My dear daughter.
You are beloved and the light of my life. However, I abhor the person you have become while being in Catholic school. You have succumbed to their lies. You have believed the teachings of some Catholic Church women. These holier-than-thou, self-righteous women who blame the victims of childhood sexual abuse for somehow seducing their powerless pastors.
You too have become a victim-blamer. I trusted these women to lead you, and love you, but they failed me. They rejected your brother. They rejected me. They protected the pedophile priests. They did not honor God. And now they have seduced you into believing their lies.
You have to be stronger than them. You have to put your faith in God, not in the needy priests who use you for their own pleasure. Not in the deacons who depend on the adoration of their devout parishioners. Not in the bishops who wanted to exalt your brothers. Not in your father who trusted his pastor.
No, my dear daughter. Do not follow the paths of destruction set before you by your Catholic upbringing. They are wrong. Do not continue to allow these women, who honor and esteem the same man who destroyed your brother’s faith, to destroy your ability to love.
They are hard-hearted, merciless people who demand that you depend on them so they can feel as if they have purpose in this world. You do not need them. They do not love you. They are only using you to prop up their own social system of condemnation and shame. Let the shame fall on them, where it rightly belongs.
Open your heart to the survivors, like your brother and I. Trust in the ones who got away from the clutches of fear-filled fools and liars. Choose to love your family even if your Church leaders have taught you to hate.
Come with me, find other women who genuinely love you instead of trusting in those who will exploit you for their own purposes. Let go of the shame, the fear, the hatred they propagate unknowingly. They are not educated. They do not know any better. They only know how to fear.
Those who are lost in fear cannot be open to love. They are not going to change their ways overnight. They will never love your brother. They will never love me, your mother. They have created idols to love. They have chosen to love cold, hard, concrete idols instead of fleshly mothers with broken hearts.
Choose life my dear daughter. Choose life and love. Choose relationships. Love your brothers. Fight for your brothers. Fight for all victims of oppression and abuse. Let the liars, abusers, and fearful leaders perish. They are drowning in the midst of their own anxieties.
There is a better way to live. But these leaders have not found the way. They are lost. They smile, but underneath their smile is a sneer. They suffer depression and hopelessness. They suffer anxiety and fear. They have no sense of true salvation or God’s love. They put a man in the place of God. A sinful, hungry, starving man is their God.
Love Always,
Your Mother
Joyful Living 