I Was In Prison And You Visited Me

In the Gospel of Matthew, you'll find a brief phrase that strikes at the heart of Christianity. It's about caring for the underprivileged, those who need food and clothes.

Matthew 25:36 also assigns Christians the duty to visit those in prison, to bring hope and salvation.

Nowhere that I've seen does it say that a good Catholic is also supposed to bring messages out of the prison from the prisoner when said prisoner isn't allowed unfettered communication with the outside.

And it certainly doesn't say anything about breaking into the prisoner's summer home to swipe a rare violin.

Father Eugene Klein can't be faulted for following Christ's teaching as he ministered to inmates at the Federal facility in Springfield, Missouri. Doing his duty as a priest, he was, and then he met Frank Calabrese, Sr.

Now Father Klein is facing some jail time himself, for passing messages on behalf of the convicted mobster. It's alleged that the priest also helped to set up a little scheme to get into Calabrese's cottage in Wisconsin so that the expensive violin could be liberated before the Feds sold it to pay part of the convicted hit man's various fines.

What the Feds don't know is whether or not Father Klein circumvented the rules out of some misguided sense of compassion for the mobster's family, or if Calabrese saw to it that the priest was taken care of financially.

Another black eye for the clergy, to be sure, but aren't all the Catholics out there offering up a prayer of thanksgiving that at least it's not another case of pedophilia?