I’m not sure why it’s less strange that it’s not a sexual thang with this guy:
After all three Masses on the weekend of Jan. 19-20, parishioners of St. Aloysius Catholic Church in Springfield, Ill., were handed a statement written by Bishop Thomas Paprocki.
The bishop explained that St. Aloysius’ pastor, the Rev. Thomas Donovan, “is suffering from a psychological condition that manifests itself in self-bondage as a response to stress.”
The statement was a response to a 911 call in November by Donovan from the parish rectory. In it, the priest tells dispatchers he had placed himself in handcuffs and asks police to help free him.
[…]Donovan’s hands were cuffed behind his back with the keyhole facing up, so he couldn’t unlock himself, according to the police report. He was wearing an orange jumpsuit and “a leather bondage-type mask with a bar in his mouth.”
The officers uncuffed Donovan, and asked if he needed medical attention. The priest said he was fine, he was alone, and that he “does this from time to time.”
I wouldn’t laugh so hard at these bastards if they didn’t spend half their time nosing around other people’s personal lives.
Xecky Gilchrist
Only one jumpsuit? n00b
aimai
“In response to stress” is apparently catholic code for “some kind of sexual thang.”
LanceThruster
Impure thoughts are a sin as well…but fortunately, the system is set up “to forgive you of your sins on Sunday that you will commit again on Monday.”
Ash Can
Hey, at least the pastor wasn’t voting for Democrats. (I knew this Paprocki guy sounded familiar.)
schrodinger's cat
Hypocrisy seems to the middle name of so many religious folk.
BGinCHI
I’m kind of impressed he could get into all that gear by himself.
Or….divine intervention??
cathyx
Did they check the closets?
cathyx
How did he dial the phone?
schrodinger's cat
@cathyx: Speed dial?
maya
If only there was an alter boy handy nearby with a key none of this would have happened.
lahru
The stress originates vertically between his belly button and his knees and horizontally between his hips and we are not sure why.
pat
I’m trying to see the point of handcuffing his hands behind his back. Seems he would rather have them in front where the.. ahh.. seat of pleasure resides.
catclub
@schrodinger’s cat: Butt dial
cathyx
@schrodinger’s cat: The police are on speed dial?
LanceThruster
@pat:
The torture is clearly meant to be psychological as well.
cathyx
Seems to me he pissed someone off right in the middle of the fun.
ETA: or he got robbed.
David in NY
Hardly unprecedented. Self-flagellation was practiced by monastics in the middle ages, and more so by the flagellants in the 13th and 14th century. Nice scene of them in Bergman’s Seventh Seal.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@cathyx: Yeah, check the Springfield pawnshops for a set of silver candlesticks
David in NY
@maya: He’d need a boy who’d been altered? That’s weird.
Omnes Omnibus
@cathyx: They can be. Most phones allow people to program numbers into them.
Mike E
Yay! Kay Hagan will vote to confirm Chuck Hagel, and all those dumb “Tell her to vote NO” TV spots will have reached the sewage treatment plant by now.
a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)
@David in NY: But was it so, well, technically complicated in the old days?
El Cid
The serious types choose double wetsuits.
David in NY
@Omnes Omnibus: Also. He was just handcuffed behind his back. Not so hard to dial a touchtone landline phone. In fact, if he’d been a little more experienced, he might have known how to break out of the cuffs — they have their defects.
cathyx
@Omnes Omnibus: Do you have the police on your speed dial?
BGinCHI
Turns out maybe Homer Simpson is the smartest dude in Springfield.
David in NY
@a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q): That’s true — a whip to one’s own back was the usual way. Seems to me the impulse is roughly the same as here, however — some form of self-mortification. But who knows …
evodevo
@David in NY: AND in Monty Python’s Holy Grail !!
LanceThruster
@efgoldman:
A really snotty silver spoon former Catholic schoolmate of mine was all proud of himself because his father was buried with then Cardinal Mahoney officiating at the service. The family has an uncle that was archbishop of a major US city who then was promoted to some post at the Vatican (though assuredly *not* Ratzinger’s ‘boy toy’).
He was a bit of a bully with a Napoleonic complex and always looked for ways to get in whatever dig he thought would get under the target’s skin.
I’ll have to remember to ask him next time I see him if he plans to have his dad repotted since the presiding cleric was someone who covered for a plethora of pedophiles.
Where’s the honor and dignity in that?
xD
Fwiffo
Actually, that doesn’t surprise me all that much. Like, high-power CEOs hire a dominatrix because they’re sick of being the boss. Sure, most also get sexually gratified by it, but some are just decompressing.
It could also be a religious experience thing. The whole self-flagellation, mortification of the flesh thing, like those Opus Dei hook belt things. And people with extreme piercings and stuff have like a spiritual experience.
David in NY
@El Cid:
HA! http://www.thesmokinggun.com/documents/crime/dead-reverends-rubber-fetish
Was trying to remember that.
Jason
@David in NY:
[i]Hardly unprecedented. Self-flagellation was practiced by monastics in the middle ages[/i]
You’ve gotta be kidding. Corporal mortification is a big thing [i]today[/i], among Opus Dei cultists. Now I don’t know if Pastor Donovan is a closet Opus Dei acolyte or whether he’s just doing this on a freelance basis, but Catholicism has always had the weird, creepy bondage thing going on. The secret bondage cult coexists with the secret gay subculture inside the priesthood. In the rare occasions where the mask slips and this secret culture comes to public light, the laity are kept in the dark with snow jobs like the letter quoted.
Omnes Omnibus
@cathyx: No, but I don’t get my jollies out of dressing up funny, get handcuffed, and them calling the cops to let me out. If I did I might very well choose to put them on speeddial.
scav
@efgoldman: Looks like they aren’t living up to their so-called standards on releasing the papers either. NYT. No one can find a new script today, all we’ve got are re-runs of remake scandals.
Keith G
No surprise here. Bondage and other S&M tropes have been part of the Old Church since the very beginning.
I one of the things that make it…well… interesting… to study.
Keith G
@Keith G: I love it. I make a typing f/u and WP locks me out of editing.
As originally conceived:
No surprise here. Bondage and other S&M tropes have been part of the Old Church since the very beginning.
It is one of the things that make it…well… interesting… to study.
FYWP
Maude
Great post title.
David in NY
@Jason: I was merely responding to Doug Galt’s, “I’m not sure why it’s less strange that it’s not a sexual thang with this guy …”
It’s just old news, really. Unless it was sexual or something.
Violet
An orange jumpsuit? He was dressed in prison garb? What’s that about?
I don’t buy this for a minute. The keyhole on the handcuffs was facing up so he couldn’t unlock it himself. How was he going to get out of that situation by himself, then? It makes no sense. Someone else was there and for some reason that someone decided to leave and placed the call on his or her way out the door. This is a cover story.
Schlemizel
No way this clown did this to himself. He hired a dom & either pissed him off, the dom wanted the ultimate humiliation or maybe the dom had been a sweet innocent alter boy once & has his own demons to work out.
Since he was gagged they should have checked his butt for santorum.
redshirt
It’s a Houdini thing. Don’t judge.
LanceThruster
@efgoldman:
So very true.
Another Halocene Human
@LanceThruster: Ha ha Protestant plant! Little did you suspect we get our sins excused on Saturdays. Bwahahahaha!
Omnes Omnibus
@Violet: @Schlemizel: I don’t know. People can be weird. I think it is quite possible that he did it himself. Possible as well that he didn’t.
Violet
@Omnes Omnibus: I know people can be weird, but the actual physical contortions required to do it seem to point to it not being a one person job. How old is this guy anyway? Is he young enough to turn himself into a pretzel or an older guy who might be less flexible?
Omnes Omnibus
@Violet: The contortions involved in getting one’s hands behind one’s back? Or am I missing something?
LanceThruster
@Another Halocene Human:
Very good pedantry…I am RCC turned atheist so I’d forgotten how they’d shuffle us through Confession on Fri or Sat (we did it as part of the school day) in order to receive Communion on Sun…but yes, I was referring to the more general xian notion of one’s Sunday piety being the source of Gawd’s forgiveness. Seems the chosen ones have streamlined the whole affair by making it once a year (and you get to feed ducks bread!).
Follow the gourd!
LanceThruster
@Omnes Omnibus:
I can step out of handcuffs to get them in the front (I’m a skinny 6′-3″). Freaked the cops rousting me in HS to no end (they let me go after their scare tactics did not work).
Darkrose
@David in NY: If he’d been more experienced, he’d have known that handcuffs are bad (they can really do a number on your wrists if you pull against them) and that never, ever, put the key in a place where you can’t easily get to it. SM 101.
Uncle Ebeneezer
I couldn’t help but laugh at this. But I do think that Greta makes an excellent point:
aimai
@Violet: Reverend Mustard, in the Sacristy, with the holy handgrenade.
J. Michael Neal
I’m disappointed that everyone here has decided to make fun of this. Not surprised, mind you, just disappointed. There is absolutely nothing about his explanation that is at all implausible.
Reading it, my impression is that this is something, like he says, that he does to deal with stress. It sounds to me like he has a plan and knows what he’s doing. This time he accidentally put the cuffs on upside down and couldn’t get out. And you know what? He had a plan for how to deal with that, having made sure he could call 911.
You think it’s funny that people have odd ways of dealing with stress? Lots of us do. In my case, I not only chew on my fingernails; I actually pull them out at the root with tweezers. @Schlemizel: remind me to show you what they look like next week. Yeah, my case is a bit extreme because I’m autistic and there is a stimming element to what I do, but for all we know the same is true of this guy.
I find this whole thread appalling from a bunch of people who like to pretend that they have empathy. Yeah, there is a fair chance that this guy’s problems are made worse by having to suppress sexual urges that are really pretty normal in human beings, but I’d think that that was something that would prompt some sort of sympathy.
Omnes Omnibus
@J. Michael Neal: I don’t see any reason not to buy his explanation; It may be something else, but his explanation covers the bases fairly well. People are weird.
J. Michael Neal
@Uncle Ebeneezer: Agreed. I see no reason here that this shouldn’t have remained completely private, no one was in any danger of being harmed, there was nothing illegal going on and I don’t even think that there is any real element of hypocrisy going on here.
Another Halocene Human
@LanceThruster: lmao @ your story
Another Halocene Human
@LanceThruster: We’re all individuals!
Omnes Omnibus
@Another Halocene Human: I’m not.
Another Halocene Human
@J. Michael Neal: Well, I posted Nelson Muntz up in honor of Paprocki, who knows how Jesus would vote (and so can you). Maybe I should have been more explicit about that.
Not all that curious about the priest in question, kinda pitiable, really, and I agree with the posters who raised questions about how this came out.
Heliopause
Anybody else think of The Ruling Class after reading this item?
Emma
@J. Michael Neal: I would be a hell of a lot more sympathetic if the organization this gentleman belongs to had not made it their business for persecute others for what they consider “immoral deviations” and “perversions”.
Mind you, whoever made the call public should pay for it.
Schlemizel
@J. Michael Neal:
Thanks for the offer but I’ll pass.
The problem for him is that be belongs to a society that enforces a strict code on its own & wants most of it for the rest of us. Repression causes some people to react badly.
As for being understanding I think members of some organizations sacrifice some amount of the assumption of honesty. If you are a representative of an organization deeply involved in lying about sex, covering sex crimes and enabling sex criminals I am quiet comfortable assuming you are lying about your own proclivities. If he were Larry the garbage man I’d give him the benefit of the doubt but he isn’t; he is a cog in a criminal enterprise deeply involved in ugly sex crimes so anything that even smells like perversion it is up to him to prove he is innocent.
Another Halocene Human
@Schlemizel: Yeah, but I kinda think you’re overreacting when this dude wasn’t hurting anyone except maybe the public coffers by getting himself into a mess (then again, maybe they billed him).
FFS, part of 911 calls should come under HIPAA. No, we don’t want to give the government free reign to cover up screwups again (like we did with “national security”) but certain items should be disclosed at the discretion of the persons involved. Not criminal calls because I don’t think someone really has an expectation to privacy when they assault someone, but suppose someone goes into a diabetic coma on the bus or an epileptic seizure and EMS is called–is that REALLY the whole fuckin’ town’s business?
Hm, just had a thought: when the AIDS scare got going there were calls to test people and publish the results and quarantine HIV-positive people, quite draconian and all that b/c of the hysteria, but I bet you unidentified epileptics have killed more people driving cars in the US than HIV+ wittingly infecting others (it does happen, sure), but there’s no call to smoke out all the epileptics and deny them driver’s licenses. Huh.
Used to tell a bus driver who was pissed about a service disruption by the same lady twice in a week with seizures–thought she shouldn’t be riding–thank god she wasn’t driving! At least she was trying to do the responsible thing.
Another Halocene Human
Hm, another thought, I bet a lot of celebrities are loath to call 911 with medical problems because the calls are public. Some of them have “people” but a lot of time that leads to sub-standard care.
Keith G
@Schlemizel:
@Emma:
Collective punishment? Is that fair or progressive?
Do we know the basis for this man’s decision to become a pastor? What if he is truly one of the “good guys”, one of those brave and committed souls who have such an important voice fighting for what’s best for the men, women and children of the faith he serves?
amk
@schrodinger’s cat: even so, how did he do it? fukcing miracle, I guess. pity it didn’t extend to unshackling.
redshirt
@Schlemizel: @64 Righteous rant dude. Right on. This is a criminal organization, it should never be forgotten, that preys on young children around the world – now spreading the practice in Africa, no doubt.
Omnes Omnibus
@amk: Put the bracelet on one wrist; put hands behind back; and put other bracelet on other wrist. I don’t see why this seems so complicated to people.
mainmati
@cathyx: Just what I thought too. And it reminded me of the Opus Dei.
amk
@Omnes Omnibus: thx dood for being so helpful. though I wasn’t talking about that.
Cerberus
It’s actually the jumpsuit that makes me more suspicious of the official story than the handcuffs. Putting people in orange jumpsuits to disconnect them from comfortable items to make a scene more intense is a common dom trick for creating more intense scene-spaces. But the point is to put you in a space where you can go deeper, which is why you pretty much need to have a dom to be there to help bring you back.
It’s possible it played out like he said, but I’m suspecting that something went wrong with the key and the dom dialed up the phone and ran so’s they wouldn’t both be caught out by the bigoted and repressive official organization they belong to.
PurpleGirl
@cathyx: Not a precinct phone number but 911. That would be good to have on speed dial.
Roy G.
This is a test for the True Believers – the ones who ‘believe’ (or swallow) the Bishop’s bullsh*t excuse. It has nothing to do with God, only with authority.
Since I left a long time ago, i’m not up on these things, but I don’t recall Opus Dei type flagellation involving Gimp masks. Perhaps this guy is just avant garde, however, I don’t see any cause for relief, nor sympathy, because I save that for the people who have been left outside of the protective circle this freakshow is inside of.
Freemark
Don’t see how than this is worse than whipping one’s self for Christ. Personally unless it can be shown he harmed someone else it ain’t nobody else’s damn business.
Schlemizel
@Keith G:
So when John Gotti said he was totally innocent even after his organization – which has a long history of criminal activities to its ‘credit’ – said he was innocent it was wrong of me to not automatically believe him?
Actually its a little finer edge than that. He was claiming to be totally uninvolved in exactly the same behaviors his organization is famous for. Had he been found in an orange jump suit, gimp hood and handcuff and claimed he did it to himself to relieve stress I might have believed that. Had the priest been accused of involvement with numbers running, prostitution and heroin trafficking I’d probably give him BoD on that.
If that makes me a not true scotsman I guess thats my lose.
Librarian
Another priest having sex in his rectory.
Forum Transmitted Disease
I feel so vanilla. When stressed, I just go play guitar for an hour.
Atticus Dogsbody
@Violet: Who was dressed as a prison guard? Inquiring minds want to know.
mouse tolliver
Isn’t everything in the Catholic church a sex thing? One of the most sacred Catholic rituals involves kneeling in front of an authority figure and letting him put something in your mouth that you’re not allowed to bite. Hello?!
Ritualism and cosplay is a defining trait for both sex fetishists and Catholics. But which came first first? Pun intended.
It’s a chicken and egg thing.
NorthLeft12
This reminds me of my recent contact with the Catholics Come Home effort by the US and Canadian RC Church. I sent them an email outlining my reasons for taking a leave of absence [ie. their persecution of LGBT, contraception issues, cover up of sexual predators, treatment of women, and the overall direction of the old, white, male heirarchy] from the Church. Got a long response “refuting” every one of my points with multiple links to articles, etc.
The basic thrust of the response was that the “Church” is the truth and the light and there is no other way.
ie. STFU and get back in line, dumbass.
LanceThruster
@Uncle Ebeneezer:
I agree entirely. Unless there is an extremely compelling reason to release the tapes or the details, it does seem counterproductive to the purpose of the 911 #. I also have no need to hear the trauma or terror on display in some of the calls played by the media.
Tonal Crow
Did the police find him reading “50 Shades of Pray”?
Julia Grey
Clearly, whatever was going on, keeping his hands AWAY from..that was part of the process.
You kill me, aimai.
In my living room, with the Internet.
fuckwit
Umm, does anyone not think it’s terribly surprising that a church which involves staring for 40 minutes every Sunday at a huge statue of a tortured, nearly naked man dying while nailed to a cross, would breed quite a few BDSM aficionados? Then eating flesh and drinking blood too. Nothing kinky or twisted about any of that, y’all.
That, and the CREEPY insistence of the men who run the church of being addressed as “FATHER”, even by grown men and women to whom they aren’t even related?
And the celibacy, that too. I’m sorry almost all religions I’ve seen are bizarre and fucked up, but the particular ways in which the church is fucked up seems directly related to the particular problems it has.
I’ve noted for a while that religions each have their own unique flavor, and seem deeply anchored in a particular place and era of time: Judaism and Hinduism seem like stepping back into the early Bronze Age, Zen like stepping into medieval Asia, Islam like medieval middle-east, Daoism and Confucianism like ancient Asia, and the catholic church is like stepping into Europe of the dark ages– gothic, bleak, morbid, creepy, filled with torture and horror and subservience and penance.
Yeah, self-bondage, big surprise.
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