Rev Richard Coles: Oops!

This is Reverend Richard Coles. He has more than 57,000 followers on Twitter.

He used to be in 80’s band The Communards, before he swapped the world of pop for the pulpit.

The Church of England priest is also a regular host of BBC Radio 4′s Saturday Live programme.

This morning, Good Friday, he was up early tweeting a modern take on the Stations of the Cross.

The First Station: Jesus is condemned to death #stationsofthecross http://t.co/YsqzrtEU7E
— Richard Coles (@RevRichardColes) April 18, 2014

However, the Rev later apologised after inadvertantly directing his followers to a porn website.

Sorry to those few who clicked on Stations of the Cross and got sent to a porn site. I dont know how that happened. It works fine here.
— Richard Coles (@RevRichardColes) April 18, 2014

Oops.

Metro.

Richard Coles does have a very good defence - the website linked to was an exclusively heterosexual 'dating site', the daintily named Local Slappers, which I think we can be sure he doesn't use. 

PS Remember this incident that did involve a man of the cloth and an unfortunate gay porn accident?

Father McVeigh: A Statement

Issued today in the Pomeroy Parish bulletin.
Poor man.
My (non-ironic) defence of Father McVeigh - 'In Defence Of My Fellow Wankers' - is here.


Update: Some rather poignant tweets this evening from Father Ted co-creator, Graham Linehan.
They're in reverse order, rather obviously...

The Holy Bible: NSFW!!!

As it is Sunday, the day of our Lord, may I kindly draw your attention to a delightful piece from The Advocate online, The Golden Age of Denial: Gay Bible Porn by Christopher Harrity, which looks at over twenty images of teh male hotness in Renaissance and Baroque religious paintings.
It is, one has to say, a somewhat limited palette, with just four recurring tropes; Saint Sebastian, David, the flagellation of Christ, and the resurrection of the flesh. 
Above you can see The Flagellation of Christ by Bacchiacca which, notes Harrity, "seems to want us to focus elsewhere than on the son of God. And then there is the awkward issue of the hats."
Younger readers may be surprised to learn there was a time long ago when the internet did not exist, and this was how chaps could get away with watching some dude-on-dude action; "Naked muscle men and milky-skinned youths as subjects of art were fine as long as they were in support of religious, mythological, or allegorical works. There had to be a moral message, however flimsy, attached to the work. Honor, strength in battle, and sacrifice were all noble subjects that were used to justify presenting some pretty hot stuff...
"If the master of the household or the local priest had a breathtaking moment of rapture in front of a particularly vivid depiction of the flagellation of Christ, for example, that trembling feeling in the pit of the stomach, or maybe a bit lower, could be safely interpreted as religious fervor and passion."
Perhaps it was a selection of images such as these that were on the USB stick of poor Father McVeigh and which led to that terrible misunderstanding last month?
Enjoy!

Father McVeigh: In Defence Of My Fellow Wankers

"An investigation into how a Catholic priest accidentally showed gay porn images to primary school children [It was a parent's meeting, as they say below. Bizzare - FB] has proved “inconclusive”.
"The probe was launched last month after Fr Martin McVeigh projected the images on to a screen during a meeting for parents in Pomeroy during a presentation at a school in Co Tyrone.
"Parents said 16 indecent images of men were displayed during a Powerpoint presentation.
"The priest said he had no knowledge of the offending imagery and did not know how the material came to be on a memory stick plugged in to his laptop computer..."

Belfast Telegraph.
Everyone's had a good laugh about this episode - now descending into farce - as indeed I did.
Tis funny admittedly; "I have no idea how they got there... oops, I've had the laptop stolen!" etc.
I know nothing about Father McVeigh beyond this story.
I've tried to find if he's said anything about The Gays, but have found nothing - I don't think it matters.
Nor do I really know exactly what happened and why.
But whatever, I think all our lives are punctuated by massive fuck-ups and I'd hope people can find the generosity to forgive other peoples'.
It's now becoming ever more ridiculous - looking like the Catholic Church is covering up sexual shenanigans it professes to condemn... yet again.
But a man watching porn - as almost all most men do - should not be a source of guilt or shame.
Though his Catholic Church is quite big on guilt and shame.
Forgive him his sins - cause they're not sins.
If he liked watching pictures of hot dudes' with big cocks doing it, so what, that is surely no reason to put him on suicide watch. 
Since when did wanking become a crime?
Happy Sunday.

PS Fagburn was, I'm pretty sure, the first to write about this, outside of the Northern Ireland press - a story that then went global. I'm not a news site, but it's a bit embarrassing if I'm covering stories like this first when I do it as a hobby, not a job.
Me! Me! Me! ME!!!! etc

Cardinal O'Brien: A Call For A Christian Fightback

The head of the Catholic church in Scotland has added his voice to growing calls for Christians to be allowed to openly express their beliefs during Holy Week.
In his Easter Sunday homily, Cardinal Keith O'Brien will urge Christians to 'proudly nail themselves to a big cross in the car park behind Asda, like they do in the Philippines'.
In a story that we made up, Birmingham council has banned public crucifixions citing health and safety regulations, and has called for Easter to be re-named Springterval.  
Speaking at Edinburgh's St Mary's Cathedral tomorrow, O'Brien will quote Pope Benedict XVI, who said Christians 'need to be free to act in accordance with their own bizarre medieval sado-masochistic voodoo death cult'.
The cardinal will also say: 'I know that many of you do nail yourselves to a cross in the privacy of your own homes, not in a pervy way, but as a simple indication that you are trying to live by Christ's standards in your own daily life, even though you've clearly never listened to a single word that he said.'
He will add: 'Easter provides the ideal time to remind ourselves of the centrality of superstition and stupid rituals in our Catholic faith.
'A cross can easily be knocked up using two planks of wood and some Evo Stik. I hope people will consider giving some as gifts, and perhaps even crucifying their own children.'
Last month, Cardinal O'Brien hit the headlines after calling for 'all the gays to be put to death like what it says in the Bible.'
A fundraising drive has been launched by Father Martin McVeigh who is selling off his extensive collection of gentlemens' magazines and DVDs.

The Daily Mail.
Probably.

Priest Accidently Shows Gay Porn In Primary School: Oh Father!

'Parents of children at St Mary’s School in Pomeroy, Co Tyrone, were shocked to see gay pornographic scenes on a screen in place of a Holy Communion presentation.
F'ather Martin McVeigh was about to host an advisory Powerpoint presentation for parents on the subject of their children’s imminent Holy Communion event last week but instead displayed shocking gay porn scenes.
It is believed among the 26 parents present, there was also an eight-year-old child at the meeting which came to a halt after the shocking images were shown...
'Fr McVeigh said he was co-operating with police and that he had no knowledge of the offending material. Speaking to the Ulster Herald, Fr McVeigh said: “I don’t know how it happened but I know what happened. There are people making innuendoes who weren’t even there but in this day and age these stories grow.'"

Belfast Telegraph.
Oops!
I'm sure there's a perfectly innocent explanation for why there was gay porn on his memory stick.
These things are sent to try us, father, etc etc. 
I wonder what he thinks about gay marriage?

PS A story in the Metro about another Carry On clergyman comedy cock-up - a Sheffield vicar apparently having to go to hospital claiming he'd got a potato stuck up his bumbum after falling off his kitchen table putting up some curtains in the nude (as you do etc etc) - has gone viral in the last few days.
This "story" first appeared in The Sun in October 2008.