Mark P. Shea's Blog, page 1293

A gaping hole in Fr. Corapi's story

From time to time, people have raised questions about Fr. Corapi's claims concerning his military service. It understandable since so many people somehow managed to all get the same impression that he had been a Green Beret, including his own order.

Here's a Wayback Machine capture of the SOLT site from 2003 in which he is described as a Green Beret.

Prior to ordination, Fr. John Corapi, Society of Our Lady of the Most Holy Trinity (SOLT), was a high school football star, blackbelt in Karate, Green Beret soldier, CPA, Las Vegas casino auditor, multimillionaire real estate businessman with a yacht, Ferrari, and home on the ocean. He eventually became a cocaine addict…destitute, homeless, and wandering the streets in Los Angeles.

Various other web sources from around that time likewise repeat the Green Beret claim, making it hard to see how these people got this impression that he was actually a Green Beret when he never made any such claim.

But in charity let us suppose they all misunderstood him the same way and mistakenly took his claim to have training in Special Forces or some sort of Green Beret-ish stuff as a claim to have actually been a Green Beret. Mistakes and miscommunications happen.

At any rate, it is well documented from Fr. Corapi's own mouth that Corapi says he had the Special Forces/Green Beret *training* but was injured and given a desk job. And so the basic story (for whom we have absolutely nobody but Fr. Corapi as our source--as is so common throughout all this business) runs as follows:

Father Corapi, a Roman Catholic Priest, was ordained to the Priesthood in 1991. Before ordination, Corapi, whose mother was a devout Catholic, spent twenty years away from the Church. He joined the Army soon after High School, was an athlete and became a Green Beret, Special Forces qualified soldier, often recounting his experience whilst training in Georgia; a helicopter accident kept him out of Vietnam. He later recounted his entire team being sent over to Vietnam and later all killed in combat operations.

Convenient that. The rest of his Special Forces/Green Berets class were all "killed in Vietnam" and he alone is left to tell the tale. And tell it he has, for years, as we hear in the clip above.

The whole "Special Forces/Green Beret training" thing is one of Fr. Corapi's most fetching tales. He has built a whole mystique around it. Here on this video, for example (at the 7:51 mark), he touches his lapel where he wears not a cross but a full-sized SF Badge, quickly pointing at the pin, and utters the words De Oppresso Liber," (the motto of the Special Forces) and adds "Free the oppressed."

You're watching Fr. Corapi's Conversion Story - Condensed Version. See the Web's top videos on AOL VideoThe problem is this. There is an organization called the POWNetwork, which is neither religious nor part of some conspiracy of liberals in the Church trying to destroy Corapi. It is, in fact, a group of veterans of military service who, in addition to honoring those who have suffered and borne the heat of battle, also devote themselves to researching the claims of those they suspect are "phonies". Their reason is simplicity itself. As they say:

Why do we expose those that lie?
Take a good look at this picture and then tell us an individual has a constitutional right - "Freedom of Speech" - to say he earned a Purple Heart when he did not.

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Pfc. Adam Bates receives the Purple Heart Award.

The POWNETwork made a Freedom of Information Act request for Fr. John Corapi's military records (which you can see for yourself at this link). As they point out, there is no record that Corapi ever attended any special forces training, nor was ever in Panama, nor Vietnam, nor Airborne training which is a basic requirement for Green Berets.

The military only documents that he had Admin Clerk training and served in Germany.

Now it may be that if you wash out there's no record of the training whatsoever. But shouldn't there be a record of the washout? Also, where is the record of the helicopter injury?

Frank Weathers, an actual military dude instructed in the mysteries of decoding military forms, writes:

That record of his service, for those of us who can decipher them, shows on the second page that he went to basic training at Fort Jackson SC, and then went to Fort Knox for Admin School. Then he shipped out to Europe.

No sign of his ever being based at Fort Benning in GA for Airborne training. No sign of his ever being at Fort Bragg NC, which is the home of Special Forces. The helicopter accident is baloney, unless he fell out of mockup of one and hurt himself. This is why in my post to the padre, I said he made all clerk-typists who served honorably look bad in the bargain, and that this helo accident was unlikely.

Dear Science Fiction Filmmakers

Give These Plot Points a Rest.

Why not make a film of Eifelheim or The January Dancer or The Wreck of the River of Stars. Does everything always have to a Hero's Journey to Save the Universe?

That Jen Fulweiler....

is one smart and healthy disciple of Jesus! Beautiful work, dudette! Keep the focus on God. The genius of Christ's Church is that it is rooted in tradition, not in the personal charisma of its members. The Holy Spirit is the soul of the Church. We just get to ride Jesus' coattails.

The Opposite of Love...

...is not hating people. The opposite of love is using people.

Speaking of prayer...

I would like to ask you guys to pray for a friend who is undergoing many severe trials right now (I believe there is a diabolical element of, well, coordination behind the attacks this person is enduring). Pray that they have the grace of Christ to continue on in the face of these trials, that the actual graces they need to know and do God's will shall be given this person, that their guardian angel and St. Michael will protect them, that they will put on the full armore of God, and that they will experience real and tangible help and love in their struggles so that they will emerge the stronger as a saint of God. Father, I ask all this for my beloved friend through Christ our Lord. Mother Mary, St. Jude and St. Mary McKillop, pray for my friend.

In keeping with focusing on God...

Steve Ray tells me some men of God are praying for and pulling for Fr. Corapi to honor his vocation. Good for them! Father, may all this issue in your glory through Jesus Christ. May we set our minds on you. Father, we believe in you, we love you, we hope in you and we adore you. We ask pardon for all those who do not believe, do not love, do not hope, and do not adore you. Mother Mary, pray for us sinners.

Prayer request

A reader writes:

Please pray for Tim and his family. He needs as many prayers as possible as quickly as possible. The doctor has given him 2-6 days. He has a wife and a baby. Thank you.

Father, we ask that you would grant you servant the grace of a happy death and that you would be close to his wife and baby in this dark trial and throughout whatever is to come. We ask that this would all issue in your glory through your Son Jesus Christ. Mother Mary and St. Joseph, pray for this family!

This cracked me up

You may have noticed a distinct absence of Corapi today

There's a reason for that.  I've said my piece (at least for the present). The more I have thought and prayed about this, the more I believe that the unclean spirit at work here is all about keeping our hearts and minds off God and on it.  It doesn't matter *why* our hearts and minds are on it and off God.  We can be passionate partisans of Dog or believe deeply that he is doing grave evil.  We can be fighting the good fight to defend a great priest who has done us many services or we can be trying to warn people of a wolf in the fold and a Pied Piper who is leading people to rebellion.

Dudn't matter.  As long as we are obsessing over this situation we are not keeping our eyes on God--which is what the spirit behind this wants: eyes off God and on yet another earthly distraction.

So, unless I feel something new is happening that requires more commentary to bring to light Dog's deeply duplicitous behavior, I'm gonna try working on keeping my eyes on God and doing the next practical thing--which, in my case, is to plow through a bunch of work today.  So ciao!  Let us pray for one another, for Fr. Corapi, and for all involved.  But let's do it by meditation on the Rosary or some other prayer that takes our hearts and minds out of the teapot tempest and places them in the Presence.

Love is not Feelings

Love is obedience to God.