Lead Me Where the Light is Ours
This month we’re looking at how power silences victims, making this weeks book, Lead Me Where the Light is Ours by N. Galilea. So lets do this.
This book was...a bit of a mixed bag for me.
First off, the author is not wrong, when she says we have a crises with the clergy. It is absolutely appalling that priests are allowed to rape children, and the Catholic church just...moves them to a new district. And its disgusting that when Jorge Mario Bergoglio stepped onto the papal throne on March 13, 2013, taking the name Pope Francis, he promoted to highly influential positions KNOWN child rapists, in the forms of Cardinal George Pell, who was appointed to the financial office in the Vatican and Juan Barros to be the Bishop in Orsono, Chile, both of whom had serious scandals behind them for child sexual assault.
Chile almost rioted, although the reaction to Cardinal Pell was considerably more muted. I’m not sure anyone noticed, outside the author. And the author references another work of hers, The Galilea Report, which I gather from this book goes into a bit more detail regarding four specific sections that experienced horrific abuse at the hands of priests, namely Australia, Chile, Ireland, and Boston USA.
So Galilea is not wrong with any of this. This is all awful and heartbreaking that children go through this, and the church condones it, and nothing is ever done due to the churches long standing tradition of simply removing the problem priest from the district where the complaints have been made.
Australia was particularly horrifying as priests were not even subtle with their abuse, and Galilea cites families who report the priest would kiss their children right in front of the them and the family wasn’t sure what to make of this.
And whenever someone complains or files a police report, the Catholics, in addition to shuffling the priest off, offers an insulting $50,000 to the family. Rather than, I don’t know, defrocking the guilty party and leaving them to face secular justice. They offer hush money and sweep it under the rug.
So all of these are valid points. The author is right to point them out. And then….it kind of goes off the rails here. And the author spends the rest of the book trying to describe her attempts to get a media personality to care about this problem. Which was incredibly frustrating to read. I’m sure it was frustrating for the author too, but I found myself baffled as to why she didn’t just….ring the bell herself?
Near as I can tell, she has absolutely no social media presence except, maybe, Instagram. I say that because I am fairly certain the author is the one who recommended this book to me. And she at one point had Twitter because she talks about trying to reach John F….who I believe is John Fugelsang and Mark Hammill on Twitter. Why these two?
Well, I believe at first she had a friendly rapport with Fugelsang, which turned sour when he did not respond to her panic over the church situation as she would have liked him to. Now...this is inferred from context in the book. I don’t know what was actually said between them because she does not include receipts in the form of screenshot tweets or messages between them. And we only have Galilea’s side of the story here, we don’t know that she ever had more than a waving hello to John F. because...well...NO RECEIPTS.
But when she doesn’t get the reaction she wants from John F., she starts looking for someone else to spread the word of the abuses she’s compiled from news stories. And she focuses on Mark Hamill. Why?
As near as I can tell, because she’s a fan of the latest Star Wars Trilogy...or at least, the first two. I mean, I’m more of an original trilogy fan and pretty much hated the sequels. Rey was a total Mary Sue and they royally fucked Finn as a character, but to each their own. That’s the difference in opinion between Gen X and Millennials, I guess. But she saw Hamill was retweeting John F. and believed the two were going to have a sit down interview soon, and she felt it was her job to to notify Hamill that John F. didn’t care. About what? I’m not sure. Maybe about the abuses of the church? It’s not real clear and just comes across as, well...garden variety cancel culture.
And she becomes disillusioned with Hamill, simply because he doesn’t respond. Which was unhinged to me because the man as 4.6 MILLION Twitter followers. There is not one indication he even saw her message and most likely did not. Hell, his Twitter page even says “I ignore all DM’s.” So getting mad at him for not responding was weirdly entitled.
Then she started insisting that news channels needed a religion division. Which I heartily disagree with. What was happening with the church was not a problem of religion. It was and is a criminal matter. And EVERY news channel has a crime desk. So why didn’t she focus on contacting the crime beat of her chosen station?
Instead, she came up with this synchronistic belief that the answer lay in the stars….astrology to be precise. And based off an incredibly small sample size of two….being John F. who is apparently an earth sign, and Mark Hammill who is an air sign….decided that she needed a water sign. Because she’s a fire sign (Sagittarius) and so she needed a water sign.
Good news...I guess. She found one. Jake Tapper. Who in one year tweeted 30 times about what was going on with the Catholic church. Which...I gotta say, I do not see this as the sign from God that Galilea did. Because a basic google search for how many tweets per year by Jake Tapper shows that he is a HIGH USER of Twitter, with roughly 16,740 tweets on average per year. Which means that his 30 in one year on this one topic was less than 1% of all his tweets in ONE year.
But, seeing that seemed to relieve the author that someone other than her cared about child sexual abuse in the Catholic church.
Now, assuming the author did recommend her book to me, and has actually watched this far, some constructive criticism.
You can’t make people care about something as much as you do. I was aware of the sexual predators that infect the Catholic church because I do pay attention to news stories and because...well...South Park. Who did more to bring attention to this matter with several targeted episodes than the author did by running around frantically like chicken little screaming that the sky is falling.
A better way to handle something you care deeply about is stop passing over the information to “qualified” individuals. It was absolutely stunning to me that she acknowledges that mainstream media has fallen down on this one, yet she continuously searches for someone in mainstream media she can pass the story over to.
Equally confusing was her reverence for Rey from The Force Awakens as a heroine worthy of emulation. I mean, if you have a heroine as an example, why on earth would you pass the information on to someone else to be the hero? Why would you choose NOT to be the hero in your own story?
And I can practically hear the author whining “well I’m not a professional journalist.” That’s an excuse. And really pathetic one, when you’re as concerned with the well being of children as you profess to be. ESPECIALLY in the 21st century, when ANYONE can be their own platform. Create a website. Create a social media presence. Of course it will be small to start. And it will take a damn long time to build, unless or until you get that one in a million post that goes viral. But to quote another famous movie: If you build it, they will come.
But guess what happens while you’re building your platform? When you specialize in one topic, you become known for being an expert on that one topic. And as you build a central database repository for all the horrific things the Catholic Church does, people will start to bring their stories directly to you. And then suddenly, you become the voice the victims need.
Now THAT is a hell of a lot more useful then looking for a co-pilot you can hand the heroics over to. Be the hero of your own story. Not a bit player in someone else’s.
I really wanted to like this book, because it takes a lot of guts to reach out to a stranger and ask them to review something you poured your heart and soul into. But while the author raises some absolutely valid alarm bells regarding religion and abuse of minors in the Catholic Church, overall this book was a confusing mess of why did she choose to do it in a way that virtually guaranteed she’d be ignored.
