On The Tortured Torturer

An essay about the effects of torture on the human person includes a moving tribute to an Orthodox priest who died in my hometown last November. Born Romanian, he was a survivor of "the Pitesti experiment" --an intense brainwashing & torture effort cooked up by the Romanian Communists. It's too wide-ranging to summarize effectively, so I'm just going to pull out a little digression I thought was telling:

One way guards particularly taunted Christians was by telling them that Christ and Mary Magdalene had had a sexual relationship. Fr. Roman noted, laughing, that in Romania this constituted torture, but in America people line up to pay for it in movies and books (“Here in the land of so-called freedom—I am not so sure you are free.”)

Curtsy: Church of the Masses. She asks --a constant question at her site-- why does no one make movies about the experiences of the victims of Communism?