I’ve been to a party or two in my time and I’ve encountered friends who I know never light up a cigarette puffing away on a stick in one hand while holding a drink in the other. When questioned they would reply, “I only smoke when I drink.” Apparently the rector of Pittsburgh’s undergraduate seminary thinks that excuse applies to a wide-range of behaviors.
Discussing recent comments by Archbishop Edward O’Brien on the apostolic visitation of seminaries and on homosexuality among seminarians in particular, Fr. James Wehner says:
“He is being very general. I would not challenge what he said, but I think we need to be more specific. You can have an orientation and never engage in homosexual acts. And you can have some young man who has too much to drink and engages in perversions he never would otherwise. That doesn’t mean he’s gay,” Wehner said.
A friend emails: “So if you keep an open can of Budweiser— no, make that a bottle of an impudent young chardonnay—in your room, it acts as a get-out-of-jail-free card. You can take on the entire cast of Angels in America, and if anybody asks questions, you say you must have been a bit tipsy.”
Never mind that someone with a propensity for drunkness that leads to illicit sexual acts would have a whole other reason to be seriously re-considered for the seminary, what can the rector possibly be thinking? What normal heterosexual male suddenly finds himself a homosexual after having a few drinks? I’m sorry, but drunkenness doesn’t change your personality, it lowers barriers and impairs judgment so that you’re more likely to do things that are already in your mind.
This is the kind of thinking that looks for loopholes and excuses, not elevated standards of behavior.
