Jim Corcoran - Your 15 Minutes Are Up

Let's Give it a Rest

It probably sucks to be Jim Corcoran right at this moment. I bet he didn't see this coming.

I said that I could empathize with him. I spent much of my life not feeling accepted, and when I did not feel accepted, there was a time when I felt OK at least in the church. I worked as hard as I could in my business, and to raise my kids, but I never felt good enough or accepted, or acceptable.

One of the things that was working for me at church, was that I had rediscovered a gift I had for music. I played piano and guitar in a folk style group at one of the masses at our local church. At one of the masses, we had played a particularly joyous song to end the mass, and I had been playing the keyboard that day. I ended the song with a slide on the keyboard, where I slid my hands up and down the keyboard. It was a cool ending to a neat song. As I packed up my gear and headed to the parking lot, the pastoral minister followed me to my car, and told me never, ever to do that again. I was crushed. It started a slow slide of a different sort for me in that parish.

I was the music leader for the Charismatic prayer group at the church at the time, and was struggling with a bad marriage. Some gossip started that at the time was unfounded, and what little security I thought I had, eroded. I made many bad choices along the way, for which I am accountable, but the skids were greased by gossip. It took me most of the years since then to recover spiritually from what happened then, to feel accepted, and above all to feel acceptable.

When I read about Jim Corcoran, this is what comes to mind, and it is painful for me to think about it again. So, I am praying for Jim Corcoran, and for Bishop De Angelis and Father Hood and their parishioners. My prayer for Jim Corcoran is that his next 13 years will not be as painful for him as mine were. My prayer for those who have spread gossip about him is that they should heed not only the words of Jesus, but also the words of Longfellow: "If we could read the secret history of our enemies, we should find in each man's life sorrow and suffering enough to disarm all hostility."

The issues that I read about that come before the Human Rights Commissions are not about rights generally, but about wounded humans, who need comfort and succor. How sad that they feel that they have to turn to the government for that. What a sad commentary on our society when we think we will get emotional support from the government.

And that is all I intend to say about that.

The End.