Posted by
KsReaganite on Sunday, January 07, 2007 10:55:01 PM
Both with disgust and disbelief I saw the MSNBC show ‘Broken Vows’ tonight. It detailed the case of a Boston area Roman Catholic priest (Father James Foley) who broke his vows of celibacy (hence the title) to have a long term affair with one of his married parishioners with whom he fathered two children. During one of these adulterous liaisons, the two ended up having an arguments and the woman swallowed a lot of sleeping pills to end up dying. Recently the Boston Archdiocese settled a wrongful action suit brought by the woman’s children against the priest for an undisclosed amount of money.
The Church was shamed, humiliated, and dragged through mud as it richly deserved for being oblivious to the action of this priest. But what about the woman, Rita Jennings Perry? Not a word was said about her equally blatant breaking of her vows as a wife and a mother.
Married to a very decent man, this was a woman who had a decade long affair with a priest. While married to her husband she begged the priest to impregnate her and eventually carried two of his illegitimate children. The husband was fooled into believing these two were his offspring, cared for them, raised them, spent his time and resources in bringing them up. The children themselves were denied the fundamental right of knowing their parental heritage and put their physical and mental health thus put at risk.
How unethical, selfish, and dishonest can a woman be? And how blind are we to place all the blame on one person rather than both?
As I look at it, Father James Foley and Rita Perry deserved each other. While it is fashionable to blame the Catholic Church and its priests for a lot of wrongdoing, let us be fair here in this case. Father James Foley is a disgusting blemish on the Catholic Church. And Rita Perry was one of the lowliest, dishonest, adulterous women that ever roamed Boston.