An Abbreviated List by Suvivor Belinda Martinez from Minnesota SNAP
1. Go to snapnetwork.org and register so you can receive updates that will help you with information regarding this very large issue.
2. Help us with your checkbook. Or you can make a contribution that will help us continue to expand our resource library for survivors, or write a check that can be used to send some of our members to the next national assembly.
3. Invite us to your microphones.......and invite us to your pulpits. When we speak, we heal. When we prepare our thoughts to share with others, we begin to organize our healing.
4. Help us get SNAP meeting schedules and contact information in all parish bulletin, on all church websites, in diocesan publications and diocesan websites.
5. Rethink overnight requirements for youth activities in our parishes. If you still find value in them, make absolutely certain there are safeguards in place.
6. Accommodate survivors who wish to maintain their traditional worship ties, but may struggle because a particular ritual is triggering. Ask then how they can be made more comfortable. Anyone of you would likely go out of their way to accommodate an alcoholic attending a party in your home and would provide appropriate refreshments. Please treat our members equally well when they attend our houses of worship.
7. If you want to discuss Article 5 of the Charter for the Protection of Children and Young People, I have no problem with wanting to restore the good name of someone who has been wrongly accused, but please, please ask our hierarchy what they intend to do about restoring the good names of all the victims who have brought them very credible evidence, and have lost their good names in their homes, in their families, in their communities and in their places of employment.
8. When you are looking for priests of integrity to support, judge whether they have been as willing as survivors to put their reputations on the line to speak out against evil. Ask them to know the histories of their parishes and if a known abuser has served there, ask them to visibly and actively seek out all who might have been hurt.
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