WISCONSIN
The Northwestern
Written by
Mike Nichols
Unless you’re a king or a demigod or, as Mark Twain once wrote, somebody with a tapeworm, it’s usually a good idea to avoid referring to yourself with the pronoun “we.”
I’m not sure who Norbert Maday, a defrocked Illinois priest sitting in a courtroom in Oshkosh the other day, thought he was when he tried to explain away the things he did 25 years ago to two suburban Chicago boys on a retreat in Winnebago County.
“We’re just committing what we call a mortal sin and we’re sorry because of the weakness that, that we allowed, allows to do it,” he told a courtroom in garbled but, nevertheless, extremely revealing language.
Maday didn’t have a codefendant. His attorney, Ralph Sczygelski, said the former priest has some health issues but the lawyer didn’t mention worms. So I don’t think that explains the use of “we” either.
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