His Spiritual Counseling Continues, Clinton Says

More than a year after admitting to an extramarital affair, President Clinton continues to undergo spiritual counseling--an experience that he finds “not always comfortable,” he said Tuesday.

At the annual White House prayer breakfast, Clinton also expressed gratitude for the “unmerited forgiveness” that he says he has received from his wife, daughter, staff and “the legions of American people.”

With First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton looking on, the president remarked: “Last year was one of the most difficult years in my life and this occasion, because it has come to mean so much to me, was a very difficult one. For those of you who were part of that, I want to express my particular appreciation.”

It was at the prayer breakfast in 1998 that Clinton issued his most heartfelt apology for his affair with former White House intern Monica S. Lewinsky.

On Tuesday, the president quickly moved on to talk at length about reducing violence in the lives of children, calling on Congress to enact further gun control legislation and pass a measure aimed at broadening the reach of hate-crime laws.

Clinton said he concluded long ago that “we’re in the fix we’re in because we don’t do enough to keep guns out of the hands of criminals and children, because we don’t do enough to lead our children away from violent paths into positive paths and because we don’t do enough to intervene in the lives of people who are disturbed, angry, unstable, mentally ill before it’s too late.”

Referring to counseling for the mentally disturbed, the president said that many men “are still really hung up about asking for help. I know about that. That’s a hard thing for men to do. I know about that.”

Clinton publicly thanked the three clergymen who have “kept their word to meet with me over the last year--both to help me and to hold me accountable.”

Two of them attended the session--Philip Wogaman of the Foundry Methodist Church in Washington and the Rev. Gordon MacDonald of the Grace Chapel Protestant Church in Lexington, Mass. The third is the Rev. Tony Campolo, a Baptist pastor in St. Davids, Pa. He did not attend the breakfast.

“I also want you to know that we are continuing our work,” Clinton said. “It is interesting and not always comfortable but always rewarding.”

Later in the day, White House Press Secretary Joe Lockhart declined to discuss the president’s remarks.

“I have no further insight to what he said. I’ll leave you to interpret it,” he said. Lockhart added that he does not know how often Clinton meets with the clergymen.

In response to another question, Lockhart said that relations between Clinton and the Republican Congress have “returned to normal” after the GOP’s failed attempt to remove Clinton from office on charges stemming from the president’s effort to hide his affair with Lewinsky.

“I think that what we have now is . . . a good old-fashioned policy debate,” Lockhart said.