This piece is my first attempt to terms with the fact that what happened to us wasn't a mistake.

We were sacrificed.

As the Smoking Gun and the existence of The Program make clear.

I've since expanded this article into a podcast...

• Chris O'Leary Sacrificed Podcast

Sacrificed

Ever since I first saw the images, I've been unable to get them out of my head.

Children who were sacrificed.

Who were told they were doing something important.

And whose lives were sacrificed, in the service of their people and their gods.

Just like ours were.

What's it Like?

What's it like to be a survivor of the Catholic sex abuse crisis?

Imagine what it would be like to be one of those Inca children, to be sacrificed, and to survive the ritual.

To wake up, buried, and claw your way out of your shallow grave.

To return to your village to looks of horror.

It's not just that people will wonder if you are a ghost. They will also wonder if your surviving means the sacrifice was for naught and their prayers won't come true.

Which can't help but be your fault.

For surviving.

We Were Sacrificed

The Catholic Church would have you believe it was as surprised as you were about the sex abuse crisis that overtook it in the 1970s and 1980s, and that finally came to a head — at least in part — in 2002.

But that's a lie.

Thanks to the release of the lists of priests who abused children, I have uncovered evidence — the proverbial Smoking Gun — that the Archdiocese of St. Louis knew what was going on by at least the mid to late 1970s.

Evidence that makes it clear that we were sacrificed.

To the idol the Eucharist has become.

During the Winter of 2019 and 2020, as a result of an effort to understand the history of a bishop who I've been told abused at least one boy while a diocesan priest, I came across a document I regard as the smoking gun.

This document makes it clear that, by the mid to late 1970s, at the latest, the Archdiocese of St. Louis knew it had a problem with what it called "troubled" priests and had put together a plan to (try to) "manage" them.

A plan that failed.

Miserably.

The Program

While the narrative is that the Catholic Church was surprised to find sexual predators in its midst, the evidence — released by the Catholic Church — says otherwise.

The evidence says that these "troubled" priests were being MANAGED.

And, of course, management requires KNOWLEDGE.

Which makes it clear that what happened to me and countless others wasn't an accident.

Instead, we were sacrificed.

Eucharist

What happened?

Why were we sacrificed?

Why were "troubled" priests kept in ministry and not expelled?

It has nothing to do with the current shortage of Catholic priests; in the 1970s, Catholic seminaries and rectories were full.

Rather, the reason troubled priests were kept in ministry, and we were sacrificed, is because the Eucharist has been transformed into an idol.

Something that transcends God.

The calculation that was made then — and is still being made, as the COVID-19 crisis shows — is that the Eucharist transcends the Word of Jesus Christ, much less the lives of the laity.

The List

On July 26, 2019, the Archdiocese of St. Louis released a list of Archdiocesan Clergy with Substantiated Allegations of Sexual Abuse of a Minor. The problem with that is that, unlike it had done previously, ArchStL refused to release the assignment histories for those priests.

Why?

To keep us from being able to connect the dots.

Much as they did with the Matrix.

Seal of Confession

Has anything changed?

All you have to do is look at the fight the Catholic Church is putting up to preserve the Seal of Confession to understand that NOTHING has changed.