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	Father Cutie's Fall By Rod Dreher Beliefnet May 8, 2009 http://blog.beliefnet.com/crunchycon/2009/05/father-cuties-fall.html Did you hear that the Rev. Alberto Cutie', the high-profile Spanish TV priest whose parish is on Miami's South Beach, got caught by a photographer canoodling on another Florida beach with a woman? Very sad. Of course he's been taken out of his parish, and now he's got to figure out if he's got any business remaining in the priesthood, or what. There's talk on some websites that this is yet another example of why the Vatican should let priests marry. I personally favor an option to marry for priests, and did before I left the Catholic Church, though I rarely if ever talked about it. But if a priest vows celibacy, his vow is his vow, period. If a priest cannot or will not live by that vow, he has no business in the priesthood. It could be that Father Cutie' will need to leave; according to the Miami Herald story I linked to, he had expressed in a recent interview a desire to marry and have children. Funny, but the thing I thought about when I first read the news was about my own three years living in South Florida, and how unbelievably carnal the whole place is. I was a single man then, and I tell you, going to mass and seeing teenage girls there in miniskirts and short-shorts was ... distracting. And good grief, Father Cutie's parish was on freaking South Beach. And he's young, handsome and famous too. He'd have almost had to have been the Cure d'Ars to over come those temptations. Still, he should have done it. Please understand I'm not excusing what he did -- there is no excuse for it -- just trying to understand. I too lived as a celibate young male Catholic in South Florida (celibate, because I wasn't married), and I wasn't handsome or famous, but still had a lot more trouble struggling to be faithful to my obligation to chastity in that environment than I'd had living in Washington, DC, where I'd come from. If you are a person committed to celibacy, living in South Florida is like being a reformed alcoholic having to pitch a tent on the floor of the Anheuser-Busch brewery. Or so it seemed to me. I can't decide if the lay Catholics quoted in the piece being very forgiving of Father Cutie over this are being admirably merciful, refusing to kick a priest when he's down, or are excusing him too easily because he's a celebrity they like and admire. Thoughts?
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