A priest in Australia on trial for sexually assaulting a 15-year-old boy claims that celibacy is to blame. The 71-year-old priest pleaded guilty to 5 counts of indecent assault and 4 counts of gross indecency. He told police at his arrest that “If we did away with celibacy this would all go away.” Another priest called Father John Barry Gwilliam’s repeated assaults of the boy “an occupational hazard.”
What a load of bunk. Gwilliam’s reasoning sounds like the abusive husband who blames his wife or the drug dealer who blames the drug laws. It’s the clerical version of the “she was asking for it” defense.
It buys into the whole notion that sex is the most important, and perhaps only important, impulse in human beings, that which will not be denied. They think that no one can resist its pull, that if they do not find a “healthy” outlet by having sex (immoral, illicit sex even) on a regular basis, they will be incapable of forming rational thoughts, they will become slvaring Jack the Rippers who must, must, assault the closest innocent available, male or female, whatever their own orientation.
The reality is that the perverts long ago surrendered their wills to immorality. They ceased to bind their consciences to the truth. This is why Weigel is so accurate when he connects heterodoxy to the sex abuse crisis. When one has already begun to weaken his conscience by rejecting the Truth, then it becomes easier to reject the truth whenever it becomes inconvenient. The will becomes weaker and temptation becomes stronger, and suddenly you’ve surrendered totally.
But in our present victim culture, it’s never our own fault. It’s always someone else’s fault and we are victims, too.
