Today I woke up from a dream about a childhood friend of mine being collared for grand theft larceny.
Within minutes of waking up, I began thinking about the sin of stealing. I was going over how much music I uploaded and downloaded at one time before my conversion, probably thousands of dollars in stolen merchandise, except it's not quite so simple. I went out and bought most of the CDs I liked and wanted to have permanently ( which I then threw away when I became Catholic, since I no longer listen to rock music ). But I still allowed others to upload burned music off my computer.
My name is Mike de la Sota, by the way, in case cops are reading this and want to arrest me or slap a fine on me. Since I can't pay it, unless my mom sells her house, which I doubt she'll do, I'll do the time if necessary. Better now than in purgatory ( although baptism wiped that sin away, if I hide it from the earthly law, isn't it another sin? ) Belloc, too bad you're not reading my posts! I think he's a cop.
That is not the moral quandary in question, though. The even worse moral quandary is that I once knew someone, without going into any more detail about age, sex, station in life, or so on, who committed a $30,000 dollar burglary, or so they told me, in another state.
It has been a while since this person occupied any place in my mind, and I thought it was all in the past. As the movie slogan says "He thought he was done with the past, but the past isn't done with him!" Because it just hit me this morning, after my dream, that I could be an accomplice to this crime, the $30,000 dollar theft, since I have not reported it.
Do I let this go and chalk it up as part of my gruesome past, or do I go to the police, which could very easily bring down a storm of fury on my head? This person would probably love to kill me already, even before getting them thrown in prison, which will undoubtedly fixate them on revenge at all costs. This person, when I think back on it, seemed to be possessed by the devil and to be driven by an extreme hatred of God, with no conscience whatsoever. I'm not exaggerating when I say this person could easily be a modern figure of a Cain or Jezebel -- I say both names to leave the sex ambiguous. Like someone under a curse.
Not that I'm scared of their revenge. It's only God I fear. Well, okay, I'm a little scared, because if this person got their hands on me, they wouldn't just kill me. They'd make it count.
But I have to do the right thing anyway.
What do you say, CathInfo? Should I go to the police? ( I'm probably going to even if the site says "No." ) And if I do go to the police, to what branch of the police? To my small-town police station? Would they care about an out-of-state crime? I'm guessing that this person, by the way, fudged details of the theft, probably told me it happened in one state when it really happened in another, and may have lied about the amount stolen as well. Maybe the whole thing was made up.