July 2, 2005
QUO VADIS?:
A Casualty on Romania's Road Back From Atheism (CRAIG S. SMITH, 7/02/05, NY Times)
It started with laughter in this land of haystacks and horse carts and new churches, whose zinc-clad steeples glint in the sun.Just weeks after 23-year-old Maricica Irina Cornici moved in January to an isolated hilltop monastery here with her brother, she began giggling during Mass. By April, she had descended into madness and doctors at a local psychiatric hospital diagnosed her condition as schizophrenia.
But for the monastery's two dozen nuns and its eccentric priest, it was not Ms. Cornici mocking and cursing them: it was Satan.
They chained her to a makeshift cross for three days, trying to cast him out. She died.
"You can't take the Devil out of people with pills," the 29-year-old priest, Daniel Petre Corogeanu, told a Romanian television station during a four-hour interview taped just before he and the nuns were arrested in June.
The monastery has since been shut down by the Orthodox Church, Father Corogeanu defrocked and, with four nuns, charged with murder and depriving a person of liberty. If convicted, each of the five could be sentenced to 25 years in prison.
The case shocked Romania, and has dominated news coverage, with one newspaper declaring on its front page: "Romania in the Middle Ages."
But the death is more than simply a matter of misguided faith in the Romanian hinterland. It is a dark measure of the explosive growth that the Eastern Orthodox Church has experienced in the 15 years since the repressive regimes of the Soviet bloc disappeared, lifting the lid of official atheism off a spiritually starved people.
A return to religion in Romania and the region's other formerly Communist countries has in many places outrun the speed at which the church can screen and train clergy, leaving institutions like the monastery at Tanacu in the hands of poorly educated young men like Father Corogeanu.
It's a quintessentially Christian story, the actors just happen to have been playing the opposite roles from those they believed they'd cast themselves in. One of the most poignant moments in Christianity came when Peter tried to escape from Rome and meeting Christ walking into the city asked, Domine, quo vadis? ("Lord, where are you going?):
Jesus replied: "I am going to be crucified once again."Then Peter repeated himself: "Lord, you will be crucified again?
And Christ replied: "Yes, I will be crucified again."
"Then, Lord," answered Peter, "I am returning to follow you."
No sooner had Peter turned around than Jesus vanished. After weeping and collecting his thoughts, Peter understood that the words were meant for his own martyrdom, that the Lord would suffer with him as he would all who lived and died in his name. And so, Peter, bursting with new strength, returned to the prison glorifying God and singing praises to the risen Christ. [...]
It is said that Peter asked only one thing of his executioners: "I beg you crucify me in this way--head down--and no other way." And he explained that he was not worthy to be executed as had his lord and master.
No Christian would think someone worthy of dying as the Savior did, least of all Satan. But were Christ to show up again tomorrow we'd be only too happy to crucify Him all over again. Posted by Orrin Judd at July 2, 2005 7:57 AM
Did Harry send you this story?
Posted by: Matt Murphy at July 2, 2005 3:23 PMNo, but it must be what he was talking about. You can see why it would be big in his circles, like that art dealer thinks some propane dealer matters.
Posted by: oj at July 2, 2005 3:30 PMSo what's your point? I have no idea what you are trying to say here, that we're all murderers?
Posted by: Robert Duquette at July 2, 2005 3:50 PMI ask because I know he brought it up here not very long ago. That was right before he recommended a new book on Christian attitudes towards the Jews in 1930s Germany, which supposedly indicated that their attitudes ran from the genocidal to the merely horrifically racist.
Posted by: Matt Murphy at July 2, 2005 4:09 PMPresumably the Rationalists were pure of heart and never missed any opportunity to speak out.
Posted by: Matt Murphy at July 2, 2005 4:18 PMThe essential difference between mystics and schizophrenics is the number of people who take them at their word.
Posted by: ghostcats at July 2, 2005 4:35 PMschitzophrenics don't lead mass movements, manic depressives do, every time.
Posted by: cjm at July 2, 2005 5:55 PMThe apostles may be manic, but the mystics themselves are schizophrenic.
Posted by: ghostcat at July 2, 2005 6:40 PMNo, the mystics are apoplectic. The apoplectics are also the schizophrenics, who run the Federal Reserve System. It's the apostles who run the Trilateral Commission; the manic depressives are disproportionately represented on the Board of Proctor and Gamble. Duh.
Posted by: Tom at July 2, 2005 8:18 PMDuh, perhaps, but schizophrenics often have "spiritual" experiences which are remarkably similar to those of historical mystics. And not just Christian mystics, by any means. Suggestive, if inconclusive.
Posted by: ghostcat at July 2, 2005 8:57 PMTo switch to another topic, notice the interesting self-fulfilling prophecy in the Biblical passage OJ quotes. If Jesus hadn't said "I am going to be crucified," Peter wouldn't have turned around, so Jesus would not in fact have been metaphysically re-crucified with Peter.
Posted by: Tom at July 2, 2005 10:02 PMSchizophrenics? I thought it was supposed to be the epileptics who were the mystics.
Posted by: H.D. Miller at July 2, 2005 10:13 PMWhere was he going to go?
Posted by: oj at July 2, 2005 10:14 PMH.D.
The two are linked in ways not yet understood. There seems to be both a genetic linkage and a brain chemistry linkage. Epileptic seizures tend to be shorter in duration, but more frequent, than schizophrenic psychoses.
One of the defining characteristics of schizophrenics is a "thin" sense of self ... a thin subjective "boundary" between the self and the rest of existence. When that subjective boundary disappears altogether during psychosis, the individual often senses a bright light and communion with the Almighty. (Something similar seems to occur at or near the moment of death.) It's possible that mystics are schizophrenic, but more interesting to note that schizophrenics may have legitimate mystical experiences.
Posted by: ghostcat at July 2, 2005 10:42 PMgc, interesting. psychotropic drug use is often linked to religous experiences, as well. i guess i should have made a stronger distinction between mystic and charismatic leader of a mass movement. the former gets you charlie manson, while the later gets you winston churchill (and/or adolph).
Posted by: cjm at July 2, 2005 11:02 PMChemical intervention seems to be quite effective at breaking down psychological boundaries, but not very good at strengthening them.
Posted by: ghostcat at July 2, 2005 11:25 PMwouldn't the drugs they use to treat schitzophrenia count as strengthening psychological boundaries ?
Posted by: cjm at July 3, 2005 10:39 AMSo when priests beat a schizophrenic girl to death, OJ thinks of the crucifixion of Christ and how we are all somehow guilty of that crime. Somehow I don't think he would have the same reaction for this case.
Posted by: Robert Duquette at July 3, 2005 12:42 PMcjm -
Yes, but schizophrenia is much more difficult to treat than mood disorders (mania, depression, bipolar).
Posted by: ghostcat at July 3, 2005 2:47 PMgc: do you work in this area ?
rd: i am probably wrong, but my take on oj's position, is that when men try and act as God, they end up acting as Satan.
Posted by: cjm at July 3, 2005 3:08 PMcjm -
I'm just a reasonably well-informed layman, with a very strong family history of mental illness.
Posted by: ghostcat at July 3, 2005 5:36 PMgc: sorry to here that. when a person's mind is afflicted it is a truly tragic thing, for their loved ones to struggle with.
Posted by: cjm at July 3, 2005 8:36 PMcjm -
Missed me. Hit my younger daughter. She's bipolar and doing remarkably well on Depakote. Her very impressive willpower kept her going for about 7 years after she knew something was wrong, but it ultimately wasn't enough.
Posted by: ghostcat at July 3, 2005 9:13 PMgc: how much cardio exercise is she getting ? because of my work (s/w engineering) i tend to deplete my serotonin, and take st. john's wort to compensate. that and 20 minutes or so a day of cardio keep me +/- 0.5 DB of normal:)
Posted by: cjm at July 3, 2005 11:34 PM'So It Was True' by Ross was published in 1980, Matt. It isn't new.
The scandal in Romania was not that some bumpkin priest tortured a helpless orphan to death. That was a run of mill crime, otherwise not worth remarking.
There are two scandals here.
1. That after a thousand years or so of Christian superstition, the understanding of mental illness is about where it was a thousand years ago.
2. The more immediate scandal is that the metropolitan defended the crucifixion of the girl. You cannot argue that expansion of the religion has outrun the supply of educated priests if the head guy is just as ignorant and savage as the backwoodsman.
Posted by: Harry Eagar at July 4, 2005 8:59 PMBetter pray you don't develop a late onset mental illness in a newly re-Romanianized country. Could be dangerous.
But I thank you for reminding me why Christianity must be suppressed in the name of decency.
Posted by: Harry Eagar at July 5, 2005 3:59 PMYeah, oh for Romania's golden Marxist era...
No wonder people think I invented you.
Posted by: oj at July 5, 2005 5:07 PMyes, it was tragic how they shot coucescaeu because they thought he was the pope. guess they thought mrs. c. was mary magdalene