waysider

"And, just maybe.....wierwille never let his mask slip in front of any of them." That's quite possible with Eddie and Donna, as well as Ray and Vera. Truly good people, all of them. But, they lived hours away and only saw what they were allowed to see. When rumors started flowing out of New Knoxville, they probably were fed the same propaganda as the rest of us. If they did know, they certainly never gave any indication to that effect.

My opinion is that VPW needed to surround himself with people who were beyond suspicion, people like Owens, Jess and George. When you think of these men, you think of wholesomeness. Whether they were wholesome or not I don't know, only that such is the perception that has endured all these years. Wierwille wanted and needed to associate himself with that perception to distance himself from scrutiny.

OK, got it. This time you'll be filling instead of removing. Little boy: "We got a new cat, Grandpa, and it's a boy." Grandpa: "Oh, how can you tell?" Little boy: "It's got whiskers."

"But then.....with spade in hand, I will be filling the grave with excavated dirt." I'm not real clear on this. Are you saying Ermal's grave was not filled with dirt from the excavation?

A parable? Nah, I don't think so. A comparison, maybe, but no deep, hidden meaning. You see these guys on the news who tell you about how some con artist got them to fork over their life savings and got nuttin in return. You think to yourself, "Geeze!, it must be embarrassing for that cat to have people looking at him, knowing he was such a fool." You wonder why he puts it out there for everybody to see.... Well, I don't know why.... Maybe he thinks it will keep some other poor shmuck from gettin' screwed like he did. Or, maybe, just maybe, there's something about it that helps him feel a little less foolish for having been such a fool. (My granddaughter, Clara Belle (Yep, that's her name.) said, "Gosh, Grampa Waysider, How's come you talk like a guy in some old Jimmy Cagney movie?")

Sometimes I feel like that old dude you see on the 6 O'Clock news, baring his soul about how some shyster took him to the cleaners and back again. It's embarrassing and yet a relief at the same time to get it out in the open.

It was a commonly held belief in the mid 1970's that ordination was reserved for those with gift ministries. Whenever we heard of someone being ordained we would try to guess their gift ministry. I don't know where the idea came from but I suspect it had something to do with the gift ministry teaching in PFAL.

Me, too. I'm still working on it.

Maybe he was the team Dr.

OK, now I see the discrepancy. We're talking about entirely different time periods and circumstances. As I said earlier, I became involved in 1972. I was already an adult. Because I was an adult, I immediately became involved in the mechanics of the ministry (ie: running a twig, setting up meeting places, lots of physical involvement.) I didn't grow up with it all around me. None of these things were evident at the local level at all. It wasn't until I availed myself of the 24/7 lifestyle of a training program that I began to see fragments of the things we are discussing here. And, it later took distancing myself from some of the Way dogma to begin to see things more clearly. I know people who are involved with satellite type activity, though I no longer know anyone who is directly connected to the mothership. More than knowing and not caring I think they simply refuse to believe the reality of what happened. Complacency is a much different animal than denial.

Spirit of seduction. I'd better alert leadership right away.

"What exactly was ever a secret about The Way? Any wrong-doings The Way did, the followers everywhere knew about. At least since before I was born." Being much younger than me, I can understand why it may seem that way to you. (I took the class as an adult in 1972.) Really, though, many of us didn't know much of what was going on behind the scenes. Sure, we would see this leader or that do things that appeared suspicious. Speaking for myself, I thought some of these shenanigans were one-off events. In fact, that's how LCM tried to play it off when he was exposed. I had no idea how widespread the problems were. And, you can't go playing snitch to the leadership just because you have a suspicion. I discussed that in another post, earlier today. (Just the Facts by Dana Fort/post #49) These things were carefully hidden from the rank and file believers in local areas. It took participation in a training program, where you have to stay in character 24/7, for me to even get a glimpse of what was beginning to look fishy to me. And that was just a peek. So, when you say "Any wrong-doings The Way did, the followers everywhere knew about.", I have to strongly disagree with you. Even as these posts appear, there is a remnant of the old-timers and some of their recruits who STILL refuse to accept the reality of it all.

"He was a mean man."

Time you'll never get back. But, hey, it was "free".

Cheeses haves cultures. The Way is pretty cheesy. So, yeah, I see a connection. (When "the big exodus" happened, would it be fair to say it was like someone cutting the cheese?)

Did you ever use your "free time" to catch up on marking your Bible? (HS/hs, dechomai/lambano, class notes, etc.) Just thinking about it makes me cringe and laugh at the same time.

Many husbands were negatively affected by this attitude as well. Suddenly, that guy who had been an easy going, compromising type of guy was expected to "grow a pair!" and be a domineering butt head. "Take Charge!" became the edict of the moment. Well, for many men, this sort of approach to marriage is contrary to their genuine personalities....or so a friend has told me.

There are 8 of them with med. schools in Ohio.

Lots of information.....most of it pedantic.

Life is seldom as straight forward as we would like it to be. Suppose there is someone at work you suspect of stealing. You have a pretty solid idea they are but you have no way to prove it. Then again, maybe you're mistaken. Maybe you've misinterpreted something. What do you do? Who do you tell? You certainly can't just blatantly accuse them. Do you approach a superior? Maybe the superior is part of the problem. Then what? This is the sort of scenarios that played out in The Way training programs. People who did speak out and seek advise from superiors were often quickly removed from the picture. It's really a false assumption that people didn't speak out. The "adultery paper" is but one example. So, you put those sort of thoughts on the back burner, and with little time for introspection, and in a state of constant sleep deprivation, they are eventually forgotten. These are some of the things that people don't always quite understand when they wonder why someone didn't "just say something".

Bingo! They owned us from 5 A.M. until midnight, almost 7 days a week. I say almost because we were allowed some personal time on Sundays to do laundry and similar things. There was precious little time for introspection.

From a FellowLaborers perspective: (We were also in an in-residence type, communal setting and were socially isolated from "outsiders".) For one thing, George, if you ever suspected something out of line was taking place, you had to be very, very, very careful about who you approached to discuss it. You were made to feel like you were at fault for even suspecting something might be amiss. "How dare you think such things about your brother or sister in Christ? You need to renew your mind and banish those thoughts." Even worse, admitting you have had such thoughts might get you accused of harboring devil spirits. Nobody wants to keep someone in the program if they have devil spirits. Know what I mean? So, part of it is a practice of denial in order to survive the environment. Looking back on my own experience, I feel somewhat foolish for denying the reality of things I saw that now are very obvious to me. I thought, at the time, that what I was seeing was a product of my unrenewed mind. That's what I was told by leadership. I was embarrassed to even admit the thoughts had crossed my mind. That's probably not a very good explanation but it's all I have at the moment. edit: I think this might be something like what happens when a rape victim tries to expose the evil deeds of someone who is held in high esteem. They become the bad person for trying to tarnish the reputation of someone who is beloved. Or so that's how it is often played out. So, they convince themselves that maybe silence is the best course of action. You are probably aware there is a high profile case similar to this that is getting quite a bit of news coverage at the moment.

I really just show up here for the cookies and coffee.

There's some kind of automatic moderation gizmo here that let's you know if you've said a bad word. Most of the time it works pretty well but it hasn't been perfected yet to the point of being able to wash your mouth out with soap.

I tend to agree. I don't think they were thinking into the deep future. They only saw as far as the next WOW year, Corps graduating class or however you want to categorize it. Damage control for the here and now. VP didn't really give a crap what would happen after he croaked. He had his cake and he ate it, too. Martinfail's problem was that he didn't really see the full scope of how the scam worked. Like a poker player who doesn't understand the nuances of bluffing. If I recall correctly, that was from a book that was endorsed by The Way and for sale at the bookstore. I know I read it but that's all that comes to mind. It was offered to us to prove that the RCC was corrupt. (Implication being that we were different/better)