I remember things happening a certain way after my husband died. I’m sure I didn’t do X, Y, and Z. I’m sure I did do A, B, and C. And yet I also know that I remember all sorts of things that aren’t true, even when I wasn’t under the most intense stress of my life. Memories are incredibly fallible, incredibly malleable, incredibly slippery things. I’m aware of my own shortcomings in the memory department. Lots of people simply aren’t.
It’s a perfectly valid description for how it’s been characterised by e.g Thudlow (my highlights):
I *don’t *believe that actually happens to people who aren’t actually physically damaged- I can believe she can not remember, but I don’t believe she would then recreate the entire episode with her being firm and resolute, like she claimed. She’ll just have a memory gap. I’m happy to be shown non-anecdotal evidence to the contrary, for people filling in entire hours worth of made-up behaviour by themselves, just by a mentally traumatic event
Was this immediately after the event?
I agree completely. My memory isn’t perfect either. But there’s a difference between long-term recall and a three-week gap.
I do not air the video - yet. I do buy it, and keep it on hand. I observe her behavior and effect on society. Once she’s had a few months to grieve, if I (great investigative journalist that I am) find that she is fleecing people (and let’s face it, they usually are) then I’d run the sermon piece next to the God-cursing piece.
In general, I hold that people who are grieving get just as much leeway as you can possibly give them. If Celtling died suddenly, I’d be speaking in tongues - using curse words so foul only God and I could understand them! I hope I wouldn’t lie about it later, but there’s also the fallibility of memory to consider. Memory is funny, and especially under such traumatic circumstances.
But if she was later found to be doing something untoward, yes, I’d use the tape to expose her lack of integrity, and I’d make it very obvious that we were talking about the lie, not the grief response.
I don’t know what I got wrong. I do know that I have gotten things wrong when asked about them minutes or hours later.
I’ve made posts in threads, had someone challenge me, thought “That is NOT what I SAID,” then went back and discovered that it was, actually, exactly what I said.
It’s not often in life that we have such clear evidence of how we remember what we want to remember, or shade the truth, or elide whole statements, but I know it has happened. And it is more likely to happen, in my experience, when I am upset, stressed, angry, or devastated by grief.
Ordinarily I would say something about fools and Tooks here, but instead I’ll just quote a good PTSD definiton. This comes from the Nebraska Department of Veterans Affairs
[QUOTE=what did I JUST SAY? Why do you ask these questions when you know you’ll be mocked for it? I bet you’d call General Zod a poncy git to his fac!]
What is PTSD (Posttraumatic Stress Disorder)?
Again: Nobody’s used that term but you, and the person’s suggesting that Jacquie is suffering from psychological trauma have not described anything like PTSD.
Or she’ll have confabulated a memory into one she can bear. I’ve seen that happen. My son’s mother has an entirely different recollection of several pertinent events regarding his death than either I or my younger sister do. She’s not a liar; she just needs to believe something else.
In other matters, what good do you envision being done by exposing Jacquie’s outburst to the world?
Who said anything about made up behavior? She just needs to not remember what she was doing during the hour or so immediately after her daughter’s death, and assume that the strong faith that she had before the death, and the strong faith she had during the grieving process, was also present during those few traumatic hours where her memories aren’t so clear.
That is not intended to mean you will never feel pain, anguish, or temptation to despair (in either the Catholic or profane sense), but rather that if you lean on your faith, you will find the strength to persevere.
Faith is not a panacea for all the world’s ills, anymore than confession is a Get Out of Hell Free card. Both are based on a deep personal commitment.
Would I, Saint Cad, air it? Not in a billion years. I lost my daughter at 3 years old through a sudden accident and I can tell you that through the grief of losing a child you do many irrational & hypocritical things. I got active with the Church again but would sit in the pew berating Jesus because he saved other people (often on a whim) so why didn’t he save my daughter. It is a mindset you truly cannot understand unless you have been there. If you have not lost a child, you cannot understand the context of that video.
Would I, average American, air it? Why not? Why is it wrong for a religious person to question God and their religion? Indeed isn’t it calling our faith into question what makes it stronger? I get worried about people who are unquestioning in their belief. “Oh it is what the Pope/my rabbi/my pastor/Allah says so I cannot have individual thought beyond that.” seems wrong somehow. As you can tell I would not use it to hurt the Reverend but rather create a discussion on what it means to question faith in our darkest time.
I agree I was the first to use the actual term, that’s not the issue
Yes, they have. From your own cite, my bolding:
I’m not saying this can’t happen. I’m saying I don’t believe this is truly an unconscious process.
Exposing hypocrisy in those who have the ability to influence large masses of people is a good.
i.e. made up, rather than saying “I was so shocked i don’t remember”
I don’t mean to be rude or invasive, but it sounds like you have memory issues even if you’re not stressed. That isn’t the setup I’m getting from the OP at all.
Depends. If the Lord of Hosts IS in fact those things, then it’s simply an inventory of some of His properties.
Otherwise, yeah, probably blasphemy.
So the Catholic Church is supposed to be sure to give non-Catholic-inclusive definitions to all their theological terms (I’ma go out on a limb and presume that the megachurch with the lady pastor isn’t an RCC congregation)?
I air the video, and I do it without destroying my program. How and why? I’m happy to address those questions.
How: Quite simply, through framing. This is not the juicy and salacious story of the hypocrisy of Jacqueline Jamison; it’s the juicy and salacious investigative report into the sleazy hospital that invades the privacy of its patients and their loved ones, AND an expose of the sleazy hospital employee who tried to sell out the grieving preacher.
Of course, I also get a follow-up story with Rev. Jamison, the tone of which will be determined largely by how my audience responds to the revelations concerning her actions.
Why: Oh, that’s an easy one. As the managing edotor of a TV newsmagazine program, I am, by definition, scum in humanoid form. Acting like scum is not only my job; it’s my nature.
We all do. Some of us are more aware of it than others. See any science done around eyewitnesses, for example.
Lotta hostility towards religion in this thread. What a surprise.
Look, Jacquie isn’t a hypocrite. She isn’t a liar. She’s a woman who’s lost a child. She’s also a minister with a large congregation who appears from time to time on television.
I think some posters in this thread are thinking about it like this:
- Jacquie is religious and in fact is a minister.
- Therefore, Jacquie is a hypocrite.
So anything Jacquie says or does is seen through that lens. Jacquie is in pain and despairing and angry after the death of her child? Hypocrisy. Jacquie gives a sermon about faith and acceptance of God’s will? Hypocrisy, and it proves that her faith is at best an illusion and probably a lie.
Too many people seem to be insisting that Jacquie be held to a higher standard than the rest of the human race.
TrueCelt would keep the video, and monitor Jacquie for acceptable (to him/her) behavior:
MrDibble would air the video, for sure. “Hell yes,” he says, he considers her a hypocrite.
This grieving woman seems to be held by some to a ridiculously high standard, higher that I’d bet most of us hold ourselves to. Just because she’s a religious figure. There’s no evidence that she’s a con artist (unless you believe all religion is a con) or a crook or a cultish manipulator of people or anything like that, just that she’s a pastor.
Actually, I’m thinking of it like this.
She lost a child. She screamed at God. She said "Why did you take my baby? “Why did you take my baby? I hate you, you selfish, evil mothrfucker! I hate you, God! I HATE YOU!”
Then she went on TV and said that she was never angry and that she never doubted.
If she remembers these events, she’s lying. Because she was angry (“I hate you, you selfish, evil motherfucker! I hate you, God! I HATE YOU!”) and she doubted “you selfish, evil motherfucker!”
I don’t think she has to be consciously lying. But if she remembers what she said and did, she’s lying.
I think it’s not just because she’s a pastor but that she’s a nationally broadcast televangelist, and most of us, including those of us who are ourselves religious, have learned over the past few decades to be suspicious of such people.
But it’s her (and other televanglists) that establish that high standard. Their whole schtick is how much more faithful they are than the ordinary schlub.