Where in Washington, D.C. is Reverend Moon?: Moon backs Married Priests Now group against Vatican?

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9/18/2006

Moon backs Married Priests Now group against Vatican?

Right: A match made in space -- Moon chose wife for priest Milingo, who said in 2002 he might have been "brainwashed" by cult.

Item:

SADDLE BROOK, N.J. - An African archbishop whose marriage to a woman chosen by [Washington Times publisher] Rev. Sun Myung Moon scandalized the Roman Catholic Church says the Vatican is demanding that he end his new campaign for optional celibacy or lose his authority in the church [...]

Milingo’s advocacy group, Married Priests Now!, has gathered about 120 couples for a strategy meeting north of New York City that will run through Tuesday. Before the opening dinner, he celebrated Mass for the men and their wives. Milingo’s wife, wearing a nametag that read “Mrs. Maria Milingo,” helped him clear the makeshift altar afterward [...]

Milingo, 76, has had a troubled relationship with the Vatican for years. Before his marriage, Catholic officials accused him of promoting African indigenous beliefs by performing mass exorcisms and healing ceremonies. Then in 2001, the archbishop married Maria Sung, a South Korean acupuncturist Moon chose for him, at a mass wedding in New York [...]

But in a packet of statements the archbishop distributed to the conference participants, he said that he traveled to Korea this year “to join the many Catholics and Catholic married priests who are in the Unification movement.” [...]

Married Priests Now! paid for the hotel rooms and meals of the couples, who came from the United States, Italy, Brazil, Mexico and elsewhere. Asked if Moon covered the costs, Milingo said, “This we do not talk about.”

In a 2002 book, issued during a temporary spell of buyer's remorse in which he'd left his Moon-assigned wife, Milingo claimed he'd been "brainwashed" by the Times publisher:

At one point, he says, Moon officials persuaded him to undergo a 40-day program of “catechesis,” in which he was not allowed to ask questions until the very end. In another part of the book, Zanzucchi asks Milingo if he had been drugged or hypnotized, and he responds: “I can’t say, even if I can’t rule it out with certainty. … Maybe they manipulated me psychologically. Maybe I was the object of a sort of brainwashing.”

Big giveaway: The Web site of Married Priests Now (www.marriedpriestsnow.org) is under construction. But the domain is registered to one David Payer, the Rev. Moon's Web master -- and a GOP candidate for the legislature in Iowa!

Domain ID:D126014808-LROR
Domain Name:MARRIEDPRIESTSNOW.ORG
Created On:17-Jul-2006 14:06:51 UTC
Last Updated On:16-Sep-2006 03:48:58 UTC
Expiration Date:17-Jul-2007 14:06:51 UTC
Sponsoring Registrar:Wild West Domains, Inc. (R120-LROR)
Registrant Name:David Payer
Registrant Organization:OMNI
Registrant Street1:PO Box 12088
Registrant Street2:
Registrant Street3:
Registrant City:Des Moines
Registrant State/Province:Iowa
Registrant Postal Code:50312
Registrant Country:US
Registrant Phone:+1.5152446664
Registrant Email:david.payer@iowalink.com

Payer's campaign site is here, and I've chronicled his adventures here.

Update: The registration has been changed to obscure candidate Payer's identity. Right now the registration info and phone number are the same as before -- they're the contact info for his IowaLink business.

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"John Gorenfeld: The first man on the Moon"
-- Ana Marie Cox ("Wonkette," Time.com Washington editor)

"Thanks to the superb reporting of John Gorenfeld on Salon.com and his indispensable Web page, Moon's shenanigans are routinely scrutinized. Maybe some of Gorenfeld's discernment will rub off on preachers and politicians."
-- Tony Norman, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette columnist

"The scene summoned the moment in Robert Graves's "I, Claudius" when Emperor Caligula declares himself a god in the Roman Senate; a fawning solon instantly offers a prayer."
-- New York Times editorial on the Crown of Peace scandal

"I am happy that our work is being challenged and improved in consistency, openness and coordination, by the accountability your spotlight demands. I am not talking about simply removing stuff from websites..."
-- Moon spokesman the Rev. Phil Schanker

"Instead of welcoming Reverend Moon, this government put me into prison. History will reveal the truth in the future and the American government and people will realize what an evil thing they did. What will they do then? They will bow down. Again, that is the way of natural subjugation." -- Moon in 1987

"A political movement basing its appeal on old fashioned patriotism and family values simply cannot justify an alliance with a cult that preys on the disintegration of the American family and advocates allegiance to an international social order operating with cell-like secrecy."
-- Rep. Jim Leach (R-IA)