A senior Church of England cleric has launched an astonishing attack on Britain’s media. “Television, newspapers, magazines, so-called literature and ‘high’ art – they all feed the public a diet of morally corrupting filth which undermines decent society! Is it any wonder that in the face of this onslaught of sex, violence and degradation, lawlessness is rife and people have completely lost faith in the very institutions which should be upholding the moral order, rather than undermining it?” asked the Right Reverend Barry Johnson, Bishop of Slough, in a recent Radio Four interview. “But worst of all, in the midst of this new popular culture of perversion, they are still failing to provide me with what I want – big women! Oh yes, that’s what I want – huge thighs, big wobbly buttocks you can really squeeze! Can I find that anywhere in the press or on TV? Oh no, it’s all about those bloody stick insects with skinny arses and no tits! They’re not real women! It’s discrimination, I tell you! Oh God, I love ’em big!”
At this point, the Bishop’s microphone was cut off, as worried BBC production staff, alarmed at his laboured breathing and the rivers of sweat pouring from him, called for paramedics. “I was convinced he was going to have a heart attack,” said Religious Affairs Correspondent Toby Scut, who had been conducting the interview. “His face was bright red and his granny glasses had steamed up completely !” Although, as it turned out, Bishop Johnson had suffered nothing worse than a mild asthma attack, the Church of England quickly announced that he had been placed on indefinite sick leave. “It’s not the first time he’s been in hot water with Lambeth Palace,” explains Scut. “Last year he was severely censured after complaints from parishioners about a new set of stained glass windows he’d had installed at Slough Cathedral – they depicted various of the Saints engaging in various lewd acts with large women!”
The windows were considered so offensive that they were doused with holy water before being smashed to pieces by a gang of blindfolded vergers. “St Thomas of Aquinas revealing to a Rubinesque lady that he is capable of a twelve-inch erection with which he can carry two full pails of water, does not constitute a miracle,” the Archbishop of Canterbury is said to have commented in reply to Johnson’s defence that the windows simply constituted an ‘earthier’, more contemporary, interpretation of the lives of the Saints. Johnson’s bizarre behaviour has highlighted the question of just how clergy should best deal with their sexuality. “Being a C of E clergyman, or woman, involves working in a highly sexually charged atmosphere – all those phallic steeples and spires thrusting upwards, semi-naked men draped across crosses, cherubic young altar boys and white-clad little choir boys and girls – some form of relief is essential,” says Scut. “Although the Church tries to hush it up, incidents like those involving Bishop Johnson aren’t uncommon. Only last year there was the case of that Arch Deacon who made his own sex video featuring a blasphemous version of the Last Supper which culminated in him being buggered senseless by twelve large men dressed as the apostles! Once the press had got hold of a copy, they had no choice but to defrock him!” Scut believes that, in order to try and prevent such embarrassing incidents, the C of E secretly sanctions the production of official ecclesiastical pornography for distribution to its clergy.
“It is probably their best kept secret. Imagine the scandal if it ever got out that the C of E was producing jazz mags – it could split the Anglican church!,” claims Scut. “However, it is quite clear that, whilst having to give a moral lead in public, priests are only human, and have the same private sexual urges as other men – they need to have some means of relieving these urges in a harmless and private manner.” Despite the veil of secrecy surrounding ecclesiastical porn, Scut has managed to secure an interview with the C of E’s former Pornographer-in-Chief, a former non-Diocesan Bishop. “As you can imagine, it’s all pretty harmless stuff, artistic, almost. You know the sort of thing, men wearing only dog-collars being gently chastised with hymn books by nuns in high heels, who occasionally, and tastefully, bare a breast,” explains the former clergyman who, understandably, wishes to remain anonymous. “But that’s the problem, there’s no way that kind of stuff is going to satisfy the urges of certain sections of our clergy – stronger, and specialised, stuff needs to be available!”
Indeed, it was his attempts to cater for these ‘special needs’ which led to his dismissal from the Church. “OK, I know it was completely unsanctioned, and some of it might have gone a little bit too far, but I stand by my work,” he told Scut. “I feel I was treated far too harshly. Those bastards at that that special hearing were hypocrites anyway, half of those bloody Bishops had been coming to me for ‘special orders’ for years!” Scut has seen some of this ‘special’ material – a publication entitled Cardinal Sins – and can confirm that it might be considered shocking by more conservative members of the Church. “The November issue, for instance, included a photo spread showing a semi-naked young woman writhing suggestively over the stone effigy of a Bishop adorning a tomb in Swindon cathedral. In the climactic shot she is pictured sitting astride the stone Bishop’s groin, stark naked, her head thrown back in simulation of sexual ecstasy,” says Scut. “Still more shocking is a feature titled ‘Holy Rapture’, which depicts a naked girl strapped to a cross, crucifixion-style, whilst the severed head of John the Baptist – held by another model dressed as Salome – performs oral sex on her!”
Not surprisingly, the Church hierarchy denies all knowledge of ecclesiastical porn and a specialist chapter devoted to producing it, claiming instead that the defrocked pornographic Bishop was acting on his own. “It wasn’t just the content which disturbed us,” said a spokesman. “It was also the fact that he had used Church resources – cathedral crypts, religious accoutrements and even genuine cassocks to produce this filth!” Nonetheless, several clerics have privately opined to Scut that the use of official pornography is one of the main reasons that the C of E has far fewer instances of peadophilia amongst its priests, compared to the Roman Catholics. “I’ve been told that Bishops would rather have their vicars whacking off over pictures of naked nuns than buggering little boys in the vestry,” he says. “In fact, my sources in the Vatican have told me that their church’s lack of official porn for priests has led to many of their younger clergy favouring illicit masturbation as a form of relief! A whole underground cult has formed, arguing that as one approaches the ‘vinegar stroke’, the holy spirit can be felt to move within one’s loins! The cult members apparently whack off over crucifixes, claiming that masturbation’s true purpose is the achievement of holy ecstasy, rather than self-gratification!” It is suspected that this cult is behind the recent outrage in Italy, where the figure of Christ on the cross in a Palermo church was found dripping with jism one morning. “If only they’d had their own jazz mags, they could have safely ‘pleased the pope’ in the privacy of their own cloisters,” muses Scut. “Clearly, this is another vital issue the new Pope must urgently address!”
