New monk and cow!

Reader AG at The Risk of Truth blog has posted a new monk and cow story! It concerns a naughty abbot who, under the guise of holiness, secretly pushed peasants’ cows over cliffs. He got away with it for several years, having convinced the archbishop of his sanctity. However, his plan goes awry when the Vicar General clues into the Abbot’s bovine fetish. You can read the whole story by clicking here.
To read other monk and cow stories, please click here.

The monk who misunderstood holiness

Among Eastern Christians (both Catholic and Orthodox), there’s a compendium of spiritual texts known as the Philokalia. It’s a sort of spiritual reader, collecting stories from early saints and other monastic spiritual guides throughout the centuries. What follows is one of my favorite stories from the collection:
Two monks were praying on the mountain when the first monk turned to the second and said: “I cannot understand why you enjoy such renown among the people for holiness.”

The monk who stole juxtaposition

Former Legionary priest Jack Keogh (aka Monk) has a new post up in which he touts the Charter for Compassion. Says Monk while discussing the principles of compassion defined in the Charter:

I invite my readers to adopt the charter as your own, to make a lifelong commitment to live with compassion. I think the principle is especially relevant when discussing the life and times of Fr. Marcial Maciel and the congregation of the Legionaries of Christ.

This request was preceded two days ago by a post Monk titled: Did Fr. Marcial Maciel’s “son” ask for $26,000,000?
Notice Monk’s use of the reverential prefix ‘Fr.’ despite all we now know about Maciel. Notice also how Monk’s headline zones in on the amount of money requested by Maciel’s alleged victim, without mentioning (in the title) the context in which this compensation was requested. And notice how Monk includes “scare quotes” around the word son. This is followed by more scare quotes in the blog’s third paragraph, where Monk states:

The congregation published a letter written by Fr. Carlos Skertchly to Carlos Raul Gonzalez Lara on January 12, 2010, in which he says that Raul demanded up to 26 million in compensation in order for him no to reveal “the truth”.

So it’s my turn to be confused here. Is all Monk’s talk about “compassion” merely cow patties?