic Show was nothing more than (incense) smoke and mirrors that came with an inedible snack and a requirement to sit through a ridiculous monologue, that wasn’t funny, about life from a man who generally knew very little about life (or was living a double life). Others like me, were subjected to horrible violations compounded by an uncaring, co-conspirator of an institution that was only focused on minimizing scandal, silencing those calling for justice and keeping the money rolling in to support the opulent lifestyles of the Bishops who condoned the sexual crimes committed by subordinates.
Defection seems to be the answer. In order to “defect” you must submit your stated intention to leave the church to the diocese in which you were initially baptised. In May I requested a duplicate copy of my batismal certificate from the church where that event took place. I have researched the process and I am going to fire off the letter to the fiefdom of Bishop “Nicky the Don” DiMarzio in Brooklyn and let them know I am done with all of it.
I am fully aware that this leaves me out of having a Catholic funeral, no last rites, no sacraments of any kind from the church. But seeing as this church has already denied me protection from predators, been an impediment to justice and cannot seem to tell the truth about the sexual crime crisis within it’s doors, I do not see the loss of sacraments as a downside. On the rare occasions where I have been in a church over the last few years, I stay respectfully silent and I do not approach the altar for any reason. Really, I am not doing anything different from what I was doing already. I am just formalizing the process. It is an active form of leaving, not a passive form.
This blog post will serve as a notice that I am done with the Catholic Church officially. I make this decision of my own free will without any undo influence from any other source. I do not want any kind of RCC intervention in any aspect of my life and eventual death. I do not want last rites, an RCC funeral mass, any kind of prayer service or burial in a Catholic cemetery. I want no indication in my life or death that I was, in any way, a practicing Catholic. I don’t know any other way to make a more public pronouncement.
I will let you know how this works out. At least I will let you know the kind of response I get. I am hoping this service will be free of charge!
I am sorting through a lot of comments, a lot of emails and a lot of phone calls? (How did my number get so widely distributed?)
Bottom line. I am not wandering off the reservation from the topic at hand. If you want to weave the birth control and abortion discussions into this conversations, I will not be going there and the comments will not be here.
I am doing this to stay on topic.
If you have a blog on the Sexual Abuse Crisis in the Church and it does not appear in my left rail navigation (<<<<< look over there and then scroll down just a bit). Send me a link and I will put it up.
It seems that my last post opened Pandora’s Box. What I thought was going to be an expression of the reasons for my exit from SNAP turned into a flash point for people for and against the way SNAP operates. I have received more email on both sides of this discussion than I expected. It is running about 50/50 in support or opposition. There are also the occasional nasty comments that seem to be focused on questioning the marital status of my parents at the time of my birth and the odd threat of retaliation for my “insensitive” treatment of the leadership at SNAP.
With all due respect to those who have nothing but insults to throw, Knock it off!
If you would like to have an open conversation about what I wrote, I am all in. If you want to start demanding to know the religious affiliation of individuals in the organization, give it a rest. I will not post any comments that attack the faith of individuals associated with SNAP at any level of that organization. Everyone has the right to make decisions that are correct for them as individuals. Whether or not a person remains a Catholic, converts to another faith or denomination or chooses to simply leave “organized” religion behind is a personal choice.
As I stated in my previous post, I don’t think it matters who is funding SNAP or how it was organized 22 years ago. I believe that current methods, tactics and tools of the organization are not getting the job done. I intended to draw a comparison between SNAP and the RCC in how they conducted business.
From my point of view, SNAP is engaged in a struggle with the Hierarchy of the Catholic Church. While they are pursuing a course of action that I think is shortsighted, they are still not the bad guys. That distinction is the sole domain of the hierarchy of the RCC and their apologists who are still denying that the church allowed the abuse of children and vulnerable adults to go on for decades. I part company with SNAP when it comes to how I think we should collectively, as a community of survivors, engage our adversary.
I also don’t think that SNAP is the sum total of the survivor community. The amount of email that came in more than backs up that thought.
Based on the feedback I received in the comments and emails that came in yesterday and today, it is clear that I hurt some feelings and possibly insulted other survivors. That was not my intent. I apologize to those who feel I have wrongly characterized their efforts on behalf of the survivor community. I have reread my most recent post and, with the exception of some typos and misspellings that I have corrected, I stand by what I have written.
If you are one of the people that contacted me by email, rest assured I will not publish what you expressed in that correspondence without your permission. If you sent your thoughts in a comment to this blog, they are fair game. If you sent something that I saw as inappropriate or threatening, I will not publish it in this forum. This is my blog and I will determine the content. I am more than willing to publish both sides of this discussion as long as it is a civil discussion.
Time to get our collective eye on the ball.
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