A Catholic priest offers group therapy to troubled teens who had rarely shared their feelings before.
Posted on 08/24/2009 8:01:27 PM PDT by thecodont
It was the middle of the night. I was asleep. My mom came in and started punching me. She said I didn't fold my clothes right. I threw her off of me. She was real drunk. She started on me again. The police came. She said: 'What? I'm just kicking my son's ass.' Just another night.
-- Carlos, 17
::
The little school in South Los Angeles is the end of the road, reserved for those who have bombed out of the rest of the system. The mildest cases were merely kicked out of their last school. The toughest are parolees -- ex-cons, some of them still in no need of a shave.
Earlier this year, they began receiving an unusual visitor. Stan Bosch was a shaggy-headed, motorcycle-riding Catholic priest who'd played college football and had the broad shoulders and busted knees to prove it.
Bosch told them he would never judge them -- and unlike many before him, he held to his pledge. It seemed they could talk about anything with him, so they did. They talked about smoking pot, about getting drunk with their mothers, about being left alone for days at a time. One confessed to a string of burglaries; he said he felt rotten about it but had to find a way to bring home some money. Another said he'd rather be back in jail, where he could be assured meals and a bed.
All the priest asked was that they refrain from calling him "homie." That didn't seem too much to ask.
(Excerpt) Read more at latimes.com ...
A Catholic priest offers group therapy to troubled teens who had rarely shared their feelings before.
at what point in the article do they make the priest a villain?
I read the article through and didn’t see the priest being made out to be a bad guy of any sort.
They don’t do that, but about 3/4 of way thru they make their big push for health care reform using mental health issues in the minority community. /s
I'm doing much the same thing on my blog:
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