I still have to feel sympathy for him. He's almost right about something. He talks about women as irresistible, and he's right. No sane man would ever resist a woman*
Err, sorry, while having urges is normal, men or women are both perfectly capable of controlling themselves. While that may not be what YOU are trying to say, the myth that the poor men just can't control themselves when those temptresses are around is the foundation of much misogyny and a common way to exculpate rapists and other abusers. It becomes just some poor guys who couldn't resist. And it certainly is what that priest is trying to say.
Even seeing a woman naked, as in his question to the reporter, does not in fact override someone's brains. If I put you in a room with a naked woman and told you she has AIDS, I dare say you'd be perfectly able to resist her. There wouldn't be some kind of mental blackout where you plough ahead on instinct no matter what.
Again, it may not be what YOU were trying to say, but it certainly is what HE is trying to excuse. People using 'irresistible' in its metaphoric and very non-literal meaning, end up providing cover for those who literally mean that seeing a woman in a provocative skirt makes one unable to resist acting upon their impulses. Like that priest does.
And in fact he is talking bollocks anyway, because we can compare our data to similar times when women were a lot more exposed. Between 1961 and 1966, the hem of skirts went from just above the knee in 1961 to all the way up to the upper thigh in 1966. By the end of the 1960's, microskirts appeared, which didn't even completely cover the buttocks. At one point there literally was no more room to go up without transforming into a belt instead of a skirt. Then suddenly there's an abrupt inflexion, as the styles go maxi again in the 1970's, and women show a lot less legs. You'd expect that if there's a proportionality between how much leg you show and how likely someone is to be to literally be unable to resist their impulses, that you'd see rape incidence drop like an anvil in the 1970's, but that inflexion just isn't there.
but the Catholic Church has declared lust to be a sin. It's just crazy.
Eh, they declared any kind of brain activity other than thinking about how great Jesus is to be a crime.
In lust's case, though, I wouldn't say the RCC invented it, though. At the time the gospels were written, there just wasn't an RCC yet. And it is straight from the gospel. Matthew 5:28 says quite plainly that it's a sin, in fact even which sin, "
But I tell you that anyone who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart."
