The recent news about a famous Miami Roman Catholic priest being sexually involved with a woman brought again to surface that church's painful problems with sex. Father Alberto Cutié (pronounced koo-tee-ay) was popular because of a Miami radio talk show for Cuban Americans, and it did not hurt that he had drop dead good looks. (At Right: No longer a priest Alberto Cutié.)

Someone took a photo of him frolicking on the beach with his girl friend, and the sex scandal hit the fan. Many a catholic gave a prayer of thanks that at least this time their priest liked women in bathing suits instead of boys in choir robes.

The sexy priest chose to leave the church to marry his beloved with hopes of being welcomed into the clerical arms of marriage friendly Episcopalians.

From the get go the Christian religion has been of two minds on sex and marriage. The first century evangelist, Paul of Tarsus to whom many of the New Testament books are attributed, said that it was best not to marry, but it was better to marry than to burn, or be horny, as we would say.

The Roman Catholic Church did not forbid their priests to marry until a thousand years after the death of Jesus, who never married -unless you accept ancient manuscripts found in the last century that say he and Mary Magdalene were married or at least an "item." Of course, the officially accepted accounts of his life make no mention of this, but they do constantly refer to one of the disciples whom he loved more than all the rest, leaving secular historians to wonder why the Church destroyed accounts of his heterosexual romance and/or marriage but not his special love for a disciples. In the early church was being gay a less offense than being married?

One also has to wonder why it took a thousand years for the church to determine that deity frowned on married clergymen. Of course, there was the mundane reason that priests' heirs would receive their inheritance, not the church. Many are loath to believe that the Christian Church, Catholic or Protestant, would make theological decisions based on filthy money. Others are only too happy to believe it, pointing out that there has never been a poor pope or an impoverished televangelist.

The real question is why does the world's largest Christian domination continue to deny their clergy the joys of heterosexuality while gay clergymen (closeted or not) abound and practice their sexuality in Catholicism and all religions, even in the most conservative of protestant sects.

Arguably, a celibacy requirement acts as a magnet to pious gay men. They are provided a religious excuse for not having sex with women.

It is doubtful that the Catholic Church will be moved by the Cutié affair, but it all may be moot as enrollment in the Catholic Seminaries has fall nearly by half in the last twenty years. No organization can continue to reach the modern age as long as it denies sexual satisfaction, the second greatest drive in all humans.

(For more information on the cute Father Cutié, Click Here.)