HERE WE GO AGAIN---15 NEW ROUNDS!

I have been following the saga of Father Cutie (pronounced KOO'-tee-ay), the Roman Catholic priest known as "Father Oprah" because of his popularity with the Hispanics in the Miami and South Florida area and his radio show on Radio Paz broadcast in South Florida, the Americas and Spain. Handsome and charismatic, he had the pining housewives of South Florida sighing and gushing over him. Then the bombshell exploded: photos of Father Cutie, dallying on the beach in somewhat intimate and amorous poses with a very attractive young woman were published, and the you-know-what hit the fan.

He was interviewed on one of the morning shows (without his clerical collar) and asked some probing questions by the woman host, which, to his credit, he handled in a forthright manner. He admitted to being in love and having had a relationship with the young woman the last two years and that he had known her and been friends for several years. He professes that this relationship was the first rupture of his vow of celibacy. He said that he had been in consultation with various clerics including his Archbishop regarding his tension and conflict between his clerical vows and his overpowering passionate love for this woman.

Then I read today that he has left the Roman Catholics and joined the Anglo-Catholics, known as the Episcopal Church of America, where he and girl friend, Ruhama Buni Cavellis, a thirty-five year old divorcee, were photographed with the Bishop of South Florida and other clerics in a smiling portrait. He will not be allowed to serve as a priest in the Episcopal Church until he has spent some time in the church and fulfilled "certain requirements". But, guess who is delivering the sermon this Sunday in Trinity Episcopal Church in Miami? You got it---the forty-year-old Mr. Handsome himself. I'll bet the church will be overflowing.

I also see that his former Catholic Archbishop, the Very Rev. John Favarola, was shocked by the decision and claims that the former Father Cutie had said zilch to him about leaving the church when he met with Father Oprah in early May and that he had not had any word from his counterpart, the Episcopal Bishop of South Florida, which he found disturbing for ecumenical relations.

As an Episcopalian myself, I have to chuckle. I love my church, but I have to comment they are gifted with an ardent love of controversy, a gift for shooting themselves in the foot, and generally stirring up the pot. This is the same Episcopal Church that a few years ago at General Convention elected a gay priest in New Hampshire as a Bishop, thereby throwing the Anglican Communion, the international association of Anglican churches, including the Episcopals in the U.S., the Church of England, and Anglican churches in Africa and other parts of the world into a state of chaotic agitation. The African churches of the Anglican Communion, which number about 33,000,000 were ready to kick the Episcopal Church of America, which number about 2,000,000, out of the Communion. It also created a rift in the American Episcopal Church, pitting conservatives against liberals and causing certain really conservative churches and even a couple of dioceses to split off and join CANA (the Convocation of Anglicans in North America), fostered by the Anglican church of Nigeria who even appointed a Bishop to run C.A.N.A. in the U.S.

Personally, to my mind, this controversy of appointing a gay bishop is history, since elected, a fact of life and to be accepted, but I know plenty of Episcopalians who resent that decision, plus it is still a thorn in the side of the Archbishop of Canterbury, the titular head of the Anglican Communion, who is constantly trying to maintain the unity of the Communion, being the peacemaker between the Africans and the Americans,

The point is the Episcopal Church is frequently a storm center of its own devices and loves it! I do hope the Anglo-Catholics and the Roman Catholics will still speak to each other! I'm sure there will be more to comment on in the near future. Stay tuned. Welcome to the club, Father Oprah! You'll fit right in and be a main attraction for some time---a real contender in our ring!