Free Father Briar and The Angel by Rita Saladano

for five months
and both had undergone a recent hormonal explosion and all its
attendant side effects. They’d been caught, en flagrante delicto, and pants
around their ankles, twice now. Poor Mrs. Abraham, the history
teacher and debate coach, had walked in to his classroom during a
free hour when students were supposed to be at a pep rally. “Well,
there was a lot of pep going on in that room!” the horrified
educator had told the principal.
    One such incident could be
chalked up to teenage impulsiveness and maybe even a bit of a
freaky streak. The second incident was much more serious, as it had
taken place in the Church itself.
    The amorous couple had
taken advantage of the parish’s “open door” policy and snuck into
the sanctuary one snowy day after school to explore not their
faith, but their bodies. There weren’t heretical enough to get it
on right there in the pews (having spent many a Sunday mass sitting
in them, they knew how sore they could make a clothed butt, much
less a naked one) so they went down to the nursery, which they knew
to both be empty and have padded play mats that would be
comfortable to lay, and get laid, on.
    It was By Golly Gosha who’d
spotted them.
    She was out driving around
town, up to nothing much, just watching the machinations and
movements of its denizens. This was her entertainment, her movies,
and it was far better than anything that was on the flickering,
static-ridden, newly popular television. From the cab of her Ford
truck (“Where does she get the money for such vehicles?” the locals
wondered, “selling rabbits can’t be that profitable”) she’d seen Ramona
and Trig sneak into the church and, knowing what teenagers do alone
in the dark, had gone to investigate.
    She phoned Father Briar,
although not immediately; no, she took in ten minutes of the show
beforehand. She envied their teenage energy; their coupling was
positively electric, athletic, and arousing.
    Upon his arrival, Cedric
gave a sharp rap on the door with his weathered knuckles. In the
small room it sounded like a shotgun going off and poor Trig leapt
away from his girlfriend and lost his erection in world
record-breaking time.
    Father Briar and Gosha
could hear the jangling of belt buckles and the zipping of zippers,
so he waited until they were properly dressed to preserve their
modesty.
    Then he chewed them out
using language he’d learned as a sailor.
    Those events had led to
this meeting, with both concerned mothers. “I don’t want this to be
seen as a bigger problem than it actually is. Young adults,
especially these days, as they are so under the influence of trashy
media like movies, rock and roll, and romance novels, are beset
with sexual desires. It is that they learn to control them that is
important.” Here, Cedric couldn’t help bit feel like a bit of a
hypocrite, as he had no desire to control his sexual urges when he
was around Julianna.
    In his heart of hearts, he
sympathized with Trigger and Ramona, sympathized with them deeply.
If Father Briar, with all of his Jesuit rigor and deeply abiding
Catholic faith, as well as years of training and practice, couldn’t
control himself, how could the teens?
    He’d had a simple childhood
and his future had been planned and predetermined since the morning
of his birth; his was to be a life of service to God and Country.
So it was easy, at least for a while, to subvert his sexual nature
in pursuit of said service. These kids had so many options; the
whole world was laid out in front of them. There was talk of Trygve
going to the National Hockey League. “Getting paid to play hockey,”
Cedric marveled as he looked at the boy’s kindly and rotund mother,
“who could imagine such a thing?”
    So he empathized with her
concern, too. Father Briar was never short on empathy. If Trigger
got Ramona “in a family way,” that would ruin his chances at a
glamorous future and sporting career. They’d be stuck here in
Brannaska forever, as if