Culture Warrior Morse: Weinstein and Archbishop McCarrick Both Believed They Were ‘Entitled’ to Sex

The founder of the Ruth Institute, a pro-family nonprofit that teaches about the “poisonous consequences” of the Sexual Revolution, says disgraced Hollywood magnate Harvey Weinstein and Archbishop Theodore McCarrick have both lived by the “sexual revolutionary creed.”

Jennifer Roback Morse, Ph.D. writes at National Catholic Register that it is irrelevant that Weinstein prefers female sexual partners and McCarrick prefers male. What they have in common, she asserts, is they are both “powerful men who believed they were entitled to use people sexually.”

In May, Weinstein was arrested and charged with rape and sex crimes some eight months after his once-powerful career crashed as it also triggered sexual assault accusations across industries and the global #MeToo movement.

McCarrick, the former archbishop of Washington, DC, was removed from ministry following allegations he sexually abused boys and engaged in sexual misconduct with seminarians.

Morse contends the root cause of the sexual abuse problems of both men is the same:

Men like Archbishop McCarrick and Weinstein think they are entitled to sex. And they both have (or used to have) enough power to take whatever they wanted. The fact that Archbishop McCarrick’s preferred sex partners are male and Weinstein’s are female should not distract us from this most basic point. Both men live by the Sexual Revolutionary Creed:

Sex is a private recreational activity with no moral or social consequences. Everyone is entitled to the sex lives they want, with a minimum of inconvenience. Any sexual activity is morally acceptable, as long as the participants consent. Believing all this is called being “sex positive.”

Morse says that, of course, the “creed” is “a sham,” and that both powerful and influential men have been able to “manipulate the terms of ‘consent’ out of all recognition.”

“The sexual revolutionary ideology creates cover for the predator, especially the well-connected, powerful predator,” she writes, adding that it is the ideology itself that caused the #MeToo movement to stall.

Morse notes the starlets who criticize the exploitation of women, but who still endorse the ideology that objectification of women is acceptable. She observes how many actresses wore black dresses to the Golden Globe Awards to protest sexual abuse toward women, yet many of those dresses were very revealing.

These women “want to keep their pills and their pornography and their view of themselves as progressive,” she notes. “They want to be ‘sex positive’ and never be caught in the predatory trap that the sexual revolutionary ideology makes possible.”

Urging Catholics not to make the same mistake, she says living by the true teachings of the Catholic faith in terms of sexuality and marriage – even when bishops and priests do not – is what is needed for lay people to effectively eradicate the “poisonous consequences” of the Sexual Revolution within our culture.

Morse asserts bishops and priests who are discovered in sex abuse scandals or in covering up such abuse are enjoying “worldly double-lives” in which they have not only brought immediate harm to their victims, but are also likely failing to teach the Church’s doctrines from the pulpit.

“Their silence has been a contributing factor to the advance of the sexual revolutionary ideology throughout society,” she writes. “Their corruption undermines their brother priests who are living godly lives. And the scandal of the predatory priests casts a cloud of suspicion over innocent priests.”

Because of the failure of these Church leaders to teach the faith and its doctrine on sexuality and marriage, Morse asserts the Church is no longer the “guardian of traditional sexual morality.” Instead, “the Catholic Church has become a symbol of hypocrisy or worse.”

Urging Catholics to take matters into their own hands – even if bishops do nothing – Morse teaches the way to do this is to stop watering down Catholic teaching in their own lives in order to be politically correct:

Let go of any part of the sexual revolution that you are holding on to. Maybe you agree that abortion is wrong, but you think contraception is OK. Maybe you are one of those parishioners who complain if the pastor preaches on pro-life topics. Maybe you are one of the parents in a Catholic high school who thinks the “gay” gym teacher shouldn’t be fired just because she married her same-sex partner in a public ceremony.

“Let’s go all in for the full truth,” she urges.