End Priest Abuse
Mary Dispenza 
Jerry Brown and Me I’ve always had a lot of respect for Jerry Brown, starting back before he was Governor and I was a hippie nun. Governor Brown has more political smarts than I, but I have a keener understanding of the effects of childhood priest abuse than he. We’ve lived very different realities. Our … Read more
The Power of Bearing Witness Over the years, as I’ve come to grips with the things that happened to me as a child, I’ve learned to take my responsibility to tell the truth about the church and abuse very seriously. In religious circles it’s often called bearing witness. Though usually that term is reserved for … Read more
From Today’s Irish Independent: “Nobody within the official church has looked at the deeper issues and seriously asked the question why so many priests and religious did these things, because it raises fundamental questions about the lifestyle of priests.” “Can they say with any degree of definiteness that the fact that so many priests abused … Read more
Though my focus here on Mary Dispenza is primarily healing from and stopping priest abuse, there are some other things I’m excited about. Here’s one – giving African children a fighting chance against malaria. NBA star Stephen Curry shares that interest. On ESPN today there’s a wonderful story about his trip to Tanzania to deliver … Read more
From The Worthy Adversary: “You see a child being sexually abused and beaten on a street corner. Whom do you call? Answer: The local university, your bishop, your commander or the leader of the closest nonprofit.” … “…why do we act so absurdly when we witness abuse on the Penn State campus, at the local … Read more
SNAP is so important these days I’m in beautiful Washington, DC, getting together with other leaders of SNAP, renewing friendships and attending the SNAP Annual Conference. For those not familiar with SNAP, the acronym stands for Survivor’s Network of those Abused by Priests. It was founded by Chicago’s Barbara Blaine in 1988 and has become … Read more
The event at Town Hall in Seattle featuring Michael D’Antonio and his new book Mortal Sins Sex, Crime and the Era of Catholic Scandal was a success. A great crowd turned out to hear and learn about the crisis of priest abuse in the Catholic Church. The panel of experts, of which I was one, … Read more
When I was growing up Catholic, I learned that there were four kinds of sins: original sin, actual sin, venial sin and MORTAL SIN. Mortal sin was the deadliest sin in town. For a sin to be mortal, the action you committed had to be very bad. You needed to know it was very bad … Read more
On July 24th (2013) I head off to Washington, DC to attend the SNAP Annual Conference. SNAP, the Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests founded in 1988, is the oldest and largest support group for clergy abuse victims. SNAP’s mission is to protect the vulnerable, heal the wounded and expose the truth. As a area rep of SNAP for Seattle/Washington, … Read more
I, Mary Dispenza, want to fix the systems that break people I was once a broken person. Now, through this blog, I look at broken systems and ideas for making them whole again. This blog is about finding ways to help broken people, ideas for overcoming personal breakage and how to live unabashed. As an … Read more