Foley really was molested by a Catholic priest when he was a boy. Gads. Maybe the Catholic Church should revive the ancient Middle Eastern religion whereby the priests cut off their penises and threw them into Astarte's shrine! After all, I hang out with Pegasus, the horse that carries lightning bolts and so far, no priests have molested me! Sparky, my horse, does push me around occassionally. Neigh.
By FRANCES D'EMILIO, Associated Press Writer 58 minutes ago
ROME - An elderly priest acknowledged Thursday that he was naked in saunas with Mark Foley decades ago when the former congressman was a boy in Florida, but denied that the two had sex.The Rev. Anthony Mercieca, 72, speaking by telephone from his home on the Maltese island of Gozo, said a report in the Sarasota Herald-Tribune about their encounters was "exaggerated."
"We were friends and trusted each other as brothers and loved each other as brothers," Mercieca said. Asked if their relationship was sexual in nature, the priest replied: "It wasn't."
His comments came after the Florida newspaper published a story on Thursday that quoted him as saying in an interview that he had an inappropriate two-year relationship with Foley in the 1960s that included massaging the boy in the nude, skinny-dipping together at a secluded lake in Lake Worth and being nude in the same room on overnight trips.
So, all they did was this older man who was supposed to be Christ's representative on earth, merely massaged, skinny-dipped and hung loose with a kid at a SECLUDED lake? Huh? How about sleep-overs at Brokeback Mountain?
In saner times, long ago, our ancestors realized the sex lies at the heart of religion. So they celebrated their gods and goddesses by having orgies, drunk parties, drug induced visions and in general, acted like we did in the good old hippie days.
The other night, I had a sudden dream which was really a reliving of what it was like in 1967. I felt all the feelings I felt back then and the contrast with today was very powerful. Namely, I remembered the joy and fun, the sudden releasing of my sexual powers coupled with a sense of unity with nature and with everyone as we ran around in Golden Gate park. As 1966 closed, I decided to kill myself.
But when I went off into the desert with a Bowie knife to do the disembowelment, I stood on a high hill overlooking the entire Tucson valley and as the sun set behind Bavaquivari, the Mountain of the Dead, the entire desert went silent and I could hear the light breeze in the saguaro that stood sentenial upon the crest of the hill.
My sexuality was nothing but severe pain, doctors had operated on me but it was terribly painful. And I had finally figured out I wan't a virgin but couldn't remember who deflowered me (yet) but then out of the West there came a voice of a woman, a whisper, it was the saguaro speaking to me about life, lightning and pain.
If you feel pain, you feel life! I dropped the knife and held out my arms. Placing my hands upon the tender, soft skin of the saguaro, I felt the flow of life coursing though her skin. I embraced her and accepted her reality.
And this is what saved me from my own fate. When adults sexually abuse children, the children must struggle to deal with the effects of this. I knew that I couldn't be 'normal' so I decided to try something different. I gave up all ideas of marriage and love and instead, decided to love Love itself. This meant embracing everyone and everything.
I came home, for the first time, filled with joy. The intensity of this feeling is hard to describe. It displeased my parents and family. They were accustomed to me being unhappy and this new person was distinctly unpleasant for the family's home dynamics. Within six months, I was gone. For good.
Freedom.
And why talk about this? Well, Foley claims he became a criminal molester because a religious man molested him. Well, Foley wasn't trying to be a hippie, he was pretending to be a nasty, uptight paragon of virtue, a man setting out to protect children like myself only he was the hunter, the monster under or rather in the bed!
I can't tell anyone how difficult it was to overcome my own rape. It still lurks in the dark of my nights and only by embracing the concept of loving for Love's sake have I been able to lie in a bed and not tear off the sheets. For I was also struck by lightning in bed as a child, this double-whammy has created interesting problems for me the top one being, how to sleep at night.
As adults, we have an obligation to not only remember our own pasts but to also prevent these pasts from turning us into monsters. Child abusers who then abuse children are not pitiful, they are criminal. Breaking away from the past means understanding demons lurk in all of us but so do gods and goddesses!
Choosing which one shall guide us is what religion is all about. Many Catholic priests join the Church seeking sex. Many preachers start preaching seeking wealth and sex, too. 'Ye shall know them by their deeds' is how we can see who chooses what. I am not rich. I didn't marry for money. I never expected to marry, yet I have because when one loves, love comes back. And finding the love within my own family has been the best thing for someone who has suffered as I have.
Instead of seeking power, if one spreads love, life springs ever eternal. The rulers of America, the ruler sitting on a throne in Rome, the many rulers of humanity, aren't spreading life, they must live lives filled with hypocricy pretending the denial of sex means one will be loved by gods.
This is FALSE. This leads to preversions. I wince when people sing, 'Jesus loves ME'....Jesus isn't about loving oneself, it is about sacrificing one's life for others because one loves all others especially the ones that are hardest to love.
This is why St. Francis, the Catholic saint who came closest to Jesus' own intents, embraced the people most feared by Medieval society: lepers. He not only shared his cloak with them, he embraced them quite literally and kissed them.
Not because he was a pervert seeking sexual pleasure but because he wanted to share the overwhelming sense of love of all living things with these poor people!
If one is fortunate, just for a day, one can feel the overwhelming love of all living things. This love comes through a fountain of pain, without the pain, as Buddha discovered, there is no love. He had to first see death in order to understand life.
May all children be protected and loved. Love is everything. And all children...sigh. WE are killing children, thanks to wars.
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