Sacrificed

I was watching the movie The Shining the other day. The controversy about the movie -- Stephen King hated it, in part because it twisted Jack's motivation and emotions -- got me thinking about what it's like to be a survivor; how it FEELS.

The musical Wicked asks a question about the nature of evil. “Are people born wicked? Or do they have wickedness thrust upon them?” But does Wicked get it right? I have thoughts about that question, especially given my story and knowledge of and experience with My Friend The Cardinal and the Catholic sex abuse crisis.

Bishop Richard Rick Stika, the Bishop of Knoxville, the man whose Cathedral I've been standing vigil out front of, for more than a year, has resigned. Which, juxtaposed with a HORRIBLE discovery I made today, has me thinking...

Father's Day has me thinking about how to explain what happened to me to my kids. So, perhaps, they'll start speaking to me again. If they know I didn't abandon them. Instead, I got sick.

For all the happy talk, and all the P.R., Catholic children REMAIN in DANGER. Because, while some things have changed, one thing has not. The hierarchy. The Bishops. Men like My Friend The Cardinal.

Why have Catholic cardinals so often crossed paths -- and, in some cases, like My Friend The Cardinal and Cardinal Pell, at least, LIVED -- with the worst abusers in the church?

Imagine my HORROR at realizing a phrase and concept from my own story of abuse by a Catholic priest in the late 1970s is STILL a thing in 2022.

I assumed The Program was a problem of the past. Of the 1970s. I was wrong.

Catholic survivor Chris O'Leary's comments at the "Bishop Rick Stika Resign Now" rally held in Knoxville, Tennessee, on October 30, 2022.

13. My GREAT, basically PERFECT conversation with Kris and Paul from the Angry Catholic Show podcast On April 2, 2022. The content and topic are so important, and the episode has been so well received, that I've decided to simply re-run it on my podcast. We start off talking about Bishop Stika and Knoxville and then broaden out to a discussion of the more general problems with certain bishops, and the hierarchy, of the Catholic Church, and why so LITTLE has changed in not just 20 but 40 years.

12. The Catholic Church wants you to believe it is Contrite and things have Changed. However, the actions of Bishop Rick Stika of Knoxville, the case of The Seminarian, and the the cross state and diocese collusion of the Archdiocese of St. Louis and St. Louis University (SLU) with Stika and Knoxville calls all that into question.

11. The way out of the crisis is NOT to avoid the problems in the Catholic Church, but to confront them. That starts with the bishops, who refuse to change.

10. What's changed? Very little in terms of predation, and the tolerance of it, as is made clear by cases of seminarians tied to both Bishop Rick Stika of Knoxville and Pope Francis himself.

Fr. Mark White Talk (Combined) with Question and Answer Session

In late June 2021, I gave two talks about the Catholic sex abuse crisis, and its aftermath, to supporters of Fr. Mark White, a Catholic priest who is an outspoken advocate for survivors, and it being run out of the priesthood for it. This is a combined version of those talks. It also takes into account some of the reflections that hit me on my drive back to St. Louis. After the combined talk, I spend a good amount of time addressing and answering some of the questions that came up, both ones I was and wasn't able to answer in my two talks in Virginia.

Catholic sex abuse survivor Chris O'Leary interviews Fr. Mark White, a Catholic priest from Virginia who is to survivors what Fr. James Martin is to LGBT Catholics, and who is being run out of the Catholic Church as a result.

On June 28, 2021, in Martinsville, VA, I gave the SECOND of two talks to a  group of concerned Catholics and supporters of Fr. Mark White -- a  Catholic priest who is to survivor Catholics what Fr. James Martin, SJ,  is to LGBT Catholics -- whose bishop has petitioned the Vatican to expel him from the priesthood because of it.

On June 27, 2021, in Martinsville, VA, I gave the first of two talks to a group of concerned Catholics and supporters of Fr. Mark White -- a Catholic priest who is to survivor Catholics what Fr. James Martin, SJ, is to LGBT Catholics -- whose bishop has petitioned the Vatican to expel him from the priesthood because of it.

6. Why aren't things getting better for survivors? Actually. Because Abuse Profiteers are running the Catholic Church. Men like my friend the cardinal, a man I've known since I was a third grader at the Church of the Immacolata in St. Louis, where he saw, and turned a blind eye to, at least some of my and our sexual exploitation and abuse by Father LeRoy Valentine in the late 1970s. And then did worse as a bishop.

9. What's the big deal? About abuse? And having been abused? What it does to your family, as much as what it does to you.

The lie is that they didn't know, laid bare by the fact that, by the 1970s, the Archdiocese of St. Louis had in place a program -- The Program -- to manage and only God knows what else known abusers, including my abuser, Fr. LeRoy Valentine.

8. It wasn't just bad luck. Rather, we were sacrificed. By people we loved. And who I thought loved us. That's the only conclusion I can draw from the evidence. But why? How can one human being do that to another?

7. I found it in late January 2020. The document that proves that it didn't just happen. Rather, we were sacrificed.

Repressed Memory, the Timeline, and My Parents are topics I address in my Catholic Survivor Q&A, a bonus episode which is an interview I did with a listener of my podcast, Sacrificed.

5. I was sexually exploited, abused, and assaulted — raped — by a priest. Then things got REALLY bad.

4. What happened? Exactly? Specifically? This is the second of two episodes that go into what happened to me when I was a kid. I tell my store in as much detail as I can, while skipping over the most graphic stuff.

3. What happened? Exactly? Specifically? This is the first of two episodes that go into what happened to me when I was a kid. I tell my store in as much detail as I can, while skipping over the most graphic stuff.

2. "This nightmare," is how Fr. Tom Doyle referred to the events leading up to the movie SPOTLIGHT. Events that, for survivors at least, are FAR from over. The Pennsylvania grand jury report of August 2018 led to a flurry of actions by the Catholic Church and (arch)dioceses in the United States, as they tried to make it clear that things were different. Promises belied by the events of the 2018 Mass of Reparation, and encapsulated in the cover art for the Sacrificed podcast, and which make clear the reality for and plight of survivors of the Catholic sex abuse crisis. Still. Despite SPOTLIGHT, the Pennsylvania grand jury report, VOS ESTIS, and everything. Which makes the problem clear. If the Catholic Church can do this survivors, what else can it justify? Rationalize? When it comes to children most of all?

1. The movie SPOTLIGHT did an excellent job of laying out the basics of the Catholic sex abuse crisis, but what happened next? To the survivors? Whose lives were, at best, turned upside down by the revelations.

SPOTLIGHT wasn't the end of the story. The Catholic sex abuse crisis and what happened, both then and now, raises a number of critical questions, starting with the biggest one; if the Catholic Church can do what it's done to survivors, as children and adults, then what else can it justify doing? Rationalize? To children, most of all.