A bad week for priests: ball tearing, strip clubs and male-on-male relationships revealed
It has not been a brilliant week for the clergy. First, a judge announced that a church deacon had to stand trial over a bit of testicular bother in a bar last June:
PDT Oklahoma City (AP) – A judge ordered a man Wednesday to stand trial on a felony assault charge after a bar confrontation that escalated from football trash-talking to a near castration. Allen Michael Beckett, 54, will be tried on a charge of aggravated assault and battery, Special Judge D. Fred Doak ruled.
Beckett, a federal auditor and church deacon, is accused of tearing the scrotum of Brian Christopher Thomas, 35, in June. Thomas said he received more than 60 stitches and still endures pain, although there was no permanent damage.
Then came the news that an FBI search party for a missing pastor came to an abrupt halt when they found the good shepherd alive and well and drooling over bits of naked female flock:
PDT RIVERSIDE, Ohio (AP) – Police say a pastor who was reported missing from his home in western New York has been found at an Ohio strip club. A police officer patrolling the K.C. Lounge parking lot Friday morning in the Dayton suburb of Riverside spotted out-of-state license plates on 46-year-old Craig Rhodenizer’s car.
The FBI and New York authorities had been searching for Rhodenizer, who disappeared Wednesday after telling his wife he was getting his computer fixed at Best Buy. He is the pastor of a church in Lyndonville, N.Y. Detective Matt Sturgeon said Rhodenizer was disoriented when confronted by police and said he felt “emotionally guilty.”
So, it was a most welcome relief to hear that the other news to come out today concerning the clergy was not about priests brawling in bars or running away to join a strip joint:
LYNCHBURG, Va. — The wife of the late Rev. Jerry Falwell has written a book recounting the half-century she spent with the Moral Majority founder. Macel (MAY’sell) Falwell’s book, “Jerry Falwell: His Life and Legacy,” is set for release on May 15 _ the first anniversary of Falwell’s death at age 73.
Macel Falwell told The News & Advance of Lynchburg she has been working on the book since September. The book will relate her experiences with her husband and tell of the founding of Thomas Road Baptist Church. The book is being published through Howard Books, which said it will include insight into Falwell’s often controversial statements and his relationship with Ronald Reagan.
Of course, with the kind of press the church has got lately it should not come as a big surprise if the book would claim that Falwell’s ‘relationship with Ronald Reagan’ came with lots of vaseline, handcuffs, whips, butt plugs and leather hoods – with Nancy watching and filming the procedures on video.
If so, the inevitable based-on-the-book movie should be worth waiting for.
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