Now that Anthony Mercieca, the priest who admitted to having "intimate" and "inappropriate" contacts with a young Mark Foley, has broken his silence, he can't seem to shut up. Nor, it seems, can he comprehend that nature of his crimes. According to The Advocate, Mercieca gave a reasonably demented explanation:

"Once maybe I touched him or so, but didn't, it wasn't—because it's not something you call, I mean, rape or penetration or anything like that, you know. We were just fondling."

"He seemed to like it, you know? So it was sort of more like a spontaneous thing," Mercieca told WPTV, a West Palm Beach, Fla., station, rejecting Foley's allegations of sexual abuse. "See, 'abuse,' it's a bad word, you know, because abuse, you abuse someone against his will. But it involved just spontaneousness, you know?

Um, who is this guy? Not only is he trying to justify his molestation of a young boy put in his holy charge, but he's doing so with made-up words! His degenerate ways know no bounds! This is like saying a rape victim liked it because she was moaning. Guess what, those weren't moans, those were screams.

Oh, and along the same lines of refuting Foley's claim that it was, in fact, abuse, Mercieca says this:

I would say that if I offended him, I am sorry, but to remember the good time we had together, you know? And how really we enjoyed each other's company. And to let bygones be bygones. Don't keep dwelling on this thing, you know?

Yeah! Just put it all behind you! Sure, you're career's in the shitter, you may face criminal prosecution, and even if you don't go to jail, you'll be ostracized for the rest of your life. The trauma caused? Feh! Walk it off. Remember when you beat me at Space Invaders? Now that's a memory to cherish...