padremike wrote:
Not my "pinched view of life" asswhole, I don't get to make or change the rules. You're both stupid and arrogant enough to think you can.
I got suspicious about this "padremike" character so I did a some research. I called a dozen mental hospitals until I hit one that said, yes, they had an in-patient who fit the description. I asked for details on this patient, and they told me this, but of course with no actual names, so as to preserve his privacy:
"A few years ago a fellow who called himself "Mike" was brought in by his sister, who said he was acting erratically and could we evaluate him. We took him in for observation. At first he seemed quite docile. He told us he was a priest so we took to calling him Padre-Mike. He seemed to like this appellation.
"After about a week disturbing signs began to appear. He got into a heated discussion in the day room with another patient, and they were just coming to blows when we intervened. After that he calmed down, but a few days later it happened again and this time we were forced to give him a shot of Thorazine before he would calm down. Thereafter we had to confine him to isolation; we could not risk leaving him unattended in the day room.
"We allowed him to have a computer with internet access while he was alone in his room. What he did with it we did not monitor, but we suppose he engaged in chat rooms and the like. Since these are usually anonymous and there is no possibility of physical interaction, we felt it was harmless enough.
"We called his sister and explained what we had observed, and asked if she had any information about his history which might bear upon the case. She told us that in his teen years he was quite wild, taking lots of drugs, engaging in seriously risky behavior, and so on - the usual teenage stuff but so intense as to be worrisome. Eventually he assaulted an acquaintance he had taken a dislike to, and caused significant injury to the point where his victim very nearly did not survive. Of course he had to be prosecuted for this assault. He used an insanity defense but lost the case and was sent to a mental hospital for the criminally insane for an indefinite period, until he could be certified as having recovered his sanity.
"Surprisingly, he was a model patient, quiet and compliant. He took up the study of religion, which seemed to provide him with a measure of happiness. After several years he was deemed to be no longer a danger to either himself or society, was given a certificate of sanity, and discharged.
"He continued his study of religion, and applied for admittance to a monastery where he could be on a path to becomimg an actual priest. However, the abbot took a look at his record and decided it was too risky to take on someone who had such a dubious past.
"This was the death blow to his hopes of becoming a priest. His mind could not take the disappointment, so he simply began to imagine that his dream has been fulfilled. He began to introduce himself as an Orthodox priest. His sister, who knew better, thought this was just a harmless gag he played on the world and himself, and went along with it.
"But it wasn't long before things took a more serious turn. Mike lived in Nebraska, where there are few Orthodox Christians; most are Protestants of one form or another, with a few Roman Catholics. So almost all the people he came in contact with were indifferent to his particularly narrow understanding of Christianity. Mike found this very hard to accept, and was soon denouncing most of his, and his sister's, acquaintances as heretics bound for Hell.
"At this point his sister had had enough, as she saw that Mike was destroying not only his own life but also hers. So she brought him to the hospital, as already described."
This, my friends, is a brief history of Padre Mike.