Bylaws - Dissolution - Public Documents
Parrot Before People - Rister
Catholic Church Sends Children on Field Trip to Visit Convicted Sex Predator’s Home - Rister
Murder By Mary’s House - Rister
The Catholic Church & Racism In Texas / Brief Review of incidents at Mary House - Matteau
Man Sets Fire to Mary House - Fox News
ref: documents
Section 6.3. Dissolution.
Approval of the dissolution of the corporation shall require a unanimous vote of all members of the Board of Directors. Upon such dissolution, all real property of the corporation shall be donated to the nonprofit corporation, Casa Marianella in Austin, Texas.
ref: Robers S. Rister http://robertrister.com/
Parrot Before People:
Lynn Goodman-Strauss killed her “beloved” parrot DeeDee. She also supervised the deaths of, by her own count, at least 49 human beings. At least the parrot got emergency medical care and a funeral from Mary House. The people didn’t. But there are probably reasons for that.
Dorothy Day was a the founder of the Catholic Worker movement. Dorothy Day, or DeeDee for short, was also the name of a pet parrot at the Catholic Worker Mary House in Austin, Texas. DeeDee had been brought in to the house a replacement for a parrot that had been killed by a guest named Rick Bartlett, a Disciples of Christ pastor who more recently became famous for killing his parishioner’s cat. But if that first parrot had been anything like DeeDee, its demise is, if unforgiveable, at least understandable.
DeeDee was, almost everyone agreed, a filthy and obnoxious bird. Long-term guests in the house said on multiple occasions that DeeDee had for several years been allowed to fly around the house free, leaving trails of bird droppings in the dining area and in the kitchen and biting guests and visitors alike, including the several in the house who took blood thinners for cardiovascular conditions. During my stay at Mary House, when Goodman-Strauss allowed the bird to fly around and it pooped, Goodman-Strauss would simply drop paper towels on top of the feces and leave them in the kitchen floor. Longer-term guests said that there would be trails of paper towels and bird sh– but Goodman-Strauss forbade them to clean them. When Goodman-Strauss left the house, cleanup was OK.
DeeDee was not, however, a higher priority than fundraising. One week in June contingents of kids from the Vacation Bible School at St. Catherine of Sienna were due to come over to Mary House to do various projects. A check from St. Catherine’s was expected, and a bird bite of a child simply would not do. DeeDee, therefore, was confined to her cage–and the cage inexplicably set outside on the west side of the house in full Texas afternoon sun.
Texas sun is unforgiving. Siding heats to 150 or even 160 degrees Fahrenheit in the afternoon. (That’s about 60 to 65 Celsius, I think.) A bird cage literally gets hot enough to cook a bird if left in the sun. No fewer than five guests of the house asked to take DeeDee inside, not wanting her simply to roast in her cage, but Goodman-Strauss told us we were stupid. Parrots are tropical birds, and heat is not a problem for them in the wild. Of course, neither are parrots caged in the wild.
The first day DeeDee was outdoors she stopped talking. The second day she looked lethargic. The third afternoon she became comatose. Four or five hours after the obvious, Goodman-Strauss demanded that residents use their computers to find an all-night parrot hospital. A veterinarian who treats parrots was in fact found, and off goes DeeDee and Goodman-Strauss to the avian ER.
A $501 IV later, DeeDee is left at the hospital. The next morning, DeeDee is dead. That afternoon, Goodman-Strauss announces she is giving the bird a Jewish funeral. (Goodman-Strauss claims to have converted to Catholicism from Judaism, but this was after she converted to Judaism from Catholicism.) An Episcopal seminarian spending a month’s internship at the house then gives the bird an funeral in the back yard and DeeDee’s mortal remains are laid to rest.
It was a terrible ordeal, the director later says to inquiring supporters of the house. You should give us money.
Does this sound like some crazy nun story? Could I be misinterpreting events?
I don’t think so. I’ve seen how humans get treated at Mary House first hand.
I came to Mary House not quite penniless (I had 55 cents in my pocket, and I had two T-shirts, my jeans, the undies I was wearing, and my shoes) after being treated for a heart attack. The hospital had given me a 5-day supply of my medications, and prescriptions for renewing them at my own expense. A friend of mine drove 10 miles north from his house to pick up my refills, or most of them, and then 45 miles south to deliver them to me. He also left me with $60 to get any other medications I needed. I felt rich. I now had $60.55.
One of the meds that got left out of the refill bag was my beta-blocker. If you have had a heart attack and your heart isn’t quite wired together enough to beat rhythmically yet, a beta-blocker is a big deal. You have to have it. But I had the $60.55 and a refill is just 4 bucks, so I only needed to get someone to go to the pharmacy for me.
Thing was, I couldn’t walk more than about 50 steps at stretch at that point, and I had no idea where the pharmacy was. No big deal, I thought, I’ll just ask Goodman-Strauss where to get my prescriptions transferred.
“Mary House has money,” Goodman-Strauss said. “Give me the list of your medications and your refill prescriptions and I’ll call an internist who sees our guests for free.” I hand her the paper and the door to her bedroom slams shut. I see the phone is in use.
“It’s all taken care of,” Goodman-Strauss says maybe 20 minutes later. Now lie down and rest for the remainder of the day and when you get up, you’ll have all the meds you need.
I lay down. I rested. It’s early evening and I inquire about that beta-blocker.
“It’s not our responsibility to get your medications,” Goodman-Strauss screamed at me. “You can’t freeload medications from Mary House. Get it yourself.”
I realized that I could soon be in serious trouble if I didn’t get that refill. However, there was no phone book in the house, and I didn’t have access to a computer, and had I called 411 to ask for a number for a Walgreen’s I wouldn’t have known where to call. I asked a resident who had a computer if he would mind telling me where the nearest Walgreen’s was, and actually he wouldn’t have needed to look it up, there was one about 5 blocks away, it turned out, but Goodman-Strauss told me not to bother other people about my medications. I start to call my friend, but I am told to put down the phone.
I decide that the next morning, I’ll see if can’t walk the 200 feet or so down to the nearest major cross street, First Street, and just see if there aren’t any drugstores nearby. There was a supermarket, so there had to be a drugstore somewhere.
I wake up at 5:30 and set off for First Street. I make it about 50 feet past the front yard when my lungs start filling with fluid and I feel dizzy. I get back to the house, and ask another guest, who had been a nurse before he became disabled, for help. He ignores me. I have to lie down. I go to my bed and stretch out.
Four hours later I hear Goodman-Strauss screaming, but I can’t move and I can’t open my eyes. I can barely breathe. It was like I was drowning. She’s on the phone reporting that I’m in a diabetic coma. That’s when your blood sugars are too low. The night before I had told her my blood sugars were too high.
Even though I couldn’t move, I was more panicked by the implications of the phone call than I was by having a second heart attack. Had there been glucagon in the house, and had someone given it to me without bothering to test my blood sugar levels, I would have died for sure. I don’t think Goodman-Strauss knows enough about how these things work for that to have been her intention. But I was in dual danger from both the heart attack and the “attention.”
An ambulance comes. I’m taken to the ER. The doctor tells me “You have a very sick heart.” About 30 minutes later, Goodman-Strauss charges into the ER bay. “I have other sick people you should be taking care of,” she screams at the nurse. And two nurses and an ultrasound technician have to back her out of the room to attend to my care.
I had a mild heart attack that time, or maybe not, depending on how you interpret the labs. My troponin levels on that admission peaked at 0.3. But I was kept for a couple of days until Goodman-Strauss reappears to take me home. She gathers up everything in site in the hospital room, including surgical tape, surgical scissors, a urinal, cleaning cloths, skin lotion, and towels. I’m left to explain where it all went.
Does this make a complete picture to you? I was in the middle of it all. Maybe I don’t have perspective. But if I have a story from nearly every day during the five weeks I was a guest at Mary House, imagine how many stories there are from 20 years. Lynn Goodman-Strauss is a menace. She is a disgrace to the Catholic Worker movement (although Catholic workers don’t exactly do themselves any favors in their relationships with the Church). And I hope that if you have influence, you will use it for good. Mary House is a great idea with horrible execution, and some of the executions have been of both people and pets.
ref: Robers S. Rister http://robertrister.com/
Catholic Church Sends Children on Field Trip to Visit Convicted Sex Predator’s Home
July 13, 2012 By Robert
Stuff like this you can’t make up. Fortunately, the St. Catherine’s Catholic Church teens and children and the predator didn’t cross paths at Mary House but that was due to dumb luck and drug addiction.
I’ve been writing about the horrendous mismanagement of a ministry based on a wonderful idea, Mary House in Austin, Texas. Mary House represents itself as a refuge for the dying, and to some extent it is. It’s also a place that as I mentioned in my last article, Murder By Mary’s House, sets up residents for death when it’s convenient. And there are field trips for children from St. Catherine’s Catholic Church in Austin to visit the sexual predator, too.
In June of this year Mary House actively solicited the relocation of a convicted serial sex predator named Steven William Perram. If your name happens to be Steven William Perram, and you aren’t the serial sex predator the Texas Department of Public Safety identifies with SID 08868084, this post isn’t about you. But it most definitely is a story about that Steven William Perram.
This was all going on the same week St. Catherine’s Catholic Church was sending kids out for half a day for Vacation Bible School. They did chalk drawings. They painted a metal rooster to decorate the back yard. They made cookies and generally seemed to have had a good time. Mary House was eagerly awaiting Steven Perram’s arrival, but Vacation Bible School ended before Perram got out of the hospital and arrived at the house.
I personally think that the Catholic Church is right that sexual predators should be supported on the path to redemption, too, but there’s common sense and there’s stupid. And sometimes there is diabolical. The director of Mary House, Lynn Goodman-Strauss, invited a couple of us guests to go to Seton Hospital to meet this wonderful man who was purported to be a noted nutritionist and a chiropractor. It would be so exciting to meet him.
I had another vascular crisis and went to the hospital from Mary House for the second time in a month myself, so I didn’t go out to interview him as part of his introduction to Mary House. He had arrived at Mary House while I was in the hospital. But I don’t think I would have gone to interview the man anyway. It seemed like a setup. It seemed like Lynn Goodman-Strauss was looking for a scapegoat to blame later for the antic she had planned, whatever that antic was.
And it didn’t take very long to find out Perram was a predator. Hospitals discharge patients who are broke with 5- to 15-day supplies of the medications they need. The resident of the house (R.G.) who went to pick up Perram stopped by the pharmacy on the way to Mary House. Even though Perram was barely ambulatory, he didn’t want anyone going with him to the pharmacy counter. He was overheard getting multiple prescriptions in multiple names.
That set off alarm bells. As soon as Perram arrived at the house, residents got on their laptops and did Google searches. Perram claimed to have a PhD from USC and a doctor of chiropractic. There is indeed mention of him a chiropractic journal–but I myself have been approached about ghost-writing an article for that very journal and I’m no chiropractor nor do I claim to be one.
What we could find was that he was a substitute teacher. Perram claimed to be “one of the top 10 nutritionists in America,” and indeed the first words out of his mouth as I arrived back to Mary House from the hospital was that he had a miracle cure that could make me whole again in minutes, MSM. This was before hello. And Perram claimed that he had lost everything when he was in the hospital for an accident, it was all so unfair. It took just a few clicks to find out that he had been released from prison after serving a 5-year term for possession of child pornography involving a 10-year-old. We also found an article in the Houston Chronicle that the Cy-Fair substitute teacher cum PhD and D.C. had solicited boys in his class and invited them home for “examinations.”
We were totally creeped out. However, not everybody in the neighborhood was. A daily visitor to the House was a 24-year-old mentally retarded man I’ll identify as AG. He thought Perram was a great guy. When Perram later departed, AG said “I mees heem very much. He was so nice.”
And that’s what we had been afraid of.
I don’t really know what crazy scheme the Mary House director had in mind for Perram. Whatever it was, it was probably averted by R.G.’s paying attention and all of us knowing how to use Google. A few days later Lynn Goodman-Strauss announced that Perram was moving to a Buddhist monastery. However, the resident of the house (Robbie G. again) who took him away said he didn’t go to a Buddhist monastery, and we later heard Perram was back in Seton.
Maybe the plan really had been to cause a ruckus while the St. Catherine’s kids were coming over for Vacation Bible School and to blame guests and get sympathy (a high probability scenario, the director thrives on sympathy for her self-generated crises). Maybe Mary House was hoping to get donations from NAMBLA. I don’t know. But I shudder to think what would have happened had Perram gotten out of hospital just a little sooner the first time.
Incidentally, the last day I was at Mary House, July 9, it was loudly announced that Mary House was paying fees to subscribe to a background check service. Then later that day someone new was brought in without one.
I’m posting this article in the hopes that responsible people will take action. I’m going on the record about what has happened in this place. If you are in a position to prevent future abuses, please do your part.
ref: Robers S. Rister http://robertrister.com/
Murder By Mary’s House
Judy Lynn Beall was dying of AIDS. A Catholic worker house begged her to die with them, and she did. But she didn’t die in the house. She died when the Catholic Worker house threw her out on the street and stopped her from being taken anywhere else. And she didn’t die of AIDS.
This is a heart-wrenching story I saw first hand. The Catholic worker house that took in Judy Lynn is Mary House in Austin, Texas. It advertises itself as a home of last resort for people who would otherwise be dead. People come to Mary’s House–sometimes, and I myself did–when they have just been patched up from a heart attack or brain cancer or an autoimmune disease by a hospital and are well enough to wash themselves and feed themselves and dress themselves but they don’t have any money or any place to go.
The house is a bit run down but it looks homey. The one thing you get for sure is a place to lie down at night but if you don’t have any money at all that’s a very big deal. And it was for Judy Lynn Beall.
Judy Lynn, she told me, had caught HIV from her deceased husband. Twelve years ago she had been a nurse (I was never able to check that part of her story) at Parkland and Baylor Hospitals in Dallas. She definitely had lived in the upscale suburb of Rockwall, Texas. Her husband died in his 30's of a heart attack, and after he died she learned he had AIDS.
Exactly what came after that for Judy Lynn isn’t clear. She had wound up as a street person and a prostitute in Austin, Texas. When she arrived at Mary House, herpes had eaten through part of her face on one side of her mouth. She looked gaunt, the muscles in her arms fibrous. It was that kind of look you see when people are dying of cancer and their bodies just can’t keep up with the calories they need. She needed a walker to get around, and she had a dog, Charlie, to catch her if she had a seizure. We had been told at first that Charlie was a trained “seizure dog,” but Judy Lynn herself, who called Charlie her “son,” said she had had him since he was a puppy. Charlie was a great dog.
But Judy Lynn was a very difficult person. Let me explain how that was.
When Judy Lynn arrived at Mary House, there was one other woman who was a guest in the house who was working through some life issues but hadn’t been sick. There were seven guys, all of whom had ongoing serious illnesses. One man had had a melanoma eat through his skull and had a giant blister where the surgery had been done. One man had an autoimmune disease that had eaten through his intestines into his legs. One had had a nasty heart attack and bypass, one had deep vein thrombosis and was in constant pain with limited ability to walk, one had had three brain surgeries, one had just had his colon reattached after colon cancer that was still active in his bladder, and I had just had a heart attack.
We took care of ourselves and we took care of each other. But Judy Lynn had come from a culture where others were not allowed to be in need.
More specifically, Judy Lynn Beall wore a a gold ring on a chain around her neck, that, she said, gave him exclusive rights to “panhandle,” as she called it, and prostitute herself, so she told me in a matter-of-fact but not solicitous way, on East Seventh Street in Austin. It was a gold ring with an inscription reading “Miracles 4 Me.” In the center of the ring was a golden seven with a shiny stony immbedded in it. In the months or years she had been living on the streets, this had made a few blocks of Seventh Street her exclusive territory.
And she applied this attitude at Mary’s House. Judy Lynn would loudly announce to all, in tones that drowned out any other conversation or a TV or a radio or the parrot DeeDee, that she was in pain. “I am in agony!” she would shout. “I hurt!” One time a visiting nurse asked her to rate her pain on a scale of 0 to 10. “Ten! I am in agony!” she said, then taking a drag on her cigarette and a slurp of coffee practically in the same breath. And it was very clear that she regarded us other guests of the house as her personal servants if she regarded us at all, although she told me “you’re different, you’re nice.”
As much as possible, most of the others in the house fled Judy Lynn’s presence. I, however, decided to be Christian about it. No one else would sit with her and talk at the smoking table. (I don’t smoke but I always wind up socializing with smokers.) I did. Some of the guys were afraid they could catch something by sitting too close to her. That probably was right, but it wouldn’t have been AIDS. More like a bacterial infection. I wouldn’t flee at the common table where we ate dinner. If no fingers or saliva went into common dishes, which was not a certainty, there was no need.
That first day I was able to stand up and cook my own breakfast she saw me scrambling an egg and asked if I would fix her an omelet. I needed a walker myself but I said OK. I stand at the stove about as long as I was going to stand anywhere and bring half the omelet out for her and half for me. She walks off to smoke a cigarette. The she comes back in and throws the omelet on the floor for Charlie the dog.
The next day I am again standing at the stove scrambling an egg when she comes up to me and announces that the mirror just a few feet away from the stove, where there were some shelves of canned goods to one side, was the only place she could see herself. She was staying in a room that had at least three large mirrors. I thought to myself “Huh?” and said “OK” and next thing I glance over and see she is inspecting her labia in the hall next to the canned goods.
I don’t patronize practitioners of Judy Lynn’s profession. I certainly don’t need to see herpetic labia first thing in the morning before I have my coffee. Then when I came back to put my plate in the dishwasher I saw a pool of brown fluid that obviously had not been left by Gizmo the Jack Russell Terrier. House director Lynn Goodman-Strauss being nowhere to be found, I put on gloves and get lots of paper towels and bleach and clean it up. This was at a time when I was having a whole lot of trouble picking up anything off the floor, but if you have dogs and cats and people who are a bit inattentive walking around, you don’t want to leave that to spread all over the house.
And after I had cleaned up that mess, I got the gloves off and was going to clean a cast iron pan that had been left on the stove. I didn’t realize it was still hot. I burned my hand, and let out a yelp. Judy Lynn charges out of the bathroom and announces “No one can make fun a person who is in agony! I am the sick person here! You do not have the right to make fun of me!” But she said all this to someone else who had happened to come into the kitchen.
You have to wonder whatever was Lynn Goodman-Strauss thinking when she offered Mary House as a placement for Judy Lynn. A more structured environment would have seemed to be a good idea, you’d think. But there are some indications of that.
For several days before Judy Lynn arrived, Lynn Goodman-Strauss had excitedly announced that she had been looking for a woman who had had AIDS and she wanted her at the house. She called her donors to tell them how noble the House would be to accept a person in such great need. A noble, selfless helper to the sick, of course, deserved donations.
Then Judy Lynn, it was learned, was at Brackenridge Hospital and was being put into a (what turned out to be at least a second) hospice program. She got on the phone and called people about this exciting new person to serve. You should give us money.
The day came for Judy Lynn to be released from the hospital and arrive at the House. “She’s coming today! She’s coming today!” Lynn Goodman-Strauss announced. And Judy Lynn arrived by taxi, I think it was. Charlie didn’t come ’til the next day.
No sooner did Judy Lynn arrive and we all get her things into her room than Lynn Goodman-Strauss was on the phone again, one would think with different people. “She was dumped on us!” she screamed in tones loud enough most of the house could hear. We are so put on upon to take this person. You should give us money.
The first evening Judy Lynn was in the house, Lynn Goodman-Strauss donned a mask and gloves. She ordered one guest to pour boiling water over a plate and to boil a cup and dry it. She told me to make a cup of bullion and then put on gloves and bring her the cup of bullion on the sterilized plate. This was Judy Lynn would not catch any germs that might be lying on our skin.
After an hour or so of this treatment, Judy Lynn, the guest, protested that a cup of bullion fed to her by a spoon wasn’t going to be enough. Lynn Goodman-Strauss announced that she was an ingrate and she could just eat the same food the rest of ate.
But it was OK for Judy Lynn to put her unwashed fingers in the bowls from which we were all served. And it was OK for her to eat from other guest’s private food, putting her utensil in her mouth and then into the food, leaving whatever she didn’t want to eat for others.
We were informed that Judy Lynn was subject to seizures. If she had a seizure, we were to help her with CPR. Then we were told that we must not call 911. If this happened, we must call the Fire Department. Then we were told that we must call 911 for paramedics if Judy Lynn had a seizure. Then were told that we must not. We were informed that she was in hospice, and then not in hospice. But in a day or two Lynn Goodman-Strauss didn’t care one way or another.
One Sunday I was about to go out the door to church when Lynn Goodman-Strauss walked up to me an informed that I was going to responsible for Judy Lynn until Lynn Goodman-Strauss got back. She handed me a pill box with Tylenol and Vicodin and told me to give her the medications 5 hours later. Off Lynn Goodman-Strauss goes.
Judy Lynn was not particularly difficult that day. We had learned that she would eat chocolate ice cream, and we had, from our own funds, bought her chocolate ice cream. And I had discovered that mate tea soothed the pain from the herpes in her mouth. It wasn’t a particularly difficult day, but I sure as heck was not going to give another guest Vicodin. Fortunately, Judy Lynn never asked for any medications and I simply handed the pill box to Lynn Goodman-Strauss when I got back.
This isn’t to say I liked Judy Lynn Beall. I did talk with her for maybe 15 or 20 hours altogether. The conversations were mostly one-sided, Judy engaging in well-thought and rational (if not necessarily effective) soliloquy, but I really kept listening because it seemed like such a shame even for a very difficult person to be left all alone at the smoking table. Others in the house were only too willing to keep their distance–and we all were losing weight fast because none of was confident about eating anything we had not opened and prepared ourselves. It really wasn’t safe to eat anything that had been left out. Judy Lynn’s fingers and saliva were in essentially every open food object in the house. And Lynn Goodman-Strauss typically left food in the frig to rot forbidding anyone to clean it out.
Judy Lynn’s days, however, were numbered. In the next week there was at least one trip to Brackenridge ER, which seemed pretty odd for someone in a hospice program. Judy Lynn seemed quite a bit better. Her arms didn’t look emaciated. She had color. But then one afternoon Lynn Goodman-Strauss insisted, in the presence of several of us at the house that Judy Lynn go to the ER yet again.
Mary House had a 10:30 p.m. curfew. At 10:35, Lynn Goodman-Strauss burst into the bedroom I was sharing with a guest named Jerry and announced with a smirk and pouty lips and a fiendish look in her eyes, “Our family is one fewer. Judy Lynn did not return in time for curfew.” Had she cackled like the Wicked Witch of the West, it would have matched her facial expression.
The next morning Judy Lynn had been released from the ER and returned to Mary House. Lynn Goodman-Strauss had already spread her clothes on the porch. Judy Lynn begged to let back in, but Lynn Goodman-Strauss screamed that Judy Lynn had “checked herself out.”
And then a few days later we heard that Judy Lynn had been found unconscious on the steps of Trinity House. Then we heard she had died five hours after being taken to a third hospice, Christopher House, but not of AIDS.
However, Judy Lynn’s death was also useful for fundraising for Mary House. Lynn Goodman-Strauss sought comfort for “her” loss. She called donors and told them, “You just don’t know how deeply this sort of thing affects us.” Oh, give us money.
Am I reading all this wrong?
Sadly to say, I don’t think so. I don’t mean to lessen the reverence for life that Judy Lynn’s story invokes, but her sacrifice in the name of Catholic Worker fundraising–by the way, Catholic Workers do not report to their Diocese, so the bishop was not supervising this mess–was not unique.
George R. was another guest of Mary House. For most of his early life, George had been a pretty rough guy. Now in his late 40's or early 50's, at the age of 15 he had bashed in another drug dealer’s skull and spent 20 years of a life sentence in prison. He was remarkably reformed, compared to that early history. He went to Mass every day, he at least gave evidence of looking for work of any kind, and that he would go out looking for work was something of an accomplishment since when he came to Mary House, he had just had his colon reattached after colostomy for colon cancer and he still had active bladder cancer for which he was getting chemo.
His surgical incisions bled. I know this. He showed them to me. He asked me if I had bandages. Lynn Goodman-Strauss would not let him have any bandages.
But there was a reason for that.
One day Lynn Goodman-Strauss announced that the house had an infestation of bedbugs. She knew this because she had found specks of blood on George R.’s sheets. It would cost $5000 to rid the room of bedbugs. and a new place would have to be found for George R. and his roommate George C. to sleep.
Most of the $5000 would, if what I was told by longer-term guests was true, would be spent on Lynn Goodman-Strauss’s hotel bill while the house was heat treated. The last time this had happened, guests had been forced to leave their personal computers in their rooms, so they would fail, and she could solicit funds for the computers, too.
An exterminator was called. No bugs were found. But a check for $5000 arrived from a donor. Lynn Goodman-Strauss, in my presence, tells the two Georges they must sleep in the living room. George C. puts up the one cot, and George R. sleeps up in a chair–even though he is scheduled for a colonoscopy the next day. That means he had to have taken laxatives.
About 7 the next morning I’m already up and dressed and looking to scramble and egg and make some toast. Lynn bursts into the living room screaming. “Leave!” she screams at George R. “Leave!” she screams at George C. “Pack up your things and go!” Then she takes George C. aside, tells him is sweet and innocent, and not to go. “You brought bedbugs into our living room!” she tells George R. He packs. He leaves. It’s raining. He has no money. I didn’t have much, but I had got a Car2Go smart car so I could go 45 miles out to Round Rock to see my cardiologist, and I could spare $20. He declined, and then remembered he had bought a can of paint and had a recent from Home Depot. So I gave him $20 for the receipt and wished him well. I don’t know what happened to George R. I hope he made it.
I have other examples. Twelve other examples in all, I think it was. But after a complaint was filed I have already been interviewed by the police and other authorities about them. I left this madhouse myself earlier this week.
Catholics do wonderful things. Lunatics like Lynn Goodman-Strauss are a small minority. But they do great harm in the name of doing great good. I am making this story public (and I’m a professional writer, I understand the various legal implications) because I hope that the Diocese of Austin–which does NOT run this house–will do what it can to take back the good name of Catholic vocations and Catholic charity. This is a time when the bishops and the priests are the good guys–or at least I hope they will be. And I have another story to tell tomorrow.
Trackbacks
[...] dying, and to some extent it is. It’s also a place that as I mentioned in my last article, Murder By Mary’s House, sets up residents for death when it’s convenient. And there are field trips for children [...]
ref: Denise Matteau http://sahsoofee.blogspot.com/
Friday, May 20, 2011
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To read Catholic statements about racism and to encounter the actual racist, extremely racist, culture of the Catholic Church in Texas is an experience that defies description. Most Catholic discussion of racism is self-righteously directed at the society outside the church and absurdly blind to the intensely active racism exhibited inside the church itself.
Even the so-called "left" of the Catholic Church in Texas is extremely, actively, and consciously racist. A case in point: Mary House, the Catholic Workers' "hospitality house" in South Austin, Texas. It is run by a woman named Lynn Goodmann-Strauss, and for accuracy's sake, I must point out that in her bio it says she came to Texas from New York, where she was raised as a Jew. She claims to be a Catholic convert. Just so ya know: I ain't pickin' on Texans. Also: notice the dehumanizing language in the Diocese's description of Mary House. You'd think they were describing an animal shelter for stray dogs. That kind of language is universal in the Amercian Fascist Catholic Church, which is diverging more and more from the true Catholic faith into this fascist genocidal cult. Does the Vatican understand enough American English to notice this?
I volunteered as a cook at Mary House for a couple of months. I was appalled at the policy of total racism. Everyone associated with Mary House is white, white, white. All the decor pretends to be Mexican. The neighborhood is heavily Hispanic. Goodmann-Strauss likes to dress in left-wing Mexi-chic. There was one Black man, L., there who seemed vibrant, intelligent, and upbeat when I started. Over the course of the weeks I worked there, I watched Goodmann-Strauss and her staff beat him down to a full shuck-and-jive! The arrogant college student Catholic Worker spoke to all the "guests", but especially to L, as if they were stubborn little children. She was following Lynn Goodmann-Strauss's example. Goodmann-Strauss also ran a continuous line of chatter about the residents' "rescue stories", talking about them in the third person as if they were pieces of furniture, human garbage, useful only for the donations she could raise in their names.
Goodmann-Strauss took brief breaks from all her hateful remarks about the Catholic Church and Catholics in general, when she wasn't congratulating herself for rescuing some poor "loser", to pray from the Catholic book of Christian Prayer.
L. told me he was Catholic. In his honor (or perhaps to warn him off) Goodmann Strauss had posted a clipping from the Austin Statesman on the refridgerator door. It was about racism in the Catholic Church and the decision of many Black Catholics to just leave.
When I tried to give L. a copy of Christian Prayer for one of Goodmann-Strauss's performances of observance of Catholic practice, one of her arrogant white volunteers snatched it from him without saying a word, with a gesture of extreme rudeness and contempt. I asked Goodmann-Strauss for another copy for him and with equal rudeness and contempt she remarked that he could not read and he just likes to pretend. L. went to get his own Bible and joined us in spite of the open hatred.
I was so choked up on the atmosphere of hatred, so appalled, I could not follow the readings. I left soon after and filed a complaint with the Diocese. The Diocese will not discuss the complaint.
Lynn Goodmann-Strauss made numerous phone calls to slander me. A deacon in my own church, whose extreme racism will be the subject of another article, accepted her slander and acted on it, and lied to the Diocese about his own actions.
The Diocese of Austin, headed by Bishop Joseph Vasquez, is the most extremely racist institution I have ever encountered. There is an African-African community of Catholics, promoted along with all the promotion of immigrants against the American working class and that "run-a-dogfight" ethic is the hallmark of this fascist church: (it breaks my heart to write this, but I must! I am Catholic and never saw this kind of fascism in the Church of my childhood!)
The Catholic Worker organization, in Austin TExas, is running a training ground for genocide. All-white, attacking the dignity of all working class people in a manner so horrifically opposite to Dorothy Day her grave must be weeping tears of blood! It is openly running HOSPICE protocols on HEALTHY people! Whites are hardly better off there than L., since they are all treated as if they are mindless children, useful only for garnering more donations for Lynn Goodmann-Strauss and the Catholic Workers.
ref: Fox News Austin myFOXaustin.com
Man Sets Fire to Mary House
Austin, TX (myFOXaustin.com) - Austin Fire and Arson Investigators have arrested Kristopher Harlson, 56, for setting fire to a house that houses homeless adults with terminal and/or critical illnesses called, "Mary House Catholic Worker of Austin".
According to investigators, two fires were started inside the house on Monday morning and Harlson was no where to be found. Harlson, who was staying at the house, was upset over the fact that his hospice nurse was late giving his medication.
The director of the facility told FOX 7 that the smoke alarms helped so much. The flames were almost ten feet high when the alarms sounded. No one was hurt, and the walls were not burned.
Harlson was later found at St. David's hospital, where he told a police officer that he tried to set a building on fire. He is being charged with arson - a first degree felony.
The director, Lynn Goodman-Strauss, also noted that she is worried about the possibility that Harlson may try to set fire to the house while released on bond.
Bylaws of
Mary House Catholic Worker of Austin, Inc.
The Real Catholic Worker Priorities in Central Texas
July 14, 2012 By Robert
July 12, 2012 By Robert 1 Comment
1.Catholic Church Sends Children on Field Trip to Visit Convicted Sex Predator’s Home says:
July 13, 2012 at 9:55 am
The Catholic Church & Racism In Texas
Part 1
-->Brief Review of incidents at Mary House
Updated: Thursday, 24 Sep 2009, 9:56 AM CDT
Published : Wednesday, 23 Sep 2009, 3:20 PM CDT FOX AUSTIN