Cardinal Sean O'Malley is holding a healing Mass for abuse survivors, Sunday December 20th, 2009 at 3:30 pm at the Bethany Chapel, 66 Brooks Drive, Braintree, MA.

All in attendance will receive this Advent Booklet, showing one of the the actual reasons for the Mass in the first place. 

I once was in the position of the Magnificent Advent Companion too. They saw great potential in me at a very early age. I was heavily recruited for the position.

It didn't last though. Once I reached the age of consent, I was retired.

Survivor: Cardnial Sean, do you know how to heal survivors?
Cardinal Sean: I don't know, can you hum a few bars?

If I get any more news like this, I think my head will explode. First on the list is an article on how the Vatican is responding to the UN about sexual abuse accusations. They start off by saying, "In a defiant and provocative statement, issued after a meeting of the UN human rights council in Geneva, the Holy See said most of the Catholic clergy who committed such acts were not pedophiles but homosexuals attracted to sex with adolescent males." Try telling that to the female victims. They make up around 40% of the victims. I guessing this must have happened because they were heterosexuals attracted to sex with adolescent females, right? If the Holy See decides to ban homosexuals to protect little boys, it would stand to reason that they should ban heterosexuals to protect little girls. Perhaps they should just ban anyone with a penis from the priesthood. Let the women run the church. It would be a smooth transition. They already have the dresses. The Holy See tried to deflect their responsibility by noting that "...most US churches being hit by child sex abuse allegations were Protestant" In most Protestant churches the members hire their ministers. They are not appointed by the Bishop, who may be playing a shell game with a person who is attracted to sex with an adolescent. And I can't think of one protestant church that is actually a sovereign nation. Hence the UN's involvement. Which is the good news. Speaking of the hierarchy of the church, a Roman Catholic bishop from Nova Scotia faces child porn charges. Raymond Lahey has been charged with possessing and importing child pornography. "Lahey once oversaw a $15-million settlement with people who said they had been sexually abused by priests in the diocese, in a case dating back to 1950." So that is who is minding the store. My only question, though, is was it child porn porn? Which brings me to Roman Polanski. The rush to protect a convicted rapist of a 13 year old girl is staggering. 100 filmmakers signed a petition demanding Polanski's release. Among them Martin Scorsese, who once studied at the seminary and flirted with becoming a priest. I have no doubt he would have become a celebrated Bishop. And, of course, Woody Allen. What else needs to be said?That is a two for one, truth and punchline in the same sentence. It would be funny except we are talking about the rape of a 13 year old girl. This is how it works for the successful predator, either a priest or celebrity. The communities back the predator because it is too much to fathom that they have loved and been touched by the work, of a person who commits monstrous deeds. Better to rely on denial than face that. I'm a fan of both Scorsese and Allen's films. I'm even in Scorsese's new film Shutter Island. You can see me in the trailer. That's me being dragged on lawn. And I got the part of a mental patient because I actually have a diagnosis, PTSD, because of clergy sexual abuse. Can I separate the art and the artist, or is that just another form of denial? Perhaps Whoopi can tell me if it is denial denial. Yesterday I went to St Mary's in Uxbridge, the place of my abuse, to support a friend, a brother in arms, at a funeral. The church has a history of hosting more predator priests in the Worcester Diocese than any other parish. Six priests to be exact. We had coffee after the funeral in the new, and quite expensive, community center. All funds raised by the thriving parish. I would say it's just plain denial.

1963 was a year of contrasts. It was both light and dark. President John F. Kennedy was assassinated and The Beatles released their first record, "Please Please Me." It was similarly a year if contrasts for Catholics. The big news that year was the passing of Pope John XXIII, the Pope of radical change who called the Second Vatican Council. Things were also radically changing on a quieter front in the Catholic Church. The Rev. Gerald M. C. Fitzgerald founder of the order, Servants of the Paraclete, a treatment center for priests and Brothers visited Rome in 1963 to warn Pope Paul VI of the immense problem of clergy sexual abuse. A forceful warning he had been trying to deliver since 1952. As the article in the New York Times reports a year earlier in 1962, Fitzgerald went to Rome and met with Vatican officials to discuss this issue. The same year a document entitled "Crimen Solicitationies," a confidential document from the Vatican was sent to every Bishop in the world instructing them how to cover up clergy sexual abuse. The document was signed with the seal of Pope John XXIII. Radical indeed. The coincidence of Fitzgerald's visit to Rome the same year this document is secretly released is hard to dismiss as nothing more. The church was warned. And they took action. Cover it up. By the time of the 1963 meeting, the wheels were already in motion. The bearer of truth and light, Rev. Gerald M. C. Fitzgerald, would meet with Pope Paul VI who would oversee the modern chapter of the darkness of clergy sexual abuse. It would be hard not to conclude that had the church listened to Fitzgerald and taken appropriate action, a substantial amount of victims since 1962 would have been spared.