“Rachmones” for Foley

I feel no pity whatsoever for Foley's violation of the public trust, nor

his selfish and cold-blooded decision to satisfy his sexual urges at a child's
expense.  But for a man whose religion, whose family, whose entire community seem to
have left him steeped in self-disgust? I wish I could enjoy all this. But I just can't.

How should a Christian feel about Mark Foley?

As a Democrat, I should be completely unconflicted – and absolutely gleeful.
One of their guys got caught with his hand in an especially nasty cookie jar.
Party leadership went into full-scale cover-up mode. The unsavory story came out
at an especially opportune political moment. And the whole Republican "We are
the Party of Family Values" riff was revealed, once again, as a self-serving,
hypocritical lie.

Cool.

But somehow, I'm not enjoying all this very much. Because at the heart of
this dirty little scandal is a man who apparently has lived his entire life
suffused with guilt and shame about who he is and what he feels.

I've had enough experience with minor-league self-loathing that I find it
painful to imagine how Mark Foley must have felt, every waking minute of his
life. I've had enough experience with temptation that I can imagine how he must
have felt every time he sat down at that computer keyboard to send ugly and
damaging messages to teenaged boys – to children.

Do I defend his actions in any way? Absolutely not. I'm the mother of a
teenager. I know how vulnerable they are, and I am bone-marrow disgusted by
adults who prey on the developing sexuality of adolescents.

But then I think of Mark Foley sitting there alone at night, sending out
message after dirty message with the invisible subheading, "Please catch me.
Please stop me. Please punish me." And my contempt is laced with some pity for a
child of God so disgusted by himself, and by the human sexuality that I consider
to be a gift of God.

In talking about this with a friend yesterday, I said I couldn't help feeling
some rachmones for Foley. He wasn't familiar with the expression, so I
explained that it's a Yiddish word that translates roughly as compassion, but
with an extra heart-squeeze.

I feel no pity whatsoever for Foley's violation of the public trust, nor
his selfish and cold-blooded decision to satisfy his sexual urges at a child's
expense.

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But for a man whose religion, whose family, whose entire community seem to
have left him steeped in self-disgust?

I wish I could enjoy all this. But I just can't.