Dude!!
Take two horrible stories and mash them together and you get something worse. Much worse. The Rev. Michael Manning confirmed by phone that he had the relationship with Monterey County Superintendent of Schools Nancy Kotowski, when questioned about copies of correspondence sent to this newspaper that appeared to point to the two breaking off the relationship more than two years ago.
Priest admits to sexual relationship with a woman. That's a bad story.
Man had affair with his own cousin. That's a bad story.
Priest had an affair with his own cousin. I don't even have words for how bad that is.SAN BERNARDINO - A Roman Catholic priest with a worldwide television ministry based here has admitted to having a sexual relationship with his cousin, a county schools superintendent on California's Central Coast.
Usually I am morbidly relieved when I hear that a priest had an affair to find out it was with a woman. It is bad, real bad, but at least I can understand it. This is NOT one of those times.
14 comments:
Not sure what good it does to post this.
ICK
When will we (but especially priests)Christians take evil seriously? I wager that PRIDE had a lot to do with this- and maybe mental illness
:(
Manning (as the article mentions) is on Trinity Broadcasting Network.
This is such a bizarre story.
"Manning said that Kotowski, 59, is his SECOND cousin."
That's maybe not as bad.
But he has a television program and she is a superintendent of a school system.
What made them think nobody would find out?
And to think - I was upset because the priest subbing for our regular pastor couldn't restrain himself from changing at least one word in every paragraph of the Mass to reflect his own agenda, and couldn't resist foisting his own doubts and disbelief on us during his homilies. Gotta love "me-centred" homilies delivered by Church hating relativist clergy.
Let's see: heretic priest versus unchaste priest sleeping with his cousin. Hmm,... they make it so easy to propose to others that the Catholic Church is the Church that Jesus founded. Thanks a lot, Fathers so-and-so.
One helluva day.
The fact that the woman is his cousing doesn;t make things so much worse.
Cousins (even first cousins) have married for countless generations with the consent of the bishop and this not only among (or I should say: within) royal families. Coincidentally, I am now reading a novel of the great Anthony Trollope dealing exactly with that, and set in the England of the 1860s.
One must also consider that often cousins do not grow up together, romantic attraction can therefore develop between them as between any other person.
Having said that, the priest in question is obviously a priest and has therefore broken his vows.
Still, if you ask me: much better this than an homosexual priest, chgaste or not.
A priest sleeping with a woman is a weak priest; an homosexual priest is a pervert who wants to be a priest. There's a big difference.
Mundabor
A Catholic priest on the Trinity Broadcasting Network? (the one featuring such luminaries as Benny Hinn, John Hagee, Jack Van-Impe, Jonathan Falwell -- son of Jerry Falwell, and let us not forget the follow on to the Jim and Tammy Faye show)
I, honestly, would question his discernment in general, not just in this area...
The post from Warren is insightful. We have become lax on issues of heresy. Thoughts become words. Words become actions.
Am I the only one who recognizes him? He has always been a little too heavy on the forced charm, the big toothy grin that doesn't change. I've seen him on Trinity (I don't watch, I stopped dead when I saw the Roman collar on that channel) - he is so vague in his teaching he fits in without offending with any Catholic doctrine or dogma.
He's been an almost-star of the Catholic media for two decades, I'd say.
As a virgin priest, the High Priest, Jesus Christ, said: "I and the Father are one". The perfect love between the Father and the Son, the Holy Spirit is a virgin. Love, God's love, human love,expresses itself in virginity.
Does this individual know what love is. I think not.
There's a certain lack of perspective going on here, both historical and otherwise.
The United States is unusual, perhaps unique, in the Western world in that many (not all) states ban the marriage of first cousins. Elsewhere it has often been accepted under certain conditions: Sergei Rachmaninoff married his first cousin (though doing this required the permission of the Czar), and Charles Darwin married his (OK, not the most admirable person for a case study, but still, it was legal). I won't even bring up the marriage habits of people in the Old Testament (some of which of course don't pass the Christian standards for marriage, like Abram and Sarai).
And anyway, the point at issue seems to be not first cousins but SECOND cousins. Before 1983, the Catholic Church prohibited second cousin marriages, but that is no longer the case--they are now allowed (as are first cousin marriages, though they are discouraged). So from the Church's point of view, this is an affair (a sin) between two people who are almost but not quite too closely related to be legally married (if one of them hadn't been a priest).
And moreover the real issue is the sex outside marriage, which is the fundamental problem.
I'm not justifying the conduct of these two, which is clearly morally wrong. But let's try not to act like that modern suburban American social values necessarily have universal application. They don't. There isn't anything necessarily icky about marrying your second cousin, so take a deep breath and focus on the real issues.
Over and over again we hear news about Priests sleeping with each other and young boys. This needs to stop. Where is the Catholic Church? They need to get ahead of this nonsense and cover it up. Yes, we know it happens, but we don't need the world to hear about our dirty laundry! The Catholic Church is clearly not doing it's job!!
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