This Priest is Letterman Hot, Sexy and Out of a Job.

                                                     Priestly Habits


The Catholic Church in New York, as elsewhere, has had little to cheer
about of late. So many priests have been defrocked for pedophilia that they
could put on a production of  “My Fair Lady.”

Into this grim media landscape shuffles Bishop McCarthy, a Westchester Man
of God, who admitted a number of sexual affairs with women--and
subsequently resigned.

Rather than being shamed and shunned like his defrocked colleagues,
McCarthy has been applauded for his masculinity. As if looking for any port
in the storm The Catholic Worker, a weekly Brooklyn newspaper,
editorialized that the Bishop “certainly made a mistake in having sexual
relations with women. But his sin is not a crime, like child molesting and
he deserves no worse punishment than counseling and a few months at a
retreat. His actions remind us that priests--well, most of them--are men
and are subject to the same frailties and temptations. To his credit Bishop
McCarthy came clean, resigned, and is not asking for special dispensation.
We don’t applaud his mistake but applaud his openness. Would his brother
clerics learn from his example.”

Bishop McCarthy has not yet been nominated as a candidate for canonization
but God certainly work in mysterious ways. How else to explain the fact
that the Bishop has become something of a poster boy for priests,
representing a time when their only sin was a little Western-position sex
and a lot of whiskey. As the New York Post noted, “More than a few New York
Catholics would be happy to return to the good old days when the worst they
could expect from a priest was a bad sermon or a long Mass. In our opinion
something has happened since Latin was banished to the back room and
seminaries became a reflection of a politically-correct, affirmative-action
country. How else do we explain so much child abuse, so much latent and
overt homosexuality, and so much watering down of the New Testament.”

A politically-correct American has been struggling with the
politically-incorrect question of why so much sexual abuse of young boys by
priests. The homosexual community understandably resents any linking with
the gay community and has taken out full-page ads in the dailies to keep
the focus on child-abuse.

At the same time the same papers are rich with articles about the
“gayification” of seminaries. From all regions of the country we receive
reports of homosexual preference being as important as the Cardinal Virtues
for admission to seminaries. At some schools sex with the Father Superior
is the only pass/fail entrance exam. At others it is de rigeur to wear
dresses to class and leather to bars.

Noted Catholic theological Dr. Cherry Stone cautions against “gay bashing,
especially in this highly-charged climate. Just because priests wear
garments that look like dresses and by Canon Law are obliged to be somewhat
effeminate, this doesn’t make a priest gay. Furthermore, if we are to
assume the consuming of the Body and Blood of Christ constitutes a kind of
gay cannibalism, as some have charged, then every participant in this
sacrament could be considered gay and Christ the First Gay Congregant.”

Dr. Stone argues that the very tenets of Christianity--humility,
submission, sacrifice--so central to religious doctrine, are being
perverted by simplistic arguments. At the very least we need a national and
global debate on whether gays would make better priests. There has been
entirely too much emphasis on sexuality. It is time to get sex out of the
confessional and give it a proper, scared place in the curriculum of the
novitiate.”

Not everyone agrees. The Queens, New York-based “Jocks for Jesus,” thinks
the church should go back to a time when priests were “one of the
boys”--not “in the boys” as their web site jocksfor jesus/gaysatbay.com
implies. Jocks for Jesus encourages priests to go to the gym and buff up so
everyone knows they are thoroughly masculine. The site has recommended a
special Sunday collection--the Buff Box--for such purpose.

In the meantime Bishop McCarthy has become a fixture on talk television. On
David Letterman he read the top reasons why someone would want to be a
priest:

10. You can drink cheap wine for breakfast..
9. Confessionals are dark, sound and stain-proof.
8. Wearing black is always an option.
7. You are the first to know when a choir boy’s voice is breaking.
6. You get to examine a lot of tongues.
5. The nuns are in a building across the street.
4.  There is no need to buy “Confessions of a Serial Rapist.”
3.  You don’t have to wear your collar in bars.
2. The Pope is always in another country.
1. Every conversation you have with a minor is confidential.

The good Bishop plans to write a book, tentatively titled “Priestly
Habits.”