I am trying to work out where I want to go with this blog. Now that I am over 50 posts into this little exercise in free speech I am struggling with where to go next. I am trying to find out what I should be talking about and what voice I should use to air those thoughts. I found that screaming and being rude is almost as effective as saying nothing at all. Not that I won’t throw the occasional dig at a certain “Prince of the Church” now and then.
I am reassessing the mission of this blog. I am doing so because I wonder if I am making a difference. I want to do more than to preach to the converted on this topic. Obviously, I am hoping that this blog can help someone either come forward and report the abuse that they suffered, get help, or feel like they are not alone. It has been cathartic for me to write it. That was my main motivation in starting this thread, my own personal form of therapy.
Writing this has also been frustrating in some ways. In addition to writing the posts (and revisting them for corrections and improvements), I try to get the link for this blog out there so people who may not normally run across it would have the chance to see it. In all honesty, I am trying to get a little traction so I can get support (non-monetary, this is not about money) for my efforts to have the truth come to light. I have linked it to CONDRON and Alpha Inventions, which are both tools for discovering and sharing blogs. In a few instances I have seen my work put up on message boards and in Abuse Tracker. Some of my posts are up on Bishop Accountability as well. It is gratifying to see my posts on political sites (just this morning I found it here).
I just don’t know if it is enough. I would love to develop a site that allows for blogs on this topic to be accessible in one location. I was hoping that SNAP or Bishop Accountability would have such a thing, but as of the time of publishing this post there is no such location. As I lamented in a recent post, some of the blogs I read as I was getting to the point of making my report on Father Gibson have gone silent on the net. I don’t know if they grew as frustrated as I have been lately and just stopped writing. I know some have been dealing with litigation and family issues. There are many reasons, all of them valid. I just don’t want the voices to die out.
I saw an article on line at Abuse Tracker that had the headline “As abuse scandals dim, St. Paul lawyer keeps suing” . “As abuse scandal dims…”, that is what the Catholic Church in America and the Vatican want. They want the scandal to dim so they can go back to the good old days. If our voices are silent, they will get their way.
So I will make an offer. If you would like to write a guest post on my blog, send it to me. I will consider putting it up on-line. If you have a blog and you write on this subject either occasionally or exclusively, I will put a link up to your posts.
If you are attending the SNAP Conference in Washington DC in August and would like to talk about how we can keep the voices from going silent I will make myself available. I’m signed up for the conference and have my hotel reservation at the Hyatt in Crystal City. Lets have a conversation. Let me know what you are thinking!
Abuse thrives in an environment of secrecy! Don’t let the Catholic Church succeed in achieving that environment again.
Off My Knees - A Blog by Michael Baumann 
An on-line community sounds like a worthy goal. Each entry you write and the comments people have submitted show that the Catholic Church is still invested in protecting its own and the Scranton Diocese is especially skilled at throwing roadblocks at survivors who come forward. The more opportunities that people have to read and respond to these experiences the better. Keep up the good work and it looks like a lot of work.