Addiction & Gene Robinson

Gene Robinson, the putative bishop of New Hampshire and personally at the center of our Anglican difficulties, is at present in a residential treatment center to deal with his alcoholism. Good for him, and I hope and pray he is successful in recovery. However, his letter announcing his personal state of affairs raises questions on the relationships between addiction, disease, and the will - and, yes, the relationships between addiction, disease, the will, and homosexuality. Reaction has been gracious and prayerful from all sides within the Episcopal Church, and no one wants to take his tragedy as opportunity to make ecclesiatical hay. Fr. Richard John Neuhaus, however, is a Roman Catholic and has sufficient distance to raise openly the questions noted above. Take a look:

"Gene Robinson of New Hampshire, the first openly gay bishop in the Anglican Communion, has been in alcohol rehab since February 1. There is this in his letter to his diocese:

Brothers and Sisters in Christ, I am writing to you from an alcohol treatment center where on February 1, with the encouragement and support of my partner, daughters and colleagues, I checked myself in to deal with my increasing dependence on alcohol. Over the 28 days I will be here, I will be dealing with the disease of alcoholism–which, for years, I have thought of as a failure of will or discipline on my part, rather than a disease over which my particular body simply has no control, except to stop drinking altogether.

One has the greatest empathy for people afflicted with alcoholism, but the logic is intriguing. It is not a matter of will or discipline but a disease of his particular body over which he has no control. One might imagine a person severely afflicted with same-sex desires writing something like this: “I thought of it as a failure of will or discipline on my part, rather than a disease over which my particular body simply has no control, except to stop having sex altogether and live a chast life.” The self-exculpating dismissal of will and discipline as irrelevant to disordered desires is always a morally dubious step. Bishop Robinson will now be a recovering alcoholic. Good. If only he were also a recovering gay."