Dan Broadbent
Sometimes, the jokes write themselves.
Yesterday afternoon, two priests in Miami Beach were caught having sex with one another in a car in Miami Beach. They were arrested for ”
lewd and lascivious behavior” and one was charged with ”
indecent exposure.”
According to the Miami Herald, Diego Berrio and Edwin Giraldo-Cortez, both in their 30s, were observed in the 1300 block of Ocean Drive around 3 pm having sex with one another inside a Volkswagen that had no window tinting on it.
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A responding officer said:
I parked my vehicle and approached the passenger side of the vehicle on foot. I observed defendant Berrio in the passenger seat, performing oral sex on defendant Giraldo who was seated in the driver’s seat. Giraldo’s pants were unzipped and his genitals exposed. This act was occurring in full view of the public passing by on Ocean Drive and the sidewalk.
And, the Herald said, the officer had to knock on the window to garner the attention of the occupants.
The priests told law enforcement that they were, in fact, priests who were from Mission of San Juan Diego in Arlington Heights, Illinois, just outside of Chicago.
According to Advocate.com:
Now Berrio has been removed as pastor of Misión San Juan Diego, a Catholic church in the Chicago suburb of Arlington Heights, Ill., reports the Chicago area’s Daily Herald. Cardinal Blase J. Cupich, head of the Archdiocese of Chicago, issued a statement to that effect today and said further action would depend on the results of the police investigation. “It is our responsibility to ensure those who serve our people are fit for ministry,” the statement read. “We take this matter very seriously and will provide updates as they become available.” An administrator will be appointed for the parish, Cupich added.
The jokes here almost write themselves. My girlfriend’s first reaction was to say that “at least the Catholic Church is cleaning up its PR” while my first thought was “at least it wasn’t a priest with a kid.”
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But at the end of the day, they’re both consenting adults, and it doesn’t matter a bit to us what they do in their own time. They both deserve love and happiness with whomever they feel is deserving deserving of sharing their love with.
Then, we did a Google Maps search of the area. Here’s what it looks like:
Yikes.
This is a full-on public area. I’m not saying I didn’t do things in automobiles while I was in high school, but at least I had the common decency to find a remote spot, away from people. And also, I was a teenager.
There’s a certain degree of hypocrisy when you consider the larger message of what the Catholic Church says about homosexual people.
There’s also the layer of hypocrisy dealing with the fact that the Catholic Church expects their priests to remain celibate for… Well, who knows why? I was an altar boy in my Catholic Church as a kid, and to this day I don’t understand the need for Catholic priests to not engage in the most human experience available to us.
Perhaps what’s most disappointing about this is the Church’s response. The Archdiocese of Chicago issued a statement saying “It is our responsibility to ensure those who serve our people are fit for ministry. We take this matter very seriously and will provide updates as they become available.”
This makes me wonder why the Catholic Church cares about what consenting adults do with one another, but turns a blind eye to priests raping children. It would be nice if the Catholic Church responded to the abuse of children with the same urgency as they did this situation.
If only the priests who were caught raping children were dealt with as swiftly as these two consenting adults were.
