Several years ago, the late Father Richard John Neuhaus said a crisis of “fidelity, fidelity, fidelity” lies at the core of the Church’s sexual abuse scandals.

Father Neuhaus’s insight has been reinforced by the scandalous conduct of Paraguayan President Fernando Lugo, who was a Catholic bishop until he renounced his episcopal office in late 2006 in order to launch his successful bid for political office.

Now, it’s been disclosed that Lugo apparently has fathered at least three children out of wedlock, by three different mothers. And two of the children reportedly were conceived before Lugo abandoned his episcopal office to pursue his political ambitions.

Let’s be blunt: Lugo is a cafeteria Catholic of the highest order. Even though he was ordained a priest and later a bishop of the Church, Lugo has demonstrated by his sexual misconduct that he regards chastity as a dispensable teaching that can be cast aside casually in pursuit of personal pleasure.

In fact it’s uncertain whether his actions in apparently fathering two children as a bishop are more scandalous than his subsequent actions in apparently fathering another child out-of-wedlock as a political leader. Together, these actions communicate to Paraguayans, Catholic and non-Catholic alike, in the most public way possible that fidelity to Church teachings about sexuality is a trifling matter.

Lugo’s abandonment of his bishop’s office demonstrated a similar contempt for the authority of the Church. The Vatican communicated its strenuous opposition to his plan to quit as bishop before he did so.

And in early 2007 Cardinal Cardinal Giovanni Battista Re, the prefect of the Congregation for Bishops, formally denied declined Lugo’s request to be laicized because “the episcopacy is a service accepted freely forever,” as Cardinal Re noted in a letter to Lugo.

This did not deter Paraguay’s faithless shepherd from acting on his political plans, however, so subsequently he was suspended from his ministry by the Church. And in July 2008, faced with the reality that Lugo was now president and showed no inclination ever to return to his episcopal service, Pope Benedict XVI acceded to Lugo’s request to be laicized.

The willingness to dispense with Church teachings that one finds to be personally or politically awkward — or both — is a common characteristic of Catholics who place political agendas ahead of their faith. And it’s by no means confined only to those who are on the political Left, like Lugo.

Lugo was unfaithful to his priestly oaths when he deserted his office as bishop to become a politician. And he has caused grave scandal by being unfaithful to the truths of sexual morality that the Church proclaims.

Like Father Neuhaus said: The Church’s sexual scandals are fundamentally a crisis of “fidelity, fidelity, fidelity.”