If You Prick Us, Do We Not Bleed? If You Tickle Us, Do We Not Laugh? If You Poison Us, Do We Not Die? If You Trust Us Do We Not Mess You Up?

You know, sometimes we find it hard to shake totally the influence the church catholic had on our upbringing, despite the Stoli and the therapy. As a result we occasionally feel a slight pang, as we did yesterday when bringing you news of the latest...um...shall we say contretemps stirring the pope's pot.  Back in the day our local priest was a juice head, not a perv so we missed out on a lot of the...ah...extra curricular activities so many of our brothers and sisters in Christ had inflicted on their private parts.

Anyway, the point is that today we are able to bring you a story that makes up for any implication in yesterday's post that the church may be, well, you know, a racket.

Detectives say they discovered Rev. Kevin Gray, a well-respected Catholic priest and former leader of several city parishes, siphoned roughly $1.3 million from Sacred Heart to pay for a lavish lifestyle usually reserved for the wealthy.

 See? This is for all of you who think the church is full of child raping maniacs bent on using their position to destroy the innocence of trusting young people left in their care by adults silly enough to believe the church hierarchy actually takes its responsibility to protect children seriously. Well, you were wrong. OK, not about the protecting kids part, but about the church being full of skulking perverts part. As you can plainly see by this mainstream media newspaper report, far from being a hot bed (no pun intended) of man on boy action, the church is merely a haven for common criminals.

Feel better now? We do.

Now, you may be thinking, "Hold on there a minute Ironicus, there's no way the church is going to be mixed up in anything illegal without sex being in there someplace. After all, these guys take a vow of celibacy."

Yeah, sort of.

Police say a months-long criminal investigation has revealed the 64-year-old Gray was leading an extravagant double life that his parishioners never knew about. That secret life included male escorts hired in New York, $200,000 in restaurant bills — including dinners at Tavern on the Green — and hotel stays in the lap of Manhattan luxury, expenses amassed by Gray and paid for with the church's money.

Now, before you all get up on your high horse, we feel obligated to point out that Father Gray was not boinking the altar boys--heck he may not have even been boinking catholics as any one of those "male escorts" could have been a Lutheran or something. Add to that he was not taking advantage of his position to score some tail, but was paying for it, just like any red blooded American of any faith, republican or democrat. No harm no foul we say.

Still not convinced? Check this out:

Police believe Gray told his congregation he was battling cancer, detectives have determined Gray has never had cancer. "I think that's how he explained his absence from the parish," said Capt. Christopher Corbett, a police spokesman.

 It's the old "Going for chemotherapy" dodge. Who among us hasn't used that excuse? Sound like a pervert to you? No way. Dude's a stone con man. OK, not up there with Bernie Madoff, but it's hard to pick up on the finer points of bilking the sheep when your training is more  liturgical than financial. Hey, the padre pulled it off for seven years and probably would have gotten away with it altogether if some bean counter at the diocese hadn't been looking for a few extra shekels to cover the legal bills all the real perverts have been running up.

So let this be a lesson to all of you out there who are willing to tar the whole church as a den of pedophiles based on the actions of a few. At the very least there were the child rapists, and the people who protected the child rapists, who weren't child rapists themselves. Now, as you can see by the case of father Gray, the church is just as diverse as any other large group of individuals, say La Cosa Nostra?