My former senior warden is getting divorced.
She handed him the papers a week ago. She suspects he's been sleeping around. It wouldn't matter, in my view, but I ask. No, he replies. I had been having the occasional dinner with a younger Russian woman, but it was just dinner. That's all. Well, I said, I can see how she might make that judgement. You might want to apologize for your emotional faithlessness, in any case. I was careful. But I could hear how he was excusing himself. Why not, he might say, why not have dinner, and what if something happened, my wife's been emotionally abusive for four years, I need someone who won't yell at me in the morning.
He asked me to mediate. "You'll have to ask her," I said. "I suppose I could call her myself, but right now, there are lawyers involved." That evening, he did. She proceeded to list everything he had done wrong, calling this Russian woman a whore and accusing him of lying. She'd checked his phone bills and found some condoms in his bags. She said, "Fr. John doesn't really know you. He thinks you're great because you do all that stuff for the homeless and the soup kitchen."
He tells me she's been emotionally abusive. He needed some attention. Yes, he was feeling sneaky. Yes, she was a young, curvacious, European sophisticate. Of course, he didn't get the attention he secretly wanted. But the desire was there. Even if it could be justified - don't we all need a little love, some respite from abuse?
How easy it is to justify small cruelties. Or even just small lies, small examples of cheating. That's the nature of sin. Ask Scalia.
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