69 year old preist can't remember one night with Foley

[mtowngman]

By FRANCES D'EMILIO, Associated Press Writer

ROME - A priest acknowledged Thursday that he was naked in saunas and went skinny-dipping with Mark Foley decades ago when the former congressman was a boy in Florida, but denied that the two had sex.


Among the activities described by Mercieca in the newspaper were massaging the boy in the nude, skinny-dipping together at a secluded lake in Lake Worth, Fla., and being nude in the same room on overnight trips while he was a priest and Foley was a parishioner.


The priest was not quoted in the story as saying they had any "one night stands." However, the newspaper reported Mercieca said there was one night when he was in a drug-induced stupor as he was suffering from a nervous breakdown and "there was an incident he says he can't clearly remember that might have gone too far."

Doig said Mercieca had called back three times after the initial conversation and had confirmed that paragraph but would not directly describe the behavior on that night, claiming it was obscured by many years and his use of tranquilizers and alcohol at the time.

http://www.comcast.net/home.html

[MADem]

1. You forgot your link.... NT

[Straight Shooter]

2. If Foley were a Dem, this is how Rove would handle it:

He would issue talking points to all the media that Foley took advantage of an emotionally fragile priest.

I tell you what, if I go skinny dipping with someone, I'm not going to go to their hotel room. Seems to me those two were exchanging signals to one another, and Foley was looking to capitalize on the priesthood scandal and thereby deny responsibility for his own actions.

OTOH, the priest could be lying ...

[Xipe Totec]

3. He just wasn't a good layperson

:hide:

[ellenfl]

4. i find it hard to believe he remembers ANYTHING

about that time. i think i heard that foley wasn't the priest's only boy. unless he was the first, why would this old priest remember anything? and why would he so readily admit to any of this? seems fishy to me.

ellen fl

[Poppyseedman]

5. Not to defend anybody, but

remembering something in detail 40 plus years ago is a little bit of a stretch.

I'm not condoning what if anything the priest did or didn't do, but this is a pretty lame way for Foley to excuse his behavior.

You ask any two people to describe the same event 40 years later, you are going to get varied and different memories.

Foley had 40 years to work out his behavior problems.