The Tart, The Altar Boy, And The Defrocked Priest- Small Town Values Gone Very Much Awry

Father James J. Brophy was the pastor of St. Maurice Church, and had been seen as the likely replacement for the Archbishop who was now in his early nineties.  

 

Father Brophy was one of the few hardline Catholic prelates in the archdiocese and had taken a very critical stance on ecumenism, homosexuality, graft, and moral corruption.  He was an old time fire and brimstone preacher, more Protestant evangelist than Catholic priest. 

 In fact he and Pastor Ebenezer Johnson of the Third Baptist Church of Ames City challenged each other very Sunday to see who could raise more Hell and shake the faithful to their roots for their sinfulness and godless indifference to the Lord. 

They had each peeked in on each other, marveled at each other's eloquence and ability to corral even the most faithless into the embrace of Jesus Christ.  They tried to one-up each other, calling upon  more and more fearsome Biblical references, causing sinners to weep with repentance, and raising the newly resurrected from their pews and shout 'Amen'. 

Of course this last was not done in the Catholic Church. Such born-again tomfoolery was verboten, especially after Pope John Paul II condemned Protestant fundamentalism as a sect, promising as it did salvation with a few shouts and hymns.  Only faith and reason, said the Pope, the vision of both Aquinas and Athanasius, could lead to heavenly bliss. 

So no one in Father Brophy's congregation stood up and said, 'Praise the Lord', or 'Praise be to Jesus', but kept their seats in quiet contrition.  Father Brophy had reached them, touched their grief and their sorrow, and they did not have to proclaim their submissiveness to anyone.  

Father Brophy was at his very best when he railed against the gender spectrum, that godless and Satanic revulsion, that twisting of God's creation, that blatant pie in the face of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, that abhorrence. 

'Go forth and multiply', shouted Father Brophy from the pulpit, 'and as for the rest of you, be gone!'

Now, hypocrisy is the stock-in-trade of the clergy and the politician, especially when it comes to sex.  Not a few politicians who ran for office on moral rectitude, sexual propriety, fidelity, and traditional Christian values, were found in bed with some tart, admitted their sin, vowed never again to stray from the path of righteousness, and were re-elected. 

Perhaps the most famous was Congressman ____from a district in Father Brophy's home state of Ohio, who was caught in flagrante delicto with a harem of hookers procured by Washington's most reliable Madame, Mrs. Esther Kleinberg. When questioned by the press, the politician channeled Dominique Strauss-Kahn, former candidate for the French Presidency, a known Lothario and obsessive 'sexualist' who when accused of a similar sexual jamboree, said, ‘How was I to know they were prostitutes?  All women look the same with their clothes off'. 

 

The press and the American politician's constituents did not find this funny at all, and he had one hell of a time extricating himself from the mess, but he did, bawling and beating his press in a nationally televised press conference, and claiming to be born again.  His district forgave him, and he was again reelected. 

Father Brophy, despite his fulminations from the pulpit about the gender spectrum, was fascinated by it, especially the idea that one could pick and choose and move easily between and among the offerings.  No one had to be sexually hidebound, progressives said.  Heterosexuality was only a choice and a bad one at that, and the gender spectrum was the sexual offering long awaited. 

Father Brophy studied the daunting array of options on the spectrum and was drawn to the bi-sexual.  Of course, there were more divisions and subdivisions of this category that one could possibly imagine, and together they formed their own mini-spectrum, but the priest quietly and quickly concluded that he belonged to all of them.  

His sexual desires were eclectic to say the least.  He was attracted by Billy Baxter, angelic altar boy who served at High Mass, gracefully moving across the altar to serve both priest and God.  Billy was a charming, delightful boy - blonde, blue-eyed, lithe-limbed, and profoundly faithful.

But he was also attracted to one of his parishioners, Mrs. Althea Albertson, reputed to be of illicit sexual bearing - a tart, to be quite honest, and just the thought of thrashing around with her, doing unspeakable things, sent him to the confessional. 

 

Now, Ames City, like most small towns in America, had its share of sexual deviancy.  Mrs. Hermione Phillips, President of the Women's Auxiliary, charming hostess, and country club golf champion, routinely entertained men in her home while her husband was away. The butcher, the baker, the candlestick maker didn't begin to describe the eclectic mix that came to 145 Harper Road every afternoon. 

There was Hennessey Phelps, a City Hall administrator, lawyer, accountant, and upstanding citizen who spent his lunch hour in his basement pleasuring himself with the raunchiest, most twisted, and vulgar pornography ever assembled.  When finally arrested for mail fraud - Phelps had naively used the USPS for his obsession - the FBI admitted they had never seen such an assemblage of filth. 

And Blanchard Tompkins, Fitzsimmons Archer, Gladstone Pinkus, and Dido Marks and a hundred others doing unspeakable things. 

So in some ways Father Brophy should not be faulted for his own eclectic mix of sexual partners.  It was par for the course in Ames City.  Of course the priesthood was sacramental - being ordained meant that he was in a line to Jesus Christ himself - and so such sexual deviance should be looked at differently 

 

Yet, in the light of God's merciful forgiveness, and his warm embrace of all sinners, he knew he was doing no wrong. 

Not so, concluded the Archbishop who investigated the rumors that were circulating in Brophy's parish.  In the old days he would simply have transferred the priest to another domain with a lecture and a warning; but in the new days of transparency, he would have to take more decisive action. Brophy was brought before the archbishopric magistrate in Cleveland, investigated, and found guilty of apostasy.  After a rather lengthy appeal, Brophy was defrocked and sent packing. 

Now Brophy was just an ordinary john, but one who had been most generous and kind in his ecclesiastical days, so when he decided to say a fond goodbye to Mrs. Albertson, she felt sorry for him, offered him a temporary place to stay, and a few hours of her earthly delights, gratis. 

Brophy was pleased and touched by the woman's kindness, accepted her offer but did not overstay his welcome, and eventually made his way to Portland, where, he had heard, anything goes.