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Bill Clinton Criticizes Catholic Church SexScandal
Saturday, June 22, 2002
Clinton Criticizes Catholic Church Sex Scandal
Ex-president Bill Clinton criticized the Catholic Church in off-the-record remarks at a recent dinner in New York City, according to an eyewitness who was on hand, observing that the same church officials who were tough on him during the Monica Lewinsky scandal now have to deal with a sex scandal of their own.
"I was at a dinner with him a couple of weeks ago," WABC Radio's Mark Simone said Saturday. "Bill Clinton is there and everybody starts talking about the Catholic Church - the priests, the scandal, and how terrible it all is."
Simone described what happened next.
"In front of everybody, Clinton starts talking about how he's so sorry for the church and the scandal and all that. But then he starts to get a little bitter and he starts to say that, well, he's not all that sorry because when he had his problems [he recalled] how awful the church was to him - how they didn't stand by him."
Clinton then complained that church officials had once canceled their annual Al Smith Dinner, which is usually attended by the nation's top political dignitaries, just to avoid having to invite him, according to the radio talker's account.
"He looks at the whole room of people," said Simone, "and he was being serious. And he said, 'You know they even canceled the Al Smith Dinner one year just cause they didn't want to have the likes of me on the dais.'"
Skeptical about Clinton's claim, Simone said he decided to check it out.
"In this room there are a number of people who are also on that dais every year," the radio host recalled. "So I said to them, 'They never canceled an Al Smith dinner - did they?"
No one had any recollection of the event ever being cancelled, Simone said.
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