General assignment memories No. 19

Long ago and far away, I got assigned a story about a controversy at a local Catholic church.

It seems so innocent now.

It all started or at least came to a head when, during a Sunday sermon, a priest got annoyed about a crying baby.

Finally, the cleric said, “Will someone stick a banana down that kid’s throat.”

The infant’s parents did not care for that. And soon accusations were flying that the priest had a drinking problem.

Parishioners wanted him out. The diocese said, essentially, “Yeah, right.”

I can’t recall how many stories I wrote about this. Not many. But at some point, I started describing the priest in print as “embattled.”

And so some of my colleagues began asking, “So what’s the latest on the embattled Father Curry?”

I can’t recall how it played out. But I just did an online search and saw that he died last year. There was no mention of the banana incident in the obit.