What complicates and impedes complete objectivity in this stuation is the uncomfortable fact that Fr. Corapi is a man with a past, one which he openly admitted to, and publicly repented of, many times, openly and honestly. Suddenly, a woman accuses him of those very same behaviors. No matter how hard we try, his past accompanies those accusations, and doubt naturally creeps in.
Now, this Santa Cruz statement, replete with sales pitch to fund some “mysterious” legal defense fund, appears, and again Fr. Corapi’s past exploits as a money-driven 'man-of-the-world" lead the mind toward doubt. It is sad, but it is also human nature.
…Which is why I said previously on the closed thread that it would therefore be highly improbable that he would engage in such repeated patterns of behavior while in the priesthood, since he has given every indication of being committed to this entirely different life as devotion to God represents. People “with a past” have to be especially careful to avoid even the appearance of impropriety, due to the dual dangers of the effect of reputation and the undeniable fact of previous personal weakness, including addiction with all of its lingering perils.
In that respect, I have to wonder how many people responding on this or the previous thread have listened truly carefully to all of his talks. Since they get replayed often on EWTN radio & TV, my own memory is not weak on this: He has specifically addressed his own vigilance, and his continued need for vigilance, precisely because of his past. He has even said that he’s aware of how drug addiction can lure a previous user right back into the habit; how he has met at least one priest – much older than himself – still addicted (at that time) to cocaine. (I believe he met him at one of his conferences.) In the talk in which he recounts this incident, he commented that he does not take his release from his own “chains” for granted. He also is not presumptuous. He is acutely aware of his constant need to “save his own soul.”
Yes, (blah, blah – not to this poster, to others) he “has a past” and some people do slip back into drugs and the attraction of money, yadayadaya. But whatever one’s personal opinion of the man, there are some things about him that are indisputable, both from observation and from the facts of his journey to and in the priesthood:
(1) He’s very smart, particularly in a pragmatic and practical way.
(2) He’s very disciplined.
(3) He is goal-oriented almost to an extreme. Again, unless you have truly listened to his talks, you have not heard, or are not remembering, the examples in his personal life – ***before and after his reversion ***-- which demonstrate such single-minded directedness.
(4) He is acutely aware of the clergy abuse phenonemon and precisely where that puts him, as well, in a categorical group of “suspects” simply by association. He further relates anecdotes, in his talks, of being “accosted” (confronted) in public by random people laying responsibility-trips on him (merely as a member of that category). He expands on that to reveal how disheartening it is to all priests, including himself, to be automatically tarnished by that and therefore to have to be ultra-careful to the point of scrupulosity, about physical contact with laity of any kind.
But here is the one factor that far too many people forget, in general, and now specifically here:
(5) Priesthood is actually a career.
A career, to most men, is linked with their very identity, as well as their manhood. Far too many lay people forget this; they forget how personally invested a priest is in doing a good job according to what the job requires them to do as a continuing condition of membership. Not to do so risks one’s career and thus one’s very sense of self, one’s bearings.
The man is ultra-career-oriented. So put it in “worldly” terms if you want to. Think about how driven he was as a high-flying accountant among the rich and famous, and then wonder how it would be logical that he would imperil his priestly career with some foolish foray into behaviors which already previously showed him were dead-end behaviors, career-wise. (By his addiction to drugs, he ended up imperiling his accounting career and losing everything.)
(6) Now he has not only a personal investment in his identity as a priest. He has a public persona as well. So any fall from grace in this respect would be devastating not only to his private self-esteem (I maintain that for all priests, that is what is more important), but also would be publicly shattering.
Saying all the above is not “casting aspersions” on his accuser. These are statements strictly related to him, and the logical probability or improbability of the truth of the accusations.
FWIW, I see him very much as a human being, a man with weaknesses just like every one of us (and like every priest). But having weaknesses, and having a “past,” does not necessarily equate to a greater propensity to devolve back into that past. Usually, particularly among those who have demonstrated commitment to the new direction, it contra-indicates a relapse.
