You Must be Satan

I'll be posting on the dark side of fame later today or tomorrow, but I just wanted to quickly comment on a comment I saw on another blog, The Deacon's Bench. From my reading of what Deacon Greg is saying, we should be neither quick to presume that Fr. Corapi is innocent, nor that the woman (involved) is guilty (of slander). Seems reasonable to me, after all, we don't have all the facts. Take a 'wait and see' attitude, as it were, and pray while waiting for all to be revealed.

Anyway, I'm reading through the comments (a dangerous hobby, at best), and come across this gem:
You are so quick to attack a beautiful defender of the faith because he is orthodox as is EWTN.
I hope you never find yourself battling Satan as he is now
and perhaps his intercession has helped you and protected you over the years.

Ummm, what? Seriously. WTF? So, because Deacon Greg is calling for a measured approach, he has been under Satan's protection and intercession over the years? I won't say anything more, because I think you can see for yourself how ridiculous this comment is.

Or this one:
In my estimation he has done more for the Catholic faith than 10 diocese priests.



Really? 10 priests? Perhaps Fr. Corapi is lucky because he hasn't had to be 'in the trenches' in a parish, dealing with administrative bullshit, putting up with parish idiots, silly parishioner requests, and just generally the day-to-day hardship of running a parish (or more likely parishes/missions). And in my opinion, it's the diocesan priests who get a lot of flack but who actually do a lot of the work 'in the trenches', teaching the Catholic faith. (I'm not trying to pit diocesan priests against religious order priests here; both are needed. But to denigrate one or the other, or to say one is more holy than the other completely misses the point. Some men are called to the diocesan life, some feel called to a particular order.)

This next one is a doozy:
Didn’t the same thing happen to St. Padre Pio. He was accused of having an affair with his spiritual daughter by a woman who was very jealous of him & this young girl he took under his wing.
I believe Fr. Corapi is going to be a SAINT, just like JPII, & Mother Theresa, & St. Padre Pio. He is a modern day saint being perscuted by evil. When the truth does finally surface it will make Fr. Corapi’s words more powerful to the unbelievers. He does have many enemies, even within the church, due to jealously of his popularity & his truth. Many people are not open to the truth & many religious have blocked their sacraments by their liberal thinking. It would suprise one, to the many sacrilegious people in the church who do not even believe in the true presence of the eucharist.
The sad part about this whole issue is that there are souls that are in jeopardy of being lost because the voice of a saint has been silenced.


Ummm, wow. I don't know where to start. Okay, first off, in my meager knowledge of St. Pio of Pietrelcina (sp?), when he was asked/ordered to remove himself from public ministry, he did so, silently. And from what I understand, St. Pio was not a 'shy, retiring priest', inclined to keep his mouth shut if something needed to be said. He was obedient to his superiors without casting doubts upon their authority to ask him to step aside.

All this reminds me of Medjugorje fanatics I've come across over the years, or NFP fanatics. Don't you dare criticize someone (or something) they uphold as holy and saintly and never sinning, thank you very much. Though, the last time I checked, anyone who is here on earth is very much capable of sinning, thank you very much, and falling from grace; and only those that the Church states are in heaven for sure, should we seek to emulate and follow, because they point the way towards Jesus Christ.

Just because people are holding back judgment of guilt or innocence on either the part of Fr. Corapi or the woman, does not mean that 'we' are infected by 'liberal thinking'. It does not mean that 'we' are jealous, and it does not mean that 'we' are his 'enemies'.

It does mean that we realize that anyone, anyone, here on earth is capable of sin, even great sin; that we realize we need to pray for our priests, all the time; and that we exercise the virtue of prudence, and will wait and see; that we keep praying, because what we do know for sure is that the devil's hand is somewhere in this mess, we just don't know where.

BTW, have I mentioned yet that we should be praying for our priests?

More on fame and celebrity later.

(P.S. Sorry if this post isn't the most coherent ever. I'm still trying to get back into the swing of things.)