Practice What You Fuck
I know this was blogged earlier, but I don't care...
Rev Travis Clark, 37, is accused of having a threesome with adult film actress Mindy Dixon, 41, and 23-year-old Melissa Cheng at the Saints Peter and Paul Roman Catholic Church in Louisiana on September 30.
The priest was allegedly caught by a passer-by who noticed the lights were on in the church after hours.
.
.
You know me... I don't judge.
So I invite you to click on the link, read the sordid details of this CONSENSUAL rendezvous between these 3 adults, and make your own decision.
But you know what my takeaway is here?... There are actually 2.
1. It is so refreshing to read a story about a perverted priest that doesn't end with the picture of a trembling 11-year-old boy wrapped in a blanket in a police station pointing to the places on a doll where Fr. Thornton touched him.
Advertisement
(a not-so-veiled dig at my good friend Jerry Thornton there)
2. Priests should be married.
Why should you care what I think?
Well, here are a couple of quick facts about me:
- I come from a strong Irish-Catholic family (as opposed to being from weak Italian-Jews?)
- I am currently a quasi-practicing Catholic.
- I was a non-diddled altar boy for just over 5 years.
- My 3 kids have zero choice over what religion they will follow (because they are kids, and they don't count... yet), and will receive all the sacraments from Baptism through Confirmation while under my roof... After that, they can pray to whatever fuck diety they prefer.
So... As you can see... I have had a vested interest in the Catholic religion for a very long time, AND I continue to be involved.
"Wait a sec... Back up. Back up... What's a sacrament, Large?"
Excellent question, heathen.
According to dictionary.com, a sacrament is "a visible sign of inward grace, especially one of the solemn Christian rites considered to have been instituted by Jesus Christ to symbolize or confer grace."
I am not sure what the fuck that means, so in layman's terms, I can tell you a sacrament is a hurdle you have to jump over on your way to living and dying as a good Christian.
The seven sacraments of Catholicism are baptism, communion, penance, confirmation, marriage, anointing of the sick, and holy orders.
Baptism is the holy dunk. Communion is the bread and wine. Penance is the confession of sins. Confirmation is something. Marriage is a bad idea. Anointing of the sick is self-explanatory. And Holy Orders is when someone becomes a priest, bishop, or maybe a deacon.
Penance is the one that we are in the middle of now, and, let me tell you... It is AWESOME.
The traditional idea of penance involves a parishioner stepping into a closet-sized confessional and then confessing their sins to a priest, who is hidden in an adjacent closet... Hopefully, not masturbating.
The priest then forgives you of your sins and gives you a list of prayers you need to say, or else the divine forgiveness will not take.
But there is another option.
Instead of using the creepy anonymous confessional, a parishioner can opt to confess his/her sins face-to-face with the priest.
This is an option that is typically chosen by the very old, the very lonely, and/or the very strange... Since I check all three of those boxes, I exclusively choose the face-to-face option when I need to spiritually kick some skeletons out of my sin-packed closet.
I walk in, sit down, and just talk to the priest about all the shit I have been doing that I think is wrong.
This is laughable to most... Religion, in general, is stupid, and Catholocism, more specifically, hasn't had a good headline in quite some time.
But I just use it as a forum to air out some shit that's on my mind. I operate from a position of power throughout, meaning, I dictate what the priest and I discuss, and, to be honest, I really don't listen to his feedback... I am selfishly there just to get shit off my chest.
And here's where I circle back to my second takeaway... I say I don't really listen to the priest's feedback because I typically don't listen to ANYONE'S feedback unless that feedback affects how I get paid.
However, I listen EVEN LESS to priests because I feel most of my sins derive from my attempt to avoid my family and my creditors.
Priests have no families, per se, and they get a parish-provided "3 hots and a cot" every day, so what the fuck does he know about the reasoning behind why I robbed a hooker in order to pay for diapers?
Advertisement
The answer is - He doesn't.
Just once I would like to walk into a room and confess how I took the Lord's name in vain multiple times behind my wife's back after she complained, yet again, about my incontinence, and have the priest say back to me, "I hear you, bro... My old-lady is one crazy bitch also."
And short of marriage, even this priest in the attached story has a certain degree of street cred with me now since he's actually done some sinning.
I could conceivably be in his confessional telling him how I knew it was wrong, but I still decided to skip mass on Sunday, opting instead to play golf. And he could conceivably look me straight in the eye and say back, "Happens to the best of us, sport... I fucked two whores on the altar last week... And I videotaped it."
Would be refreshing, and mean a helluva lot more than being told to say 5 Our Fathers and 3 Hail Marys from a guy behind a screen.
Just a thought.
Take a report.
-Large
BTW… Here's the only gay priest I'm listening to this weekend…
TAR
-L