Rebuild My Church

"Neither the civil law nor the divine law can be maintained to any degree without holy justice.  The one who isn't corrected becomes like a limb that rots, infecting the whole body.  And the leader who doesn't correct him is like an incompetent physician who covers the would with salve without first cauterizing it, even though it is infected."

Catherine of Siena

The Church has a raging systemic infection. It is septic. From cardinals, bishops and priests who sexually assaulted children and young people to cardinals, bishops and priests who knew and looked the other way or transferred offenders to other dioceses or sent them to treatment and then returned them to active ministry, it is corrupt.

Catherine of Siena was right: it’s time to lance the boil, drain the putrescence from the wound and #rebuildmychurch.

I’m sickened by Cardinal Wuerl’s slick PR move: a website telling the world what a great job he’s done (per the Archdiocese of Washington, the website has been taken down due to outraged reactions).

I’m furious that the bishops are trying to brazen it out yet again.

Did the bishops not hear me when I told my story to them in Dallas in 2002?  When I eviscerated myself in front of them in that ballroom at the Fairmont Hotel on international television?

“We’ve done so much!” they cry. Well, what they DIDN’T do was create a mechanism to make bishops accountable for their actions.

Yes, it is now, and always has been, about the bishops. It’s about bishops who have their own secrets, and about the fellow bishops who knew those secrets, and the priest offenders who could blow the whistle on them.

It’s about the bishops who transferred offenders or sent them to Jemez Springs or St. Luke’s and brought them back to reoffend.

In my case it’s about the Abbott who refused to state publicly that my abuser had been credibly accused of sexual assaulting me at the age of 11. The same Abbott who sent members of his review board to intimidate and threaten me.

I am beyond angry, beyond anguished.

Regardless, I will not leave my Church in this condition. Why should I deprive myself of the sacraments? No, they are going to have to throw me out.

Rebuild my church.