I am late to the game in commenting on the latest development in Corapigate. The official statement made by SOLT seems to make it quite clear that Fr. Corapi indeed was guilty of the accusations made and that he left behind a trail of email, and SMS Sexting messages that pretty much make it quite clear what was going on along with other irregular behavior.

SOLT’s fact-finding team has acquired information from Father Corapi’s emails, various witnesses and public sources that, together, state that, during his years of public ministry:

— He did have sexual relations and years of cohabitation (in California and Montana) with a woman known to him, when the relationship began, as a prostitute.

— He repeatedly abused alcohol and drugs.

— He has recently engaged in “sexting” activity with one or more women in Montana.

— He holds legal title to over $1 million in real estate, numerous luxury vehicles, motorcycles, an ATV, a boat dock, and several motor boats, which is a serious violation of his promise of poverty as a perpetually professed member of the society. [Via Jimmy Akin’s Blog]

Like many I was a bit caught off-guard by this. When it comes to the mystery sin I am seldom surprised when somebody falls. I always saw the possibility that Fr. Corapi was indeed guilty of the charges, but also like many held-out thinking that there was a good likelihood that the charges were false. When he initially left his order I was annoyed that he did not stay to fight it out and to help maybe change the process when it comes to accusations of priests.

This latest revelation does anger me a bit or to be more accurate highly annoyed. Not that he fell. That he fell certainly saddens me and just reminds me to pray for him as we must hold up our of our priests in prayer. What annoyed me is the same thing that annoyed me about Rep. Weiner who kept denying what happened and attacked his accusers even as more and more photographic evidence was coming out. That Fr. Corapi kept maintaining his evidence and blaming the process is a betrayal to his fans. We can understand someone falling into serious sin, but someone of Fr. Corapi stature lying to us in the aftermath is another story. But I won’t let the sun go down on my anger and annoyance.

Phil Lawler asks Why were warning signs ignored?

In many ways it was a recipe for disaster with Fr. Corapi living in isolation in Montana away from his religious order with access to large sums of money that had gone unmonitored. As a convert I certainly realize the dangers of an incomplete conversion or being put into circumstances that can lead to backsliding and falling back into a previous orbit.

I always felt the saying “There but for the grace of God, go I” as being rather trite, but I feel the merit of it in this circumstance. God gives us all the grace we need to persevere and we have to cooperate in that grace.

In the reply of St. Joan of Arc to a question posed as a trap by her ecclesiastical judges: “Asked if she knew that she was in God’s grace, she replied: ‘If I am not, may it please God to put me in it; if I am, may it please God to keep me there.” May it be so for all of us.

When it comes to patriotic anthems I do love “America the Beautiful”, especially the second stanza.

O beautiful for pilgrim feet
Whose stern impassioned stress
A thoroughfare of freedom beat
Across the wilderness!
America! America!
God mend thine every flaw,
Confirm thy soul in self-control,
Thy liberty in law!

A patriotic song that allows for critique concerning flaws hits me just right. And I really like “Confirm thy soul in self-control, Thy liberty in law! ” A message sorely lacking today.

Growing up in the sixties and seventies I wasn’t very patriotic in that I thought there was nothing but flaws. It took joining the military for non-patriotic reasons and seeing the world to finally come to understand my homeland and to see it in a new light. It is always easy to be complacent and not realize what you have until you have something to compare it to.

Spot the “offensive photo” in the picture above. Wow this is much harder than “Where’s Waldo.” Give up? Well it’s the ultrasound photo on the banner of course.

The Jaycees have thrown out the “Palantine Area Catholics Respect Life Group” because of the “offensive photo” on their banner and won’t allow them to march in this years 4th of July Parade.

“They decided that an unborn baby is too offensive,” said Martin Kelley, co-founder of Palatine Area Catholics Respect Life. “It’s an ultrasound photo. It’s not a picture of an aborted baby. [Source Warner Todd Huston]

Also of course the gay and lesbian group will be allowed to be part of the parade since everybody knows these groups show so much restraint.

Well maybe one day we can have an Independence Day for the Unborn when they are allowed to live.

Maureen Down interviews Gov. Cuomo.

I FIGURED I’d get straight to it.

“So, Governor,” I asked, “are you afraid you’re going to hell?”

Andrew Cuomo, inculcated at Immaculate Conception grade school, Archbishop Molloy High School and Fordham University, chuckled. “There are forms of hell, Maureen,” he answered. “The question is, which level?”

Rather funny answer, but really more of an evasion than answer.

“I have a portrait of Saint Thomas More in my office,” the governor said, calling from the statehouse in Albany. It is a picture Mario Cuomo once kept in his office. He gave it to Andrew as a present when he graduated from Albany Law School, and the younger Cuomo has kept it with him for 30 years as he moved from job to job and city to city. “It’s not the first time there is a tension between the teachings of the church and the administration of the law, for my father and for myself.” Dryly, he adds: “I haven’t lost my head yet.”

Before the vote on same-sex marriage I had tweeted “NY Vote reminds me that when it comes to marriage as Sts. John the Baptist and Thomas More learned you can easily lose your head.”  Maybe a prophetic tweet when it comes to Gov. Cuomo.  The Governor I must admit is quite glib.

I wonder what ironic devotions to saints from Catholic politicians we will find about next?

I have long felt that Catholic politicians are often irony deficient. Iron deficiencies lead to nutritional deficiencies, and irony deficiencies lead to theological deficiencies that make you make statements like the above.

Saint Thomas More was a great defender of marriage and of the teaching authority of the Church. He refused to support King Henry VII in his marriage to Anne Boleyn after the Pope refused to grant an annulment. He would not sign the Act of Succession or acknowledge the Kings’ supremacy over the Pope. There is many ways he might have quibbled in this by interpolating the document in generous ways as many people urged him to do. St. Thomas More was certainly no one rushing off to martyrdom, but he would not compromise his faith knowing he would have to answer for his conscience.

Gov. Cuomo on the other hand has no regard for marriage in his private life and in his public life shows his distain of marriage by signing the bill for same-sex marriage. His obedience to the Pope and the teachings of the Church to say the least are somewhat lacking.

Nothing would please me more than if he ever developed a true devotion to St. Thomas More and repented of his actions. For now though that picture on his desk is nothing more than cultural Catholic prop to use in conversations with other cultural Catholics.  St. Thomas Becket was once a man who craved political power over his faith and yet he died a martyr to the faith.  St. Thomas Becket please pray for Gov. Cuomo.

That tension he talks about between the teachings of the Church and administration of the law is not really a tension. The gap between the teaching and his administration of the law is a chasm similar to the one that separated the rich man from Lazurus in Jesus’ parable. More like that tension it is the black hole  gravatic pull of a contradiction and paradox. A tension runs more in the line of prudential actions in applying the faith and the natural law. Approval of same-sex marriage is not only contrary to his faith, but to natural law. He has not administered a law and as St. Thomas Aquinas said “An unjust law does not seem to be a law at all.”

Canonist Ed Peters makes some excellent points.

As does Thomas Peters.