Brian’s Reflection: Wednesday, September 29, 2010

[ In the Christian Kalendar: The Feast of St. Michael & All Angels ]

I have said repeatedly that in this country we track
Library books better than we do sex offenders.

Mark Foley, Republican congressman; he resigned
on this day, 2006, after being confronted with sexually
explicit computer messages he'd sent to former male
House pages.


Have you heard a word about Mark Foley since he fell ignominiously (but later protected by his Republican friends) from grace?? I haven’t ….. but then I don’t go looking, and I rarely listen to any “news” at all these days. Too much about hate and deception and hypocrisy and killing and blatant injustice. An acquaintance told me today that, when he went to his doctor with an ulcer, she told him to stop watching all the “News”; it would kill him. Point taken.

As to Mark Foley, I, as a Gay man, am deeply disgusted that this hypocrite, or, to put a better light on it, deeply morally and emotionally warped man, should be Gay. He is a disgrace to the 99.9% of Gay women and men who have personal and ethical integrity.

You can Google Mark Foley and see all the hypocritical things he said and supported. Two examples: 1, he lauded his Florida state beauty and attractiveness to tourists ….. but towed the Republican line about the non-reality of the degradation of the environment; and 2, he said he supported good public education ….. but he continually sought the support of right-wing Roman Catholics by praising their separate, non-public educational system. Enough said. There are many more examples.

My point? This. The inner struggle is monumental – and we forget it at our peril. In Thy Peace, The newsletter of St. Francis Episcopal Church in Turlock, California. The Rev. Kathryn Galicia writes…



It seems as though many of the people who consider themselves to be model Christians have completely forgotten about the One who is the basis of Christianity. Perhaps it’s not so much a matter of forgetting who Jesus is, but a matter of reconfiguring Jesus to fit the mold they believe He should occupy. The Jesus I keep hearing about now is not the Lord I know and love.

Nor the Jesus I know. People like Mark Foley and the present Republican party (and some Democrats), who often claim to be Christians, seem to have forgotten the same thing. And as well, they seem to have forgotten the same thing about the Constitution of the United States and its message.

But here is the principle “spiritual” point: it is vitally important to do those things which keep us firmly in relationship with the core of our spiritual heart. And I firmly say here: the likes of Glen Beck and Sarah Palin and present political “righteous” people do NOT represent the Jesus of the Gospel. They have been co-opted by that great seducer called Power that now runs the United States of America and much of the World.

If any part of Christianity (and of other faiths) have any integrity, they will speak and act boldly against the perversion of the Gospel of Jesus and the Torah and the Buddha and the best of the Prophet that now seems to have taken hold.

There is a Mark Foley in all of us: a part of our human nature which remains oblivious to the self-deception to which we all so easily give power. This is the work of the Dark Power, the Evil within us all.

I do not think that Mark Foley was ever held to account for his self-deception and the pathetic acting out he did. But this should not be our path as human beings with integrity.

Brian+