Posted on 05/16/2002 5:48:36 PM PDT by HowlinglyMind-BendingAbsurdity
Accused priest apparently takes own life at Maryland hospital
Copyright © 2002 AP Online
By STEPHEN MANNING, Associated Press
SILVER SPRING, Md. (May 16, 2002 7:57 p.m. EDT) - A 64-year-old priest who resigned from his parish in Connecticut amid allegations of sexual misconduct apparently killed himself Thursday at a Catholic psychiatric hospital, church officials said. The Diocese of Bridgeport, Conn., identified the priest as the Rev. Alfred J. Bietighofer, who was stripped last month of his priestly powers and ordered to undergo psychiatric evaluation.
Two men told diocesan officials Bietighofer abused them when they were boys in the late 1970s and early 1980s, church officials said.
Bietighofer was found hanged in his room Thursday at St. Luke Institute, according to Prince George's County police and hospital officials.
"I am profoundly saddened by the tragic death of Father Alfred Bietighofer," Bridgeport Bishop William Lori said in a statement. "To parishioners and to all those whom Father Bietighofer assisted during the course of his priestly ministry, I extend my sincere sympathy and prayers."
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As sad as that is, the sadder fact is the commentary that is in this fact. Depression is a matter of oppression - spiritual oppression. It's a direct result of listening to the devil and having a grand self pity party rather than listening to God and his word. A person this spiritually challenged should never have been a candidate for ministry. I wouldn't even let him run a sunday school class. IMO too many put stock in psychology (opinion of men) rather than following scripture or this sort of thing wouldn't happen.
Oh, yeah. You bet. The delusions, the utopian fantasies, the intellectual pride, the smug pseudo-elitism, the reality-denying romanticism, the guilt-obsessed liberal freaks trying to make everyone else feel guilty about perennial problems like global poverty... All this is quite common among certain types in our society. Liberal culture is weird. It's like a cult because it is based on irrational emotions, delusional fantasies, an eccentric belief system built on guilt and desire for acceptance by "superiors."
Weird, but ubiquitous. When it has even infected segments of the Catholic Church....!
Most people engaged in such sin will never seek forgiveness, because their hearts are hardened to the point of no redemption. Without a doubt, God has given many over to a reprobate mind.
Undoubtedly true, but so very sad.
"I am profoundly saddened by the tragic death of Father Alfred Bietighofer," Bridgeport Bishop William Lori said in a statement. "To parishioners and to all those whom Father Bietighofer assisted during the course of his priestly ministry, I extend my sincere sympathy and prayers."
How about the two boys that Bietighofer sexually abused? Got any consoling words for those two? Apparently the two victims handled the criminal act much much better than Bietighofer. Seems it would be a much greater loss if those two innocents had lost lost their lives instead of Bietighofer. I wonder what Bridgeport Bishop William Lori had to say about the victims.
Why do the children always come LAST in the Church's reckoning?
Yes, well, Catholics do live and work in secular modern American society and , unfortunately, some are quite vulnerable spiritually, morally, and intellectually to some of the toxins present in our culture. It does go back to the social protest model of the 1960s which has some structural similarities with the Church's actual social mission (charity). They make the mistake of thinking that liberal concerns about social problems are the same as the Church's concerns.
I agree. Unlike some, I do not believe that God receives pleasure in meting out judgment. Scripture affirms that it breaks His heart. God's Spirit pleads with men (humankind sense of the word) to repent and be broken by Him. Oh, the insanity of rejecting God's grace!
That said, I think the sin of child molestation (among others) should provide plenty of reason to naysayers that justice demands eternal punishment.
Child molestation is indeed a violent turning away from God.
To have sent his Son to be tortured and die for us shows how much God wishes we give ourselves to Him.
I know it sounds weird, but some of the guys who've left the priesthood to marry that I know have said that the love of God just wasn't enough.
I can understand how difficult that would be considering their is zero verifiable proof that a supernatural God exists and thus a person, if they so chose, may toss physics out the window when they instead rely on void-of-physics faith. People can chose mysticism over reality for that is their choice to make. Even when they unknowingly harm themselves by their mysticisms.
Mysticism is the dishonesty that creates problems where none exist. Mysticism has no redeeming values. It is the remnant of the ancient bicameral mind -- the hallucinating non-conscious mind that the Neo-Tech literature systematically exploited in the 1980s by generalizing, expanding, and then harnessing the bicameral-mind theories of Julian Jaynes to gain competitive advantages.
Neo-Tech identifies mysticism as the number-one enemy of human life -- the number-one disease of the conscious mind -- the number-one global plague to be cured. Mysticism is (1) the self-delusion that non-reality is real, (2) the immaturity of acting upon nothing as if it were something, (3) the seminal source of irrational behavior and criminal destructiveness. …Mysticism yielded the September-11th mass murders of honorable value producers by criminal value destroyers. Emphasis mine.
PAX NEO-TECH
People need to deal with their internal mysticism by first identifying it then defeating it. Suicide -- aside from terminal illness causing great pain and suffering where the person choose to end the pain and suffering -- is an effect of mysticism.
Although I first winced at your post (it could be taken as celebratory), I do think that you have hit on something. I believe it reinforces what I was writing about. Of all people, Judas knew about (had seen) the mercy and forgiveness of God through His Son. Yet instead of repentance; his guilt drove him to suicide. He was obviously hardened beyond hope (Jesus referred to him as the one "doomed to destruction"). Through the continual hardening of his heart, he had long sense abandoned any hope to obtain mercy from God, to the point that he eventually betrayed God Himself to be murdered (and I'm not pretending to know whether or not this priest reached this point).
Satan himself (and apparently a third of the angels) sinned against such a great light and revelation of God to make future reconciliation an impossibility. I don't think God is vengeful enough to keep anyone out of His forgiveness, even Satan. But what more could He do? If one could sin against such light and perfect revelation of God, what could possibly be done to induce them to repent?
I cringe to think of how casual we as Christians refer to "wanting more of God". This is indeed a good thing to want (it is sin, "backsliding", not to be in such a state). But do we realize the tremendous responsibility of such a revelation? The more we know and do not act upon in obedience; the greater our judgment will be.
James 3:1 - Not many of you should presume to be teachers, my brothers, because you know that we who teach will be judged more strictly.
Matthew 18:6 - But if anyone causes one of these little ones who believe in me to sin, it would be better for him to have a large millstone hung around his neck and to be drowned in the depths of the sea.
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