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	Woman Wants to End Abuse by Priests By Liz Balmaseda Palm Beach Post April 17, 2010 http://www.palmbeachpost.com/news/woman-wants-to-end-abuse-by-priests-577486.html There's something I'll never forget about my first confession. I don't remember my sins. I don't remember the priest. I don't remember the date. But I'll never forget the fact that I forgot my penance. I emerged from the darkened confessional into the cool quiet of the church. I walked, hands steepled, to the pew where my classmates knelt, reciting their assigned Hail Marys. But as I reached my seat, I drew a blank. I couldn't remember what the priest had told me to do. I must have been about 9 years old, and I was horrified. I was nervous to begin with about sitting in a dark, narrow space, waiting for a priest to appear, not as a man but as some intangible force that beamed itself in tiny golden dots through a dividing screen. But the thought that God's forgiveness hinged on the very instructions I couldn't remember brought me to tears. I raced to find Sister Theresita, the Irish nun who was my religion teacher. She had taught us that when we harm others, our sins leave dark spots upon our souls. "I forgot my penance," I sobbed to her. Sister Theresita, a sweet-voiced woman with large, expressive eyes, leaned down in a whisper. "My dear girl, don't cry. Your soul is clean and shiny," sweeping her palm across her heart. "You confessed your sins and your soul is filled with light. There is nothing to be afraid of." I clung to every word as she walked me back to the pew, where I prayed a heap of Hail Marys, just to be on the safe side. In her words that day, I learned about shadows and light. And I've always measured matters of the soul, of goodness and transgression, in those stark terms. The memory came to mind last week when I spoke to Barbara Dorris, a national advocate for victims of pedophile priests. She told me the story that triggered her activism against the church's institutional leadership. She was a teacher in her Missouri parish's grade school, attending Mass daily and raising six children in the Catholic tradition. And one day, she says, she caught the associate pastor molesting a 6-year-old girl. "That was the start of remembering for me," says Dorris, the outreach director for SNAP, the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests. This happened at that same St. Louis parish where, 35 years earlier, she says she was raped repeatedly by a priest. The sexual violence, which began when she was 6, went on until she was 13, she says. She didn't tell anyone about the abuse, she says, because her aggressor convinced her that she was an "evil child" who needed to be punished. Those memories were long buried — until the day she walked in on the associate pastor, says Dorris. That's when she decided to bring it all into the light. "I couldn't stand by and let the abuse go on to another generation," says Dorris, who visited Palm Beach County some weeks ago amid reports that Pope Benedict XVI, when he was still a high-ranking cardinal, had allowed pedophile priests to remain in active ministry. Dorris stood outside St. Ignatius Loyola Cathedral in Palm Beach Gardens, handing out leaflets urging transparency and vigilance in the church. In the days that followed, she traveled to Rome where she and three other abuse victims stood just outside St. Peter's Square, holding childhood photos of themselves taken during the years of their abuse. The four Americans were detained for two hours by Italian police. But Dorris believes this is only a sign that a groundswell of Catholics demanding an end to church secrecy is under way. "We've been hearing from an avalanche of survivors from around the world," says the straight-talking grandmother who calls herself a "Catholic on sabbatical." Indeed, the torrent of allegations mounting against priests can no longer be ignored or shuffled out of sight. In the United States alone, there have been abuse allegations against more than 5,600 priests since 1950, according to www.BishopAccountability.org, a site that closely monitors abuse reports in the church. Their victims run in the tens of thousands, according to the site. As the Vatican grapples awkwardly with the growing scandal, a population of disaffected Catholics like Barbara Dorris continue to find their voice and seek their place in their fractured church. "On one hand, I don't want spiritual advice from a corrupt hierarchy. On the other, why should I leave if I didn't do anything wrong?" she says. This population could be the long-dormant force powerful enough to rattle those who harbor or indulge pedophiles — those who have allowed darkness to fester in the soul of the church. People like Dorris are not outsiders or would-be invaders. They were once children in the pews, altar boys and little girls in Holy Communion dresses. They learned to regard sin as patches of darkness. And now, they simply want to turn the lights on. What could be the harm in that?
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