Hello Hops,
Thanks for your question.
The use of the word ministry is similar to charity work, at least for me. The charity or ministry work that I do is post abortion healing --working with men and women who have experienced the pain of abortion and trauma and are searching for a sense of peace and healing.
The Catholic church, believe it or not, is actually a leader in the post abortion healing movement:
www.rachelsvineyard.org Being post abortive myself, having attended a retreat many years ago, I used to work with this ministry, mostly doing hospitality and serving on retreats.
Last year, when all of this drama with N-saint started, I was hoping to start a new post abortion healing retreat team here in the city where I live. It was at this time that I was also working with a pregnancy counseling center to help the men and women that I work with in AA receive counseling in addition to their AA recovery.
As all of these "charity" ideas were developing, not really my ideas but more or less as I felt lead by the spirit, so to speak, I shared all of this with N-saint. It was at this time that I was working with her as a counselor and spiritual director, reluctantly, again after I had tried to get away from her a year previously. But since my new director seemed to like her, and because he was going to be away for the summer he told me to work with her -- I did -- but mostly out of my sense of obedience to him.
What happened, in terms of how N-saint took my ministry, which I have never really tried to convey to this board clearly, was that N-saint began to put walls of envy and despise up towards me because of my rapid spiritual growth that I was sharing with her as well as her envy at my charity work and what she saw as the potential honor involved. This is actually the short, short story...I can't delve too much here. But, anyway, as her contempt of me grew, eventually, with gentleness and curiosity, I confronted her on her coldness, that is when she began shunning me and when the smear campaign started. This was all confusing for me because my gut told me there was something not right about her and my head was still disillusioned by her mask of sanity and kindness.
Little did I know at that time that she coveted my charity work, my noble character and my good heart; now, I know and can see that she had always been envious of my integrity and goodness.
Anyway, after she shunned me, she found her way into the pregnancy counseling center I was just begining to work with and obtained a job, smearing me along the way so that the counseling center became suddenly cold, shutting me out.
Then, she found a connection through to the post abortion ministry team that I had worked with for almost 3 years and slandered me to the team under the guise of caring; using her power as a counselor to let people know that I was too mentally or emotionally disturbed to work in that ministry. She only had to convince the leader of the team, who happened to be bran new because the old leader who was my friend had just gotten married and left the country leaving the door open wide open for an opportunistic person like N-saint.
N-saint had slandered me to my spiritual director, using him as a pawn in her game. She smeared my virtue as vice to him because she admired him from a stand point of power and did not want him to respect or like me. She also began telling people that the only reason that I do charity work is for the attention and praise which is actually one of the devious reasons she does charity work.
She eventually slandered me to my beloved parish making sure that in their eyes I was seen as this abusive and hostile person lacking in integrity and virtue. No doubt using an emails that I sent her in righteous indignation, my stupid fault, and possibly tweaking them to make me look bad -- can you imagine the humiliation?? She basically when on a campaign to humiliate me from one end of my Catholic community to the other - her main task to ruin my good name in order to feel better about herself and to win at her vicious game which is the only thing she really cares about in life.
She is not even post-abortive, or at least I do not think she is, she is a liar so I had wondered if she might have had an abortion and covered it up. So here is this woman who has no emotional life, no heart, working with hurting men and woman -- she only sees them as the perfect victims, objects in her game of power and control over others.
My number one task these days is to not let bitterness take root in my heart and to NOT hate her, because that only hurts me. God has basically thrown me into the fire of life's trials to train me, heal me, and weed out my deeper issues and faults -- which is exactly what this trial as helped me to do...................growth!
Here is an excerpt from Martha Stout's book -- The Sociopath Next Door.
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Since it is simply not possible to steal and have for
oneself the most valuable "possessions" of another personalty---
intelligence, success, a strong character --- the covetous sociopath set-
tles for besmirching or damaging enviable qualities in others so that
they will not have them, either, or at least not be able to enjoy them
so much. As Millon says, "Here, the pleasure lies in taking rather than having.
The covetous sociopath thinks that life has cheated her some-
how, has not given her nearly the same bounty as other people, and
promise, she must even the existential score by robbing people,
by secretly causing destruction in other lives. She believes she has been slighted
by nature, circumstances, and destiny,
and that diminishing other
people is her only means of being powerful. ~retribution, usually
against people who have no idea that they have been targeted, is the
most important activity in the covetous sociopath's life, her highest priority.
Since this clandestine power game is priority number one all
the covetous sociopath's deceitfulness and tolerance for risk are
devoted to it. For the sake of the game, she may devise schemes and
perform acts that most of us would consider outrageous and potentially
self-destructive, in addition to cruel. And yet when'such a person
is around us in our lives, even on a daily basis, we often
oblivious to her activities. We do not expect to see a person direct a
dangerous, vicious vendetta against someone who in most cases has done
nothing wrong to hurt or offend her. We do not expect it so we do not see it -
even when it happens to someone we know - or too us personally.
The actions taken by the covetous sociopath are often so outlandish, and
so gratuitously mean, that we refuse to believe they were intentional,
or even that they happened at all. In this way, her true nature is usually
invisible to the group. She' can easily hide in plain sight.
The covetous sociopath is the ultimate wolf in'sheep's clothing.
