Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests (SNAP) is an international group with an outlet in New Zealand. Christopher Longhurst (image left) is the point man here and says the person he is standing with in his Facebook profile picture is “Jacinda Ardern, the beautiful Prime Minister of Aotearoa New Zealand.” SNAP is so dedicated to calling out abusive priests that they are willing to overlook the abusive part entirely. This week Longhurst and SNAP celebrated the cancelling of the long dead Bishop of Dunedin, John Kavanagh.
John Kavanagh wasn’t just a regular guy like you and I but a pillar of his community. He rose to the top in the New Zealand Catholic world and performed celebrated acts remembered in New Zealand history. In particular, it was Kavanagh who was the central character that saved the famous Polish Orphans cast out of Europe and rescued by New Zealand after World War 1. During the early 1970s a future child abuser slipped through Kavanagh’s fingers when, according to some, he had the chance to see into the future and stop that man. Instead, Kavanagh dismissed Magnus Murray from service in New Zealand entirely and enrolled him in a rehabilitation program in Australia.
And that’s it. This week Kavanagh’s successor Bishop of Dunedin capitulated to Longhurst and his priest-hunters by deleting the name of Kavanagh College, Dunedin. After combing the desert of archives for some 2 years an independent investigation paid for by the Church could only say that Kavanagh should have taken a more active role in the problems of one of the many Dunedin Catholic institutions than he actually did. Essentially, Kavanagh who was born before WW1 should have applied 2020s values in the early 1970s.
Longhurst’s SNAP press release read like a hit piece as it celebrated the Bishop throwing his predecessor under the bus by denigrating him and erasing his memorial. I wondered if Longhurst wanted justice for abuse survivors or if he was just out to perpetuate a cycle of more hurt and abuse? So, I responded to his press release with the information posted to Anarchist History of New Zealand about Kavanagh and the Polish Orphans. Unfortunately, Longhurst and his team whirred around and interpreted this as an attack on their unconditional righteousness in punishing those they see as wicked. It is, after all, a case of Psychological Projection in this case. That strongly suggests that in all cases SNAP Aotearoa are simply living out an abusive Repetition Compulsion to re-experience suffering and persecution rather than grow out of it. This would include their fight to redact the names of Christchurch’s Marylands Reserve and Marylands Place and probably reflects also on SNAP as a world-wide organisation. Longhurst, by this reasoning, would be an abuser or perhaps someone who saw abuse he did not prevent and now is trying to make up for it in an impossible way by becoming a Priest Hunter.
***PRESS RELEASE***
SNAP Aotearoa Welcomes Catholic Diocese of Dunedin’s Decision to Rename Kavanagh College
Nationwide, New Zealand, 18 March 2022
Because Longhurst offered no rational arguments I consider that gives me license to psychologise in this way. Because he has made a public figure of himself I may talk about him. And, because he has censored and deleted the following comments I am free to do what I would not otherwise do: Publish them.
NZB3 (Rick:) Bishop Kavanagh definitely protected hundreds of children directly. Put that against your idea that he failed to protect them on one occasion. Why suppose those involved didn’t back the idea of dismissing the accused from the country for rehabilitation? Maybe they didn’t feel as strongly about persecuting people back in the 1970s as some of us apparently do now.
Alex Cionca: Your comment is not supportive. We are a support group for survivors and not a place for opposition….take such unsupportive comments elsewhere, otherwise, they will be removed as they breach our first rule… not here to oppose our good work of expositing the truth, but to advance it.
NZB3: Denigrating dead community leaders is not supportive but a false sense of support. We fail to support legitimate hurt when we pretend made up hurts are real. Remember the Polish orphans.
Alex Cionca: Again, this is not the place to express your view against the offical view of Snap Aotearoa because it is not supportive of our position…. If you do not agree that the bishop failed to protect the children who were sexually abused, then please take that up with the leadership of the Catholic Church.
NZB3: When this post was created and made public it demonstrated a lack of support for my position. Rather than make denigrating posts why don’t you write a private letter to the Catholic Bishop to express your support for him and remove this upsupportive public post? If one of us is allowed to speak in public but the other must be reduced to writing private letters to Bishops, if that’ s what you want, then, please, you be the one to self-censor not me.
Alex Cionca: If you do not agree that the bishop failed to protect the children who were sexually abused, then please take that up with the leadership of the Catholic Church.
NZB3: I would like to see you stand behind your own press release. My assumption is that the Catholic Church doesn’t write SNAP pressers.
1. Be Kind and Courteous: We’re all in this together to create a welcoming environment. Let’s treat everyone with respect. Healthy debates are natural, but kindness is required.
2. Respect Other Views: Everyone is welcome here. We are a nonpartisan and nonreligious forum. Please feel free to express your views, though please consider that others may have alternative views.
Alex Cionca: please not taking up this topic on this page please because again it is not supportive (rule no.1)
NZB3: In asking me not to engage in a topic you took up you are breaking rule 2 as well as rule 1 under the cover of rule 1. I am supportive of these rules and want you to be self-expressed even if you have views different to mine. I support you in having your different interpretation and welcome it.
Unconditional Positive Regard (being supportive) never means accepting and valuing others for who they are. It’s a basic interpretation to mistake this for affirming and echoing everything they think and say. ‘Support’ doesn’t mean witch hunts.
Christopher Longhurst: Having this conversation here is not helpful to the purpose of our group. Let’s continue it on either my personal page or your own, no? What do you say?
NZB3: Just playing the ball where it landed, Chris. If you would please have this attack post on Kavanaugh removed I will be happy for my public right of reply to be redacted along with it. And maybe we can talk about it somewhere else.
Christopher Longhurst: I could just note that to transfer pedophile priests who had complaints made against them while ignoring the needs of the priests’ victims and those of their parents as well, at any time in human history, is hardly protecting children now is it.
NZB3: Offering your analysis while insisting no other voice be heard to counter it is the same kind of cloistered kicking-the-can outrage the great humanitarian (Kavanaugh) is being accused of.
Christopher Longhurst: This is not the right place to oppose our work. Please express your view elsewhere. It breaches our rules because it is not supportive. Also, likening me to a powerful priest of the 1960s is not supportive either. Please PM me if you want to continue this conversation. Thanks, Rick. On this page please support our mission
NZB3: Are we to be supportive of abused children or supportive of this organisation right or wrong? You have made a terrible mistake and because you’d elected to put that out as a a public press release that’s where it needs to be addressed. Take it down and I’ll take my response to private channels too.
Todd Al: mute or delete him… he clearly has no insight into the heinessness of the crimes they protected or the long term health of victims. There are no excuses…
Alex Cionca: Well said! It is as simple as that really.
NZB3: When you see something you should say something. Protect the innocent. That is what I’m doing now. Please be supportive and don’t side with the abusers.
Todd Al: your perspective is different when you were abused by the abusers, like many people in this group were. That’s why Alex and Chris are protecting the group…I would never support a persons opinion who hadn’t suffered the abuse over someone who has. You don’t know what you don’t know.
NZB3: I hear you saying you have a biased perspective when it comes to making judgement and wish you well in using these men as your protection while you still need that.
Alex Cionca: Muted for 24 hours. I hate doing that but sorry for any upset, Todd.
Todd Al: I’m all good 👍 sorry you and Chris have to deal with that.
Todd Al [paraphrased:] Nothing you can say matters here. As this Jim Carey gif shows, abuse and suffering of survivors is what counts and I will believe what people say depending on how much suffering they have survived not facts or evidence.
NZB3: How we judge someone ought to be based on what we know. It shouldn’t be a contest between abused people and the survivor who suffers the most and has the most comedy movie memes wins. What I know I am not allowed to tell you on this forum. It keeps being deleted by the censors.
Ade O’Maolain: please define – protected children directly. What exactly did he do to “protect them directly”? Personally I have never know any priest far less a bishop who was anything less then arrogantly oppressive and terrifying to kids
NZB3: Thanks for asking. I would like to provide a balanced view to the accusations however my responses keep being deleted by the group censors. I think they know.
Matt Epsom: ‘attack post on Kavanaugh’? Are you insane or just trying to cause trouble? Couldn’t imagine a fairer press release.
NZB3: I’m willing to listen if you think capital punishment or otherwise is better than rehabilitation when someone is accused of a crime. But to be taken seriously we must not cry wolf and simply delete every great man who becomes suspected of not acting in the 1960s as if he’s from the 2020s. When we make things up about the past we undermine our ability to be supportive to the real cases. Why do you want to do that?
Matt Epsom: Hmmm??? Another classic case of denial? Why don’t you take it up with those who made this decision?…What we do know is that there was an investigation by the church and they are taking his name away from the school. So probably best if you take your protest to them.
NZB3: They didn’t write this press release. Or, are you saying they did?
Matt Epsom: “they”? Who do you mean?
NZB3: Them they! The they you just referred to as ‘them’. The Church! Pronouns aren’t so easy these days are they?
Alex Cionca [paraphrased:] Your admins have held a crisis meeting about what to do. No rules have been broken but we are all very upset. The important thing about SNAP is that SNAP is infallible. We are not here to support people who are wronged but to support SNAP. We have reluctantly decided to fall back on the tactic Kavanagh himself used when in a far more difficult and responsible spot. Comments will be shut down and the offending member and his comments deleted from the record. We’re starting to see Kavanagh had a point after all and that real life decisions are quite hard.
NZB3: People keep asking me questions about Kavanagh’s good name. You keep deleting what I write which breaks 2 forum rules. If people would not engage with me I would not reply.
* * *
Conclusion: There are doubtless many legitimate cases of abuse-in-care in New Zealand in need of a credible champion. That credibility is spoiled when the champions show blind dedication to lynching a dead New Zealand hero no matter what evidence. A case for Kavanagh could not be put and attempts deleted because it disrupted the narrative of the Group Think echo chamber. “Support,” as it turns out means support for the mission, for SNAP, right or wrong. That doesn’t make this an organisation seeking justice but rather one hell bent on blind vengeance no matter how many innocent people it takes.
The currency, as we see, is not evidence or facts but the measure of self-reported trauma that has been survived but gone unhealed. Anyone who doesn’t support the fabric of persecution is driven out. This is, of course, a basic textbook Repitition Compulsion situation. These abuse victims have internalised the persecution of others as an absolute and now seek to turn the tables by becoming the molesters of the living and the dead, innocent or guilty. These slave-like people are trapped in the very same cycle of Acting Out abuse they claim to oppose but which Catholic Priests surely inflicted upon them just as they had it inflicted on them back and back into antiquity. Christopher Longhurst and Alex Cionca can be accused of being Victimhood Culture perpetrators whose status and perhaps funding relies on keeping traumatised people around them to ‘protect’. They maintain the echo chamber and make sure it stays free of healthy fact-checking or introspection. Minds who would offer that are driven away and then, I just bet, the circle within the Group Think probably despair together that more people do not listen to them or join them. SNAP, after all, can only flourish so long as there is evil to fight so it has a vested interest in perpetuating endless evil. That’s the trap of setting yourself up in the Victimhood Culture Outrage Industrial Complex. If Alcoholics Anonymous cured people then it would fade away. If Feminists and Environmental Catastrophists and COVID Epidemiologists actually succeeded then they would make themselves irrelevant. All bureaucracy expands to fill the available space. If the traumatised manage to individuate and recover back into Self then they would not need SNAP which is a reason why SNAP must actively keep people hurting. Fittingly, Longhurst stands beside the master of this politics and calls her “beautiful.”
My respect for Kavanagh is based on a deeper look. SNAP’s disrespect is based on a blind willing acceptance of anything bad about a priest being automatically true. Who’s right? We can only get to find that out by deepening our understanding not by censoring dissent. There is so little of that in New Zealand today that we’re in this bizarre Clown World: I, a life long athiest, am in the position of defending the church! The Bishop of Dunedin is in the position of denigrating his church and a previous Bishop of Dunedin! While, an organisation dedicated to defending the innocent from the trauma of a powerful unjust authority now ranges the land as a powerful unjust authority that traumatises the innocent!
Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests (SNAP) is an international group with an outlet in New Zealand. Christopher Longhurst (image left) is the point man here and says the person he is standing with in his Facebook profile picture is “Jacinda Ardern, the beautiful Prime Minister of Aotearoa New Zealand.” SNAP is so dedicated to calling out abusive priests that they are willing to overlook the abusive part entirely. This week Longhurst and SNAP celebrated the cancelling of the long dead Bishop of Dunedin, John Kavanagh.
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