SNAP Leader Blaine Comes Unglued In Search of Media Attention: ‘Nothing’s Changed’ in Catholic Church’s Handling of Abuse Cases

Barbara Blaine SNAP Survivors

SNAP President Barbara Blaine: Just making things up?

The measures are unprecedented: "Abuse panels" in nearly every diocese … the training of millions of children and adults (including 99 percent of all priests) to recognize signs of abuse … intensified screening of seminarians and other Church employees … strict annual audits for compliance of procedures … a "zero tolerance" policy that is so strict that accused priests feel abandoned by their bishops … and billions of dollars in settlements and therapy for victims.

Yet despite all of these dramatic actions undertaken by the Catholic Church, according to the always hyperbolic SNAP President Barbara Blaine, "nothing's changed" in the handling of abuse cases and "[bishops] are still saying now what they said in 1993."

Blaine's latest loopy salvo was made in an Australian newspaper.

Fading into oblivion with an agenda exposed

Blaine's attack reveals that the very survival of SNAP rests in its ability to dupe the public into believing that this decades-old story is somehow "new."

In addition, in order to keep the hysteria alive, Blaine has allied herself with radical organizations like the pro-abortion Feminist Majority. She has also aligned with wild-eyed Church bashers like Barry Lynn and noted anti-Catholic bigots like Geoffrey Robertson and Richard Dawkins.

Through all this – and the fact that SNAP's own tax records reveal almost no financial support for victims whatsoever – Blaine reveals that SNAP ultimately is just a tired, anti-Catholic organization masquerading as a victims group.

And if there were any doubt that the issue of child abuse is just a pretext for SNAP's hatred of the Church, one does not need to look further than Blaine's passionate letter of support on behalf of a Louisiana SNAP psychiatrist who was arrested with over 100 images of kiddie porn on his computer. (See TheMediaReport.com, August 8, 2011.) Whatever happened to support for child sex victims?

Fortunately, the truth is finally catching up with SNAP as its relevance and credibility begin to fade into the sunset.

Comments

  1. Walter says:

    SNAP never lets the truth or the facts get in the way of a good press release.

  2. Colleen Sheehy says:

    ZT for accused priests is what sticks in my craw! While ONE abused person is one too many, we need to practice what Jesus taught us, and err on the side of mercy since we humans are incapable of perfect justice. Dallas Charter must be re-worked to allow due process and protection of rights of the accused while still protecting the abused. ZT is just an excuse to cease rational, compassionate thinking.

  3. Robert says:

    "Loopy salvo"?  You mean this?: "After a Philadelphia grand jury report in 2005 church officials promised many reforms, but a 2011 grand jury found there were 37 predator priests still working in that one diocese."
    Doesn't sound "loopy" to me.  Sounds more like Ms. Blaine is dead-on target.  Thanks, themediareport.com.  I just contributed $50 to SNAP in your name.  Bravo!!

    • TheMediaReport.com says:

      “a 2011 grand jury found there were 37 predator priests still working in that one diocese (Philly)…”

      Well, the grand jury’s claim was entirely false. It’s sad to see you get duped like that. See what I mean? SNAP cannot be trusted – at all.

      [Addendum: The GJ announced 37 ... But eight were already found to be bogus, one had already been on leave for a long time, two were incapacitated and out of ministry, and two were from orders outside the diocese. Yet the archdiocese suspended 26 priests anyway. Chaput has since returned 8 to ministry and kept 7 out of ministry. One more guy died. So there are 10 cases still pending, and the fact that they are still pending should tell you how flimsy these claims actually are. http://articles.philly.com/2012-10-17/news/34500526_1_philadelphia-priest-abuse-or-misconduct-altar-boy ... Again, SNAP cannot be trusted.]

    • Dai Yoshida says:

      Another SNAP plant. For shame. I think TheMediaReport should make home address and phone number mandatory to leave comment.

  4. Mark says:

    Oh dear. Robert just got shafted.

  5. Barbara Blaine is very effective in getting her message (aka the truth) out. Otherwise, folks like David Pierre wouldn't spend so much time and energy going after her. GO BARBARA!

  6. Frank Lostaunau says:

    Everybody in San Francisco loves Barbara Blaine!  VIVA BARBARA!  VIVA!  GORA!

  7. Publion says:

    Well, now comes Barbara Blaine – from whom we have all eagerly been waiting to hear in regard to just how SNAP operates since CEO Clohessy identified her in his Deposition as pretty much the only person who really knows.
     
    But nothing yet on that score. Although you would think that the organization’s operational (not personal) information would be the easiest thing in the world to provide for somebody whom even Mr. Clohessy acknowledges as the brains behind the operation.
     
    The hope is to Keep The Ball Rolling by starting it up somewhere else. For whatever reasons – and I mentioned a few possibilities in a comment two articles ago – there seems to be a possibility of a start-up in Australia. But we’ve also seen that the Aussies still have some capacity for independent analysis – and those folks have had 30 years to watch how the Game is played (and has played out) here.
     
    So I think it will be interesting to see if at this point the same old plays can be run Down Under.  And if the Aussies will allow themselves to be stampeded by phantasms such as have been commonly deployed by SNAP up here.
     
    "Everybody in San Francisco"?  Surely a figure of speech, a rhetorical exaggeration and not intended to be taken as factual. But then – that's a very substantial part of the problem with SNAP-py statements generally, isn't it?

  8. Julie says:

    Frank Lostaunau, I recall you calling me a "Ho" when I posed on another site. That says a lot about Barbara Blaine supporters.

  9. Mark says:

    Back of the net, Publion.
    I just called a friend in San Francisco. She's never heard of Barbara Blaine. Seems like Franky boy's telling porkies.

  10. anonymous says:

    Publion,
    I was thinking one day about what Michael Voris believed about attacking the church: He believed is
    was a "divide and conquer" strategy.  I thought about this for a while…Do you think it has been more of
    a "sub-divide and conquer" strategy?  Think about it.  Not only our religion, but also our various
    cultural/ancestry backrounds can be mocked (with no hate speech consequences).
    The "priest" issue, while it has had an enormous media and financial impact, was really the
    last segment of the "sub-division". 

  11. ERW says:

    As a survivor  of revolting childhood abuse by a priest, and now close to 80 years old, I am forever grateful for SNAP and every other organization who shines the light of truth on this way- under reported crime by priests.  There where hundreds of little girls in my parish molested by a crack-whipping pastor for 25 years.  And I thought I had been the only one. We were slapped and trashed if we dared to even wishper anything negative about any priest  The suffering is indescribable! 
    Lets not be ambiguous in prodecting the children first and foremost.  Priests have gotten a free pass for too long.  How else could have the horrific crimes occudred in the bording schools for deaf children and Canada, and those for native Americans.  These have been proven in court.  Never mind those tortures commited in such institutions which never have been reported. 

    • josie says:

      I am very curious as to where your story took place. You are close to 80 and there were"hundreds of little girls"  molested in your parish by 1 priest.. They are all living to tell their story and accuse this priest? He must be dead..When and where was this reported?  What was "proven in court"? How do you know "tortures" were commited if they never were reported. This sounds pretty outragious! Just interested in the veracity of your statements.
      Can you respond also as to how SNAP helped you when they do not give much to victims and have been exposed recently?  Do you refer to the lawyers that have been dishonest in getting big$$$$$ on settlements via SNAP's help? Underreported???the clergy abuse is overreported..are you for real? Where do you live?

    • Therese Z says:

      I too am curious. REPORT your abuse to the diocese. Name names, dates, everything you can remember. THEN complain. When these "I was abused but no I never reported it as an adult even though I have been given years of chances now, that the media is fascinated to the point of inaccuracy about these cases" commenters come out of the woodwork, I believe them less and less.
      The abusing priest that I am aware of HAS been reported, has been disciplined and removed, has been sent for treatment for his urges and his alcoholism. The parishes he served in have been notifed and pardon and mercy asked. HIs original bishop followed psychologists' instructions and treated and then moved him. His later bishop was criminally stupid in not yanking him after a repeat of his behavior (which was dirty talk and giving minors beer, thankfully no touching, it's bad enough) and retired with almost no thanks or notice.
      If you want credibility, report your abuse with details and give them (diocese, priest name, dates) whenever you tell the story. Hide your own identity, that's understandable, but don't just sling words and expect to be believed.
       

  12. Publion says:

    I am not greatly familiar with the Voris work and have not followed its career. But let me offer these thoughts on ‘Anonymous’s question from 440PM today.
     
    American ‘Progressivism’ began around 1900 with a strongly Christian (but Protestant) element: whether Teddy Roosevelt’s ideas of Americans adopting a muscular approach to spreading both Democracy and (Protestant) Christianity around the world, or Woodrow Wilsons’ insistence that America must pursue what he saw as her vocation to make the world safe for Democracy (Wilson was not as overtly Christian as TR, but he had a missionary-like intensity to what he saw as his vocation as President and Great Man to lead America into a world leadership role in the fresh new modern 20th century, and Christianity was a major part of his concept of America).
     
    But in later 1960s, the progressive/liberal (in the 1930s FDR had begun using the term ‘liberal’ rather than ‘progressive’ to define the Democratic Party) approach began to run afoul of any traditional sort of Christianity (and Catholicism) as it sought to embrace the demands of new political demographic groups of that era. The Boomer subset of Flower Children were particularly interested in a much freer approach to sex (as had numerous Progressives in the later 19th and early 20th century) and they emphasized individual ‘freedom’ over any sorts of traditional ‘commitment’ and had a rather sanguine approach to ‘change’ – equating it almost by definition with ‘improvement’ and giving no thought to consequences and prudence (which sort of goes with the territory when you’re young … I recall Mary Hopkin’s marvelous refrain from her 1968 or 1969 song Those Were the Days: “We’d live the life we choose, we’d fight and never lose, for we were young and sure to have our way” – I think for a while she knocked the Beatles off the No. 1 spot in the charts with that song, and at that time the Beatles were putting out some pretty impressive stuff).
     
    This trend had been given a certain general public credibility when – in the mid-1950s – the Southern Jim Crow States had tried to block Martin Luther King’s campaign to eradicate Jim Crow by claiming the need to slow down, be prudent, and look at consequences. By placing prudence and deliberation and a careful look at consequences into the service of continuing segregation and Jim Crow, the Southern elements had thrown prudence, deliberation, and concern for consequences into a bad light. And along came the Boomers in the 1960s … youth is not the period of life when prudence, deliberation and concern for consequences come naturally. There is, I would say, a strong need for some adult supervision or else – like eager young puppies – they will run out into the traffic (and if you don’t keep a good grip on the leash, take you with them).
     
    Some significant forms of post-MLK (he was sidelined by black vanguards by 1966, as well as by LBJ – for not supporting that President’s war in Vietnam) black thought became enmeshed with European and Maoist ‘revolutionary’ thought.
     
    But it was radical feminism that took the lead here, because – if you read Catharine MacKinnon’s 1989 how-we-did-it summa Toward a Feminist Theory of the State – as early as 1971 radical feminists were looking to old Soviet ‘philosophy’ to provide a ready-made philosophical basis for an agenda which even then they recognized would have to help de-validate and de-construct substantial chunks of American and Christian tradition: the concept of marriage and the commitment it requires; the concept of the family; the very notion of human-nature itself; as well as a recasting of abortion as a right required if an individual is to be ‘free’ (curiously, the argument here basically required the federal government to somehow address the non-political evolutionary reality that the female of our species will wind up with any possible ‘conceptum’ issuing from a sexual encounter while the male gets to ‘walk away’ from the sexual encounter … this was cast as an intolerable condition – a denial of ‘freedom’ and ‘equality’ that the federal government is – as a matter of constitutional responsibility – required to remedy). Not only certain elements of American Progressive thought, but the Soviet State itself in the early, Leninist years (it backed away after it realized the consequences of the whole thing) also sought such re-arrangements, for the good of the State and that State’s Revolution.
     
    As you can see from this highly compressed historical sketch, the Democrats (and the ‘liberals’ generally) were being ineluctably pulled in a direction away-from American and Christian tradition as that tradition and cultural Shape had evolved throughout the history of the country from its Founding and toward a repetition here of Continental revolutionary secular materialism – it was the only way to ‘justify’ the tremendous shift away from traditional concepts in order to create social and cultural ‘space’ for the new demographic groups’ agendas and demands.
     
    And among the various Christianity-based religious organizations, the Catholic Church was the largest. And the Church had already demonstrated its ability to influence public debate in the early 1980s when it had spear-headed the Reagan-era effort to re-valorize nuclear weapons.
     
    But the Church was herself also riven from within. Vatican Two, which delivered its texts right smack dab in the middle of the 1960s (1965 – the same year as the Voting Rights Act which completed LBJ’s initial burst of federal legislation giving shape to MLK’s long campaign), created a many-faceted fission-reaction within American Catholicism. While there were numerous ‘surface’ elements having to do with the look of liturgical and sacramental practice and traditional pious observances, there were also deeper rifts opened up by the question of ‘social justice’: how do you define it, how does the Church and how do Christians fit into it and what are their responsibilities toward it? Quickly, there developed within the American Catholic community a division similar to that in American politics: a ‘liberal’ wing (that easily shaded into a ‘revolutionary’ wing) and a ‘conservative’ wing. Curiously, this division was more pronounced within the ranks of the clergy and Sisterhood and professoriate than within the Catholic laity at large.
     
    It was only a matter of time before the Catholic ‘liberals’ and the political ‘liberals’ found each other. While it would be nice to think that the Catholic liberals remained sufficiently Catholic to neutralize some of the secularism and relativism characteristic of political ‘liberalism’, it seems to me that just the opposite type of dynamic took place.
     
    Anyhoo, here we are and the question was about Mr. Voris’s approach. I certainly agree that a society and a culture needs a strong sense of morals in order to Ground and Boundary and Shape (call this triad ‘GBS’ for short) itself and the milieu and ethos it creates, in which its young will be given their early training.
     
    And or morality to work among humans as they have developed, I think it is absolutely necessary that GBS be anchored solidly in a multi-plane or multi-planar reality. As engineers know, if you are going to anchor some quantum solidly, you have to reach above or below the plane on which that quantum is standing: if you are going to build a building, then you have to dig below the surface for the foundations, and the higher the building, the deeper the foundations have to be (assuming also that you are anchoring in solid earth or rock and not in sand or swampy mush). You can’t simply build a building with the first floor on the plane of the ground-surface that the building will occupy; you have to go beneath that plane for the foundation.
     
    For morality – or more specifically – moral standards, the Christian and Catholic building-approach is to  anchor ‘up’, in a Higher Plane or Higher Reality. You have to , I think, because if you don’t then the ‘authority’ of your moral standards remains as transient and fungible as anything else in this human-historical dimension. If – and this is pretty much the bottom-line of secularist thought nowadays – the selection of moral standards  is simply a matter of a general human group consensus as to what moral-standards they are going to embrace as a group and enforce upon each other, then the authority of those standards is only as reliable as the ‘consensus’ that brought it into being (sort of like Supreme Court decisions: a case is only permanently decided until a new coalition of Justices comes along to change it).
     
    And if there is also a sense – as there is in modern secularist relativism – that each individual is ‘totally free’ to choose his/her own moral standards so long as they don’t harm anybody else (the kicker here is how you define ‘harm’), then it becomes even harder to achieve any consensus at all. And the ‘authority’ of the moral standards based on that even shakier consensus is even more fragile and fungible.
     
    So I support the idea that you need a Multi-Planar Reality to ground moral standards. But then humans also need to feel that somebody or Somebody ‘up there’ is helping them through life. This abiding human characteristic can’t be written off to ‘superstition’ or ‘primitiveness’ (although the content of some imaginings of that Somebody can surely veer into the primitive).
     
    I can even understand Mr. Voris’s call for a more “muscular Catholicism” – during the 1970s ‘tolerance’ shaded rather strongly into relativism, and many of the hierarchy tried to accommodate that massive shift in the popular culture of the day, abetted – it must always be remembered – by a national government that bipartisanly was trying to have it both ways: keep a Shape to American culture while also making as much space as possible for new agendas and demands.
     
    The Voris call here echoes the Protestant Social Gospel movement of the very early 1900s, a Progressive element translated into Protestant Christianity in that era, calling for a more typically American and pragmatic (William James’s influence here, and later John Dewey) engagement with the social problems of that era: the consequences of urbanized, industrialized ‘masses’ – often immigrants who while in many cases were solidly Catholic weren’t considered quite up to ‘American’ life and were – I agree – hugely burdened by the social consequences of an industrial-capitalistic economic ethos.
     
    The American hierarchy was also similarly concerned for its flock, while simultaneously trying to convince Rome that ‘democracy’ as it existed in America was not the same as the ‘democracy’ of the French Revolution, which in the Vatican’s estimation had led to nothing but a century of civil war and terror and the assorted horrors of European radicalism. They finally got Leo XIII to accept some of their thinking, but the Vatican remained highly wary of ‘Modernism’ – although, again, it was more the European variant of that movement that gave Rome pause.
     
    But the problem I see with Progressive Protestant “muscular Christianity” was that it gave too much away to the this-worldly, treating vital matters of doctrine and belief from a ‘pragmatic’ point of view, i.e. that ‘ideas’ weren’t as important as ‘actions’ and those ‘actions’ can only be judged by their ‘success’ or – to use an unhappy phrase of William James – their “cash value”. So I wouldn’t want to see American Catholicism make that same mistake all over again.
     
    Thus the Question for me is this: how do American Catholics today gird for battle and war? – which I believe is a trope Mr. Voris embraces. Here the question is one addressed by John Courtney Murray in the 1950s and early 1960s: how do American Catholics engage in the political life of the nation while respecting what Murray firmly believed were the fundamental and foundational presumptions of the American Framers’ Vision? Those fundamental presumptions are that human beings i) are capable of rational deliberation and thought and ii) must be respected in and for that capacity. (Murray, in best Catholic form, stated more clearly what the Enlightenment-influenced Framers were more circumspect about: that human beings are created in God’s Image and that very fundamental reality of human existence ultimately grounds-boundaries-shapes their role in determining the form of their own governance. (Even Aquinas came to that conclusion in his Letter to the King of Cyprus: having spent 108 paragraphs saying that in an ideal world a Benevolent Catholic Monarch would be the best form of governance, yet alas you don’t often get such marvelous creatures in human history, and therefore his basic advice to that King of Cyprus was: treat all your subjects as if they too are kings.)
     
    So while I strongly support the idea of a reinvigoration of the sense and spirit of the best of Catholicism, I am not comfortable with the idea – certainly in this country – of a Catholic monarchy or a sort of Catholic theocracy comprised ‘democratically’ of only Catholic voters. Murray too would not approve, from everything I understand of his thought.
     
    I don’t want to add to the European sense of ‘culture war’, which was originally the phrase – Kulturkampf – used to describe Bismarck’s campaign to de-legitimize the role of Christianity (the German Lutheran version as well as the Catholic) so as to clear more space for the German masses to accept the benevolence of his own government’s agendas for social and cultural change (and – to give him his due – the Iron Chancellor came up with a government program of  ‘social insurance’ in the second half of the 19th century.  
     
    But there is an even more ominous source of the idea of culture-war: Italian Communist Antonio Gramsci – in the early teens and 20s of the 20th century – tried to come up with a decently humanist way of getting the Leninist revolution going in the established democracies of the West (where you couldn’t as easily create armed revolution the way it had come about in Russia). Gramsci – rather decently, in a way – wanted to see the ‘marginalized’, consigned to the outer rings of political power (the ‘margins’)and ‘oppressed’  by the ‘hegemony’ of those at the core of cultural and social and political power, educated by ‘vanguard elites’ of the Party so that those very emarginati  would be able to bring themselves into the center of political life and in that ‘humane’ way create the Leninist Revolution in their countries.
     
    Many of these ideasof Gramsci’s  were taken over by radical-feminists here in the 1970s (read MacKinnon’s book for details) although – shrewdly – without attribution: after all, what Beltway politician could admit that s/he was supporting what was in essence a Leninist strategy for de-legitimizing actual Western democracy and Christianity and replacing everything with a social agenda and strategy devised by a Leninist Communist Party apparatchik looking to undermine Western democracies?
     
    Now perhaps a well-intentioned Catholic might realize all of this and then say: well, then, if their side is going to try something like this, then this means war. But ‘war’ is, in my opinion, precisely not the way to deal with such a situation in a still-functioning democracy. First, the entire foundation of a democratic politics is precisely that it is not a ‘war’ (alas that LBJ loved to create ‘war’ on this and that to achieve his Great Society, and subsequent Presidents have gotten into that mode as well); rather, democratic politics is a reasoning-together of human beings rationally-endowed (and made in the Image of God).
     
    Second, ‘war’ is a word that Americans – especially –  don’t truly grasp in all its horror and destructiveness, even if it is not a shooting war or civil-war but a political or culture-war. The Vatican in the past half-millennium has come to see the awful wrack and ruin caused by war and war is not something to which any sane polity should lightly resort, even as a ‘metaphor’.
     
    And third, I don’t see ‘war’ as the true genius of Christianity or Catholicism or Christ Himself. The true genius – I think – is the Human Being As Created In The Image Of God. And from that, all things flow.
     
    So the key to restoring Catholicism’s vitality in this country begins here: with the Creation In The Image Of God – and then much prayerful deliberation and then prudent but genuine action taken as a result of that deliberation (for Catholics, a deliberation involving laity, clergy and Sisterhood, and hierarchy).
     
    But we must do it as a genuine Church. The American Protestants of the Progressive Age – lacking any central core of authority (an authority that should always be exercised in genuine and serious consultation) simply fractalized into all sorts of illuminations and favored-causes; we saw the same thing in the post-Vatican 2 era as certain elements within the Church re-created both the Progressive Protestant and then even the Leninist-Maoist excitements and thought they were on some sort of theological cutting-edge (when actually, I think, they were in far too many cases simply on the edge of a cliff and heading full-steam in the wrong direction).
     
    The utterly indispensable moral urgency and gravitas necessary for a more “muscular” Catholicism would stem from this: that we as Catholics, whatever our station and role within the Catholic community, realize just how deeply threatened the Image of God is today, precisely as it is embodied in God’s children, our fellow and sister human beings. But I would see us follow John Courtney Murray’s insight that the American Framing Vision of genuine democracy’s potential must define the Method we use to restore a vital and robust sense of that Image of God in the world and in this country. 
     
    And I would say that it is a savage irony that within ten years of Murray’s We Hold These Truths, the American government began to bend to the siren-call of what is essentially a totalitarian or totalizing solution, flowing from Gramsci/Lenin/Mao as well as from the authoritarianism that was always latent at the heart of American Progressivism (it is the enlightened ‘elites’ who must be granted plenitudo potestatis or plenary power to shape and drive American culture and society – this was a key belief of Woodrow Wilson that he embraced as early as the mid-1880s, long before he reached the Presidency).
     
    Now to the Abuse Matter (which was the original question from Anonymous): I think that the secularist Gramscian elements within American progressivism/liberalism found a ready ally in the post-Vatican2 divisions already created within the American Catholic Church in the mid-1960s.
     
    Bismarckian Kulturkampf strategy and Leninist cultural strategic doctrine (and Goebbels’s demonstrated strategy as well) would call for de-legitimizing the Church as a cultural and political authority by any means possible. And going after an opponent’s sexual misconduct is always a sure-fire way to do that. (Bismarck didn’t engage in it because 19th century Victorian gentlemen didn’t really discuss sex too much – but Hitler took a stab at it, trying to indict an entire monastery for sexual misconduct, but it misfired and the Reich had to wait until it was sufficiently established to imprison and execute priests and nuns simply because they were representatives of a rival approach to totalitarian life).
     
    And thus I place the Catholic Abuse Matter here: it provides a handy way to de-legitimize the cultural and religious and moral and – yes – political stature of the Church, thus clearing space for other approaches espoused by elements inside as well as outside the Church.
     
    As always, this is not to deny that the Church as human organization has been the site of moral failures (just like any other human institution – including the government itself). But the sustained 30-year campaign, based on rather dubiously-established claims and assertions, mostly about past instances, cannot – I would say – be sufficiently explained any other way. In the Salem Witch Trials it was precisely the role of the Royal Governor – acting on orders from the Crown – that put an end to the mania. But here, the government has – I believe – been rather hospitable to the whole Thing, to say the least.
     
    Well, let me apologize beforehand to readers and even Dave Pierre if I have gone on too long or cast too wide a net in discussing this.
     
    And, lastly, let me say that I would be happiest if those readers who find some use in these comments take them for further development. I don’t put them forward as any sort of complete explanation, and the best fate for a worthwhile idea is to be taken and discussed and developed.
     
    Also, I guess I would add John Courtney Murray’s writings to MacCulloch’s history and Bishop Sheen’s books for Christmas spiritual reading.

    • anonymous says:

      Dear Publion,
      Thank you.  I should have been more clear.  When I was referring to Michael Voris, I only was referring to "divided and conquer" in mathematical terms.  Therefore, by "subdivide" I wanted the question the tearing down of ones "sense of self" via their cultural background, too.
      For example, it seem to have been permissable (even encouraged) in America over the past 30 years to joke and/or make derogatory comments about the Irish, Italians, Germans, and Polish.  You can find evididence of this everywhere. Since, many individuals with these backgrounds are Christian and or Catholic; is it is a subtle way to reduce the ( worth?  self esteem?) all under the umbrella of "just kidding."  In other words, there are no laws or protections that I am aware of to protect these groups from hurtful jokes and comments.  This may be related or unrelated to attacking Christianity indirectly.    I thought it may be worth consdieration.   Because if it wasn't, it certainly seems to have worked.

  13. ERW says:

    If SNAP had been around in my time and place, this horror could not have so easily occured.  Obviously, you  hate those who report the crimes committed on them as children.  May the Lord have mercy on you.
    If it was not for SNAP, who has pushed the media on this evil, this horror of destroying childrens lifes would still go on to the degree it has since it was first documented in the thrid century. 
    Are you for real with your claim of clergy sexual abuse being under reported?  Do you for deny the fact that in the USA  about 200 deaf boys were abised by one priest?    And how long did it take for this come out?   And you resent the attorneys who finnally get those diabolic men to court?  If you are that ignorant, I recommend http://www.richardsipe.com.  on which Father Thomas Doyle, OP,  Patrick Wall, and Richard Sipe list there experiences as experts on the subject.  This is the most comprehensive website on the subject.  Or how about the Abusetracker of BishopAccountability?  How about you are gong to see the just released MEA MAXIMA CULPA,   instead of denying and sticking your head in the sand.

  14. Mark says:

    ERW, still waiting for an answer to Josie's questions.

    • ERW says:

      He or she does not deserve any answers with ther denying attittudes, who would victumize the victims further

    • josie says:

      ERW-you are doing a disservice to alleged victims with your whopper and then refusing to help clarify when,where, and who you are talking about. One cannot deny what is not factual.

  15. jim robertson says:

    Why is it always: Yay Barbra, Nay Barbra? The question is who made Barbra ? Who keeps making Barbra ?  Always Barbra. Barbra and David the only 2 victims in the world. How bloody convienient. For you.

  16. Publion says:

    Responding to ‘Anonymous’: I certainly agree that a significant indicator of how the culture is being shaped is how media and entertainment outlets (TV and film, especially) treat a particular type of individual. So, to use an example relevant here, the portrayal of clergy or believers generally as either evil or hapless or objects inviting derision is certainly going to play its part in changing the public perception.
     
    I recall a German vampire film made back around 1970 or even earlier, in which the hip and adorable young couple actually turned out to be helpless and clueless, while the old village Monsignor was the gritty type who strapped a large gold cross onto his back (he took it from over the altar in the parish church), pulled up the skirts of his soutane, took his hefty walking stick, climbed the mountain in the dark and found his way into the vampire’s coffin-room, placed consecrated hosts in the coffin, and on his way out jammed the cross into the front-door handles of the castle. Even as early as 1970 it seemed oddly striking; this was because the modernist mentality had as little use for actual religion as the Romantics of the 19th century: religion and priests were of no use to the latter because there wasn’t enough attention-grabbing magical-mystery in Catholicism, and of no use to the former because modernism’s whole thrust is to replace the Multi-planar vision of human existence with a Mono-planar vision in which the ‘experts’ employed by the State are all the help anybody needs or is ever going to get. The Abuse Matter that started up 15 or so years later simply built on that pre-existing trend in modern Western culture to dismiss religion and priests and believers and belief itself and seek to corrode their standing in society and culture.
     
    I am a little confused by the ‘ERW’ material: if ERW is not here in this time and place then from whence is s/he commenting? Is s/he not alive in this same time and space as SNAP and all the rest of us?
     
    And once again we see a familiar stew of SNAP-tactics: a) the presumption that everything that s/he claims to have happened (and we’ll get to that in a moment) did actually happen; b) thus the stunning failure of persons who doubt ‘the truth’ and their failure to comprehend ‘reality’; and – for extra yuks and that perfectly adolescent  in-your-face barfly touch – a bunch of gratuitous epithets about anybody who clearly has to be dumb as plop or evil as devil-plop to reject the ‘truth’ and ‘reality’ that – s/he is perfectly sure – s/he has put before us.
     
    How hundreds of young girls could have been ‘abused’ (in any substantive sense of that elastic term) over a period of a quarter of a century, by a single pastor in a single parish (the assignments-office left him in one place for a quarter of a century?) – and no adults realized it or if they did realize it didn’t take any action? Of course the SNAP-py comeback to that is that all Catholics before Vatican 2 were taught to see clergy as “kings” and therefore were paralyzed into inactivity. Amazing, since the history of the Church is hardly a seamless web of Catholics robotically obeying priests, pastors, bishops, Popes, Patriarchs or anybody else in authority. Or perhaps that is simply thinking too much.
     
    But the fact remains that ‘ERW’ claims to be 80 years old; to have indisputable evidence of numerous instances of ‘abuse’ stretching over a quarter of a century (all of which happened untold decades ago … such that at this point any possible corroborating witnesses are now as conveniently neutralized through death or senility as when old-school mobsters had potential witnesses whacked before they could get to court); and – having putatively reached the maturity of 8 decades of human experience – still has an attitude and predisposition to gratuitous nastiness that is far more often seen in the average youthy (or whacky) barfly. Curious indeed.
     
    It is open to speculation whether i) ERW has read much of the material on this site where the material in many of his/her claims has been discussed at length or ii) whether ERW has read it but has nothing else to offer except the material here presented, or iii) whether ERW hasn’t bothered to read anything since s/he already knows all that needs to be known about the matter.
     
    But in any case, I note again the taunting barfly tone so characteristic of many SNAP-py comment-makers. To some extent the internet is like the bar scene from the 1977 Star Wars: some are in there to get serious and urgent business accomplished, and a whole lot of others are in there to blow off steam, start some fights, call a lot of people names, and apparently go home feeling fulfilled  to sleep it off and begin on page-one all over again the next day. But – alas – on the internet you don’t have that nifty soundtrack music from the bar scene.
     
    Since by now the principal accused is no doubt long deceased, perhaps ERW could share the name of the parish (which might itself be defunct by this time) and diocese. Surely s/he would have no qualms about outing so putatively monstrous a cleric, and it would help lend some credibility to what is – in my opinion – a rather fantastical tale.

  17. Publion says:

    Well now.
     
    We can now add to our handy list of SNAP-py excuses: “He or she doesn’t deserve any answers, with their denying attitudes, who would victimize the victims further” (I made some spelling corrections).
     
    The marvelous (if sleazy and whacky) mental and rhetorical economy of this bit! A) if you don’t agree with us then you don’t deserve any answers that explain or justify our assertions and claims; B) to doubt or even just ask for some evidence of our claims is to ‘re-victimize’ us; C) if you doubt or question, then you clearly are morally disqualified from any conversation with us so D) we don’t have to talk about it with  you anymore. (Add: a concluding Myah-Myah, or some other suitable bit.)
     
    So in the SNAP universe, it’s all on the level – as long as you hold your head at just the right angle. And if you don’t, then you don’t deserve the SNAP-pies’ attention any further. This is the sort of thing you would expect from your younger sibling at the breakfast table when s/he realized s/he had gotten him/herself on the wrong side of an argument and needed a quick way out while still looking-like s/he was holding the moral and conceptual high-ground.
     
    I would also point out that when you ‘respect’ this principle – out of a Correct ‘sensitivity’ – in the legal forum, then you are essentially gutting the entire Western concept of evidence: if the claimant refuses to talk about it anymore unless s/he is ‘believed’ without evidence, then how conduct a trial at all? The result – with a chilling obviousness – is that the assertions, claims, and allegations must be made credible as ‘evidence’ by re-defining the concept of ‘evidence’ until it is indistinguishable from mere assertion, claim, and allegation. And here we are today.
     
    But for their own reasons the media bought it, the pols went along with it, and the ‘changes’ have been made to a far greater extent than most people realize.
     
    And this ‘concept’ (it can hardly be dignified by calling it a ‘principle’) has migrated and mutated into other parts of the country’s domestic and foreign affairs, and – far worse, I think – into the general discourse as a type of thinking that is at this point unthinkingly accepted as ‘normal’.
     
    Bottom-line: no explanation or evidence or justification of any of the assertions, claims and allegations.
     
    Neat.

  18. Mark says:

    Still waiting, ERW. You and your material are 24 hours away from being added to my extensive list of frauds/shams/false accusers/liars, and quoted widely. You see that's the double-edged sword of the internet: you can write what you want, but once it's out there, you can be quoted by whomsoever pleases to use your content.
    You'll appreciate that the Truth Abuse Scandal has created a culture whereby one is guilty until proven innocent. That same principle is now being turned on the accusers whose predecessors have brought it about. So you stand accused of fabrication. Effectively, guilty of fabrication. Unlike the accused clergy, you will be given the chance to exonerate yourself, through substantiation.
    Incidentally, if you take the time to peruse some of the threads on this sight, you will find that, with some notable and all too obvious exceptions, they are characterized by intelligent, informed comment. You may want to consider posting on some of the more SNAP-infected sites. This one has a pretty effective anti-virus program, powered by truth and reason.
    In any case, I thank you in advance for your material.
    Tick, tock, tick, tock.

    • anonymous says:

      "MarK'
      I hope I an not one of the "all too obvious exceptions".  Anyway, I found an article that does a
      much better job of describing the most insidious aspect of this situation for clergy:
      After the "Zumba" fiasco in Kennebunk, ME., a professor, Laurie Shanks from Albany Law School
      wrote the following:
      The shaming techniques are particularly damaging because they publicly humiliate people
      prior to trial for relatively minor offenses, etc..
      Further along in the article it was stated:   "The chance of a completely innocent person having their
      life destroyed was astronomical, "  she said.  "It was worse than the scarlet letter.  At least the scarlet
      letter happened after the trial.  It's closer to branding, where you can't take it off once the harm has
      been done."
      If any reporters/news agencies "knowingly" did not report this going on in other schools and/or
      organizations while simultaneoulsy "pounding" and "re-running" the clergy stories; what does
      this describe, a tabloid?
      By the way, Tom Cruise did not waste anytime filing a lawsuit against the tabloid that smeared
      his reputation during  his divorce.  

  19. Ken W. says:

    It has been stated on the NCR blog that the reason ms Blaine wrote letters pleading for leniency in the Dr. Steve Taylor case is because "he also has a number of reasonable sounding people suggesting that someone with a grudge downloaded those pictures and that justice has been miscarried." 

    • Publion says:

      Marvelous bit added by ‘Ken W’ and thanks for it.

      Notice how sly her statement is: A) she makes no statement of direct-knowledge herself, so she can’t be required to back it up; B) what she does propose isn’t even asserted to have actually happened but instead it has been “suggested” by other people (by which she almost invents a new category: subjunctive hearsay); C) the sources of this imagining of what might have happened is “a number of reasonable-sounding people” – which is a bit of a clunky construction and doesn’t roll off the tongue or out of the mind; ‘rational’ might have been a simpler descriptor … but she didn’t even want to say something that would nail her down by even that much (she might be asked to justify her assessment that they were ‘rational’) so she comes up with the even more vague and elastic “reasonable-sounding”.

      She has written something here that is so vague that she can’t easily be held accountable for what she has written.

      Of course, at the same time and by the same token she has written something that upon even the most cursory examination has no evidentiary value whatsoever.

      And from that three thoughts come to me.

      First, why take the time and effort to write such a content-less letter at all? Why not just tell the accused child-porn doc that there is nothing she can say and thus nothing she can do by writing to the authorities? Perhaps the doc had something on her or SNAP and had told her that she had better write a letter on his behalf or he would ‘sing’ (as the old-timey mobsters used to put it).

      Second, if this is her concept of supportive evidence, then you can see just how vague and abstract and content-less her conception of ‘evidence’ actually is.

      Third, imagine how many allegations against priests would dissolve if this same level of ‘evidence’ were accepted in their defense. But of course, there is that double-standard for ‘evidence’ in Catholic abuse allegations: almost anything will work if it’s against priests, but almost nothing is sufficiently evidentiary if it is for priests (since ‘everybody knows’ that ‘they’ are guilty anyway).

    • josie says:

      Ken and Publion- the Dr. Steven Taylor arrest and guilty plea in Louisiana and subsequent 'come to the rescue' SNAPpy letters in his defense have been one one my favorite 'double standard' stories during the time of abuse coverage.  As has been the pattern, not much is covered by the news, print and other, when it is not a priest.. Doctors, teachers, coaches, cops, etc. etc get a small blurb for a day (maybe). But there is enough on this guy to have peeked some interest. http://www.NOLA.com site for the Times Picayune news of New Orleans has covered a few times, the arrest in 2008, the plea etc.but I just discovered I had not read 4/20/11 and 8/7/11. Read the comments at the end of the article. I knew he had been sanctioned by the medical. board but you can look up further. Really makes you wonder if Barbara Blaine has her wits about her. Of course, the Catholic League had questions about Dr/ Taylor's insistence at some point in his work with the abused that the 'seal of the confession' priviledge be broken. Read 6/20/11 on the CL site as well as other bits on Dr. Taylor.
      Dr. Taylor is himself full of excuses-he did download, he didn't, he can't remember, he has dementia, chronic illness. Somewhere he is 71 and elsewhere he is 78. His wife, who founded the Louisiana chapter of SNAP says she was abused but the priest she named presided at her wedding 8 years after.  There is more but I am becoming more and more convinced that there is serious mental illness surrounding SNAP people-I know, that has been is obvious for awhile , but I was willing to at least consider that their motives were just suspect and devious. It is now apparent that there is no glue there to become undone. What a tremendous opportunity for someone to really expose these people nationally in a news series or in a documentary. I won't hold my breath., however.

  20. jim robertson says:

    Since there are no more investigative reporters, no one will look closely at SNAP.
    You are correct Josie, in being shocked at the hypocracy of SNAP's behavior. Snap is either incredably stupid or something else is going on.
     Not that SNAP isn't stupid but something else is going on.  SNAP continues to constantly make victims appear  dumb and hypocritical on such a scale that If SNAP were controlled by it's "membership" the SNAP officers would be shown the door.
     But no, Barbara and David and Dorris reign supreme in their undemocratic dictatorship. Hmmmm? Remind you of any other undemocratic dictatorships? (Think Rome)

  21. Mark says:

    Anonymous, no – you're not one of the exceptions!! Who, by the way, seem to have gone, uh, exceptionally quiet of late. Anyway, good observations.
    Josie, KenW, Publion, thanks for opening my eyes further.
    By the way, quietly and away from the media glare (!), another case of exoneration:
    Sr Mary Theresa Grogan found not guilty of sex assaults
    http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-20556776

  22. Publion says:

    May I be the first to say that I agree with JR on this one? My own hope is that maybe some investigative reporter will do a full-scale work-up but my bet is that if s/he is employed by a major outlet, that's not going to happen, at least not at this point. My opinion is that if SNAP received even a fraction of the treatment the Church has received from the mainstream media in the past 10-20-30 years in this Abuse Matter, a whole lot of stuff would come out.
     
    I have started to think about the SNAP-faithful the same way Josie is starting to think. Of course, if you tote up all of the mental derangements that have been made simply to accommodate the double-standard of truth and the new definitions of 'evidence', then all that derangemnet  alone has to throw any reality-based mental equipment out of whack. And then there's the predisposition to the 'tuning-fork' dynamic, and the emotional and psychological bennies that accrue simply by being in the in-group and all that.
     
    But beyond that – as I think Josie implies – there is something else. And it isn't pretty.

  23. jim robertson says:

     Barbara Blaine is in fact a Doctor of Divinity. Isn't it extraordinary? Barbara has worked full time for SNAP to the tune of 80,000+ a year for decades now and she's still found the time to go to school and get a doctorate. Now that girl's a real success story. Better than success she's a frigging Saint.  Sacrificing herself for all the victims she never helps meet and has no time to talk to . That's our Barbara, doing it all for the victims. No, doing it more to the victims or on the victims.

    • josie says:

      I believe she has a masters of divinity, Jim. And it is quite apparent that Ms. Blaine likes the spotlight, media attention, interviews, rallies, protests WITH media attention.  Just councelling, helping victims.does not carry big bucks or notoriety, it seems.

    • jim robertson says:

      Sorry Josie you are right. It's a masters she has in divinity. And That lying slag never counclls anyone. She runs from victims. Unless they gush devotion and then she'll stop briefly to accept the attention but she's "so busy" always in a rush to be some place else. Probably to go to class to get her masters.

  24. Delphin says:

    Hey ERW- OJ Simpson was found NOT GUILTY in a court – not exactly a ringing endorsment of the [in] justice system. And, we can't recount all the true innocents purposefully imprisoned by corrupt prosecuters and judges.
    Re: some posting dupes disillusionment with SNAPs "holy crusade" mission; really?? You really thought they were honest brokers…really? Or, did the rattlesnake just simply turn on the copperhead?
    How many times will you poor slithering sots allow yourselves to be victimized and then look for compensation and blood-letting to assuage your own stupidity?

    • jim robertson says:

      Off with their heads Queeny. I was 13 then 16 when I was hurt. I thought if I told, Who would believe me? I finally at 16 when the second perp happened, was in fear for my life. I truely thought my perp would kill me. I told a friend who reported it to the dean of students, who's initial response to my friend was: "What are you trying to do cause trouble?" And since then? that's been the real face of the Church to victims."What are you trying to do cause trouble?".
      And then there's Delph. Where's all that anger coming from? Hey I'm an angry person but Delph you have me beat.  The warmth and Christian love in your last sentence says volumes. Are you a victim yourself? If so I am very sorry. Very sorry.

  25. Rick Rodebeck says:

    I cannot believe the number of people covering for the church here. For some reason even though there's plenty of proof, many here simply don't want to admit there is an ongoing problem with how the catholic heirachy deals with this issue. It's more cover up than fix and that's not changed it appears. People just don't want to accept what's been proven over and over. Sad, very, very sad. Calling people liars, lying slags, etc. And some of you actually blaming the victims. It leads me to believe some of you might very well be abusers yourselves. Scary and sad (again).

  26. jim robertson says:

    My dear Josie. Blaine and Clohessy suck the air out of the room when the camera is on them. They are there for one purpose to get and control victims. To be victims voice to the world. And all for the benefit of the Church.

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