When Priests Go Bad - Fairies In The Vestry And The Compelling Case For Atheism

Father Aloysius F. Brophy, Jesuit, rector of St. Maurice's Church of New Brighton, loved little boys, and couldn't wait until they came of age.  He refused to admit that he was a pedophile - in the quiet of the rectory or the silence of the confessional, he was an honorable member of the Society of Jesus, devout Catholic, and man of principle and moral rectitude; but when the saw those sweet. young, innocent altar boys, his resolve and resolution weakened.  He became a sinner, if in intent only, and if the Catholic Church taught anything, it was the occasion of sin, the fountainhead of actual sin, the place to be avoided above all else. 

 

And so as far as young boys went, he kept his hands under his cassock, on the chalice, or on the host with purity and cleanliness of spirit, but when Father Peacock joined the parish, a gorgeous seminarian who had just taken his vows and turned down far more lucrative and promising churches for St. Maurice, Father Brophy was entranced.  'They' knew each other from the first, in that demure, pious chastity that suggested anything but; and before long the older priest and the newcomer joined in sexual congress. 

The act, officially condemned by the Church, was wrongly decided the young Peacock and his fellow seminarians averred - Jesus himself could not have remained celibate for long with the likes of Paul, John, and the lovely Luke as apostles.  The Last Supper was part seder, part early Christian ceremony, and part male camaraderie, the last being the most important, and God knew the most soulful; and so it was that Peacock and his Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John had a marvelous time as novitiates of Christ, bound and bonded together by Holy matrimony to each other and to Christ. 

While many observers wondered how the Church would survive the counter-cultural revolution of the Sixties and the sexual apertura of the Seventies, a disastrous secularization dismissing religious orthodoxy, their concerns were premature.  The Church was the go-to place for the newly uncloseted gay men who were looking for just this opportunity.  Imagine! a sanctioned all-male institution, cloistered, protected, and cared-for by the Vatican itself, what a sanctuary and playground for a certain, privileged ordained sexuality.

Well, 'ordained' might not be the mot juste for an activity prohibited and condemned for over 2000 years, but human nature and sexual desire being what it is, it should be no surprise that the 400 graduates of St. Bartholomew Seminary dismissed the censorious opprobrium of the Church and turned it into a 'What Would Jesus Do?' moment of Christian charity and community, and off they went happily anointed, married to Christ, and free to enjoy the life of the gay Catholicism. 

When Father Lennon was caught in the vestry in delicto flagrante, using the kneeler to comfortably service the rector, he was warned but not chastised. 'Be a bit more careful, Father, where and when, etc. etc.' but nothing more.  St. Maurice's like every parish up and down the East Coast and then some was gay heaven, so who was to chastise or censor whom? The pot and the kettle were both black. 

So the 'friendship' between Frs. Peacock and Brophy not only went unreported, but was admired by clergy in the archdiocese from Hartford to Willimantic. Theirs was a love affair made in heaven, no irony intended but well appreciated.  God had created these immeasurably congenial enclaves of male bonding and affairs such as those of St. Maurice were to be limned, loved, and written about. 

Until Father Brophy got greedy and crossed the line.  He became lascivious.  Peacock was not enough, and those delectable altar boys were there for the notional picking, so why not?  They were, after all, simply adolescent versions of Peacock, young virgins ready to sacrifice themselves on the altar of God with older, more originalist fathers like him, so where was the harm, the damage?  

None and none again; and so it was that Father Brophy invited the young Peters Marshal to tea one Saturday afternoon, and amidst Easter lilies and frankincense, the priest enjoyed the boy to God's greater glory. 

However, Peters was not the complaisant young fairy that Brophy had become accustomed to.  He was as straight as an arrow, son of a pipe fitter and a nurse, good Catholics, good contributors, and good parishioners and had to be 'encouraged' in the art of pleasuring the good fathers of St. Maurice.  It all came out in the end, part of the growing scandal within the worldwide Church, and Father Brophy was reassigned to a missionary outpost in Chad where he suffered cerebral malaria and died.

Not only were these buggering priests rather unseemly in their predation of little ones, they were ordained ministers of Christ, in the unbroken line of clerics through archbishops, cardinals, the Pope and the resurrected Jesus of Nazareth.  They were priests by Holy Sacrament, not just approved applicants for a job.  Their abuse of children was not only a reprehensible social act, a crime against humanity itself, but a callous insult to Jesus Christ himself.  A sin above all sins, an unforgiveable sin. 

When Harry Gooding got word of the events at St. Maurice, he turned in his union card.  A lifelong Catholic, nurtured by the Church, faithful and devoted to Jesus, the Pope, and the legacy of saints, he reluctantly gave up his faith. What Father Brophy had done was an unconscionable, unforgiveable act. 

'Don't throw the baby out with the bathwater', his friend Rocco Palafutis counselled. 'They are only men'; but that did nothing to deter him.  Anything...anything but this, he replied. 'Those fucking, buggering....' and here he spewed an unprintable, corrosive stream of hateful sexual bile.  It was one thing to approach children, but another for a priest...a priest for Christ's sake.  Nothing but the rack and death by burning was good enough for them. 

Of course it is one thing do leave the Church, another thing altogether to go over to the dark side, the Godless side, but that was exactly what Harry Gooding did.  'Fuck 'em', he said to no one in particular. 'Fuck 'em all', and so it was that Harry became a practicing atheist, more out of anger and spite than blame of the Deity, but so be it.  The dark side can be recrossed with difficulty, so why bother.  His was a more considerate, rational, temperate side without the likes of Brophy and Peacock.