Priests are not infallible.
But no, I don’t agree that it’s possible for someone to believe they have absolution if it’s withheld, unless it’s some sort of psychosis that allows a complete divorce from reality.
To me, a psychosis is demonstrated by the belief that a priest has the power to absolve you of your sins.
That’s interesting.
I prefer the DSM-IV criteria.
Maybe…if you made the second hand-nail much longer than the crossbeam is thick, put it through first, and backwards (i.e. sticking up, like a road spike), he could nail himself normally for most of the limbs, then just kind of slam/twist his remaining arm down on the last spike?
You’d probably be best to put some kind of barbed spike on the end of the nail to keep it from slipping/being pulled back off, which would eliminate the need for an assistant to bend it over or hammer a block on afterwards.
Now, the hardest part remaining is simply to arrange a system where he could raise the cross off the ground into a vertical post hole by himself. This could probably be done with a scaffold and a complicated block and tackle system, assuming he could pull the cable with his teeth for awhile.
This could be one of the great God conundrums – like could he create a rock so big he couldn’t lift it.
Could God create a cross that he can nail himself to?
Wow…horrible story…horrible man.
The amazing thing-many of these perverts were allowed to wreak havoc for decades-ex priest James Porter admitted to abusing over 100 children, in a period of 20 years.
The guy was a one man crime wave, and nobody thought-gee, maybe this guy shouldn’t be around children?
I remember when Porter was finally arrested-he was totally dismissive…like he was thinking, “yeah, I raped a lot of kids…but that was so long ago…what’s the big deal?”
A South Korean guy managed it last year. The trick apparently is to pre-drill holes in your hands so you don’t need to use a hammer for the nails. My old thread on the incident.
It’s amazing how often this story comes in handy, even six years later.
Truly, Terrifel is the gift that keeps on giving.
With a dash of two wrongs fallacy thrown in for good measure I’d say.
Sure, but nobody expects it.
Just had a thought… Is it possible that, as part of the original settlement, the bishop got to, um, keep the porn? 
If I was to put on my tin foil hat
When I volunteered as a coach for the Boys and Girls Club years ago, we had a meeting on information being distributed by an organization called NAMBLA
Apparently, the material was information on how to get into organizations that put men in positions of confidence where boys were
Boys and Girls club was three on the list. Boy scouts two, and number one was Priests.
Not quickly enough, apparently.
Unless you actually saw this alleged “material” and verified its provenance I’d take that supposition with a grain of salt. AFAICT, no sinister conspiracy on the part of a pro-pedophilia organization is required to explain the incidence of child abusers within the Catholic Church, which is about equally prevalent there as anywhere else.
And the sinister conspiracy that did exist—namely, the one on the part of the Church hierarchy to shield their erring members at the expense of their congregations’ safety—is perfectly explicable as a (sadly) non-unique example of in-group secret politics gone toxic. No hypothesis of infiltration by NAMBLA is required in order to account for the scandalous molesting-priest coverup.
“. . . wait, all that money, all that time, all that paperwork, and I don’t get to keep him?! :eek:”
I think you are largely unaware of the way people rationalize things to themselves. It doesn’t take a complete divorce from reality to find the smallest crack and cling to it.
I do not think it takes any mass delusion to put together the fact that only God can actually absolve sins and the fact that priests are not infallible to get to the idea that the priest was mistaken when he told you you did not have absolution.
It’s definitely no more crazy than those people who discount Vatican II and believe the current pope is not the real pope, despite the Catholic belief that God himself selects the pope.