Priest Shrugged Off Rape

Back in 2002, former Milwaukee archbishop Rembert Weakland retired from the clergy after it was revealed that he paid nearly half a million dollars in hush money to cover up a homosexual date rape allegation against himself. That’s bad enough, but he was also one of the many high-level priests who both knew about and attempted to conceal the rampant raping of children on the part of priests both under his jurisdiction and elsewhere. And like any disgraced scumbag in America, he’s decided to write a book about himself. In the upcoming memoir A Pilgrim in a Pilgrim Church, Weakland explains his lax position on child rape by claiming he didn’t think it was a very big deal. Oh, he knew it was a “moral evil”, but he says he didn’t know it was criminal. Furthermore, he didn’t think it would have any lasting negative effect on the victims, because they would either forget about being raped or “grow out of it”. Some rape victims are up in arms over this confession, even going so far as to accuse Weakland of lying, since it seems inconceivable that a man with a functioning cerebellum and at least two working senses could possibly believe it’s not illegal to rape a child. However, I’d like to posit that Weakland may be telling the truth. After all, he also believed that he could please an invisible man who lives in the sky by dressing in black and not sticking his penis in other people. Sure, he didn’t actually practice the latter half of that belief, but that doesn’t mean the belief itself is any less crazy. More details here.