So a Priest walked into a bar...

It was the first time that he had taken up the invitation to a bachelor’s party for someone he was to marry the next day. It wasn’t that he really wanted to go, but Mary, the bride-to-be, had pleaded with him to the point that he obliged just to get her to give him peace.

Now he sat perched on a bar stool, alone, though he figured this was because of his clerical collar. Someone from the bars smoky depths hollered a “Priest walks into a bar joke” and garnered some drunken laughter.

Original, he thought, like I haven’t heard one of those before.

“What’ll it be Fatha’,” came the voice from behind him.

Swiveling in his chair, he was taken aback by the, mountain of a man he assumed to be the bartender. A good six and a half feet of flab, stuffed in a shirt adorned with almost decorative looking beer and pit stains, was now staring at him from behind the bushiest red beard he’d ever seen.

“Fatha’ I ain’t got all day,” he said a little more impatiently.

“Ah, uh,” he stuttered, still taking in God’s massive creation standing before him. “I... I’ll have… Do you have any wine?”

“Fatha’ you want wine you betta go back to that there Church of yours. Here all we got is beer. At least that’s the only safe stuff we got here in this bar. So what’ll it be? ‘S on the house for clergy.”

“Oh, well thank you. That’ll be fine.”

The bartender turned away to fill a mug with the liquid gold the area was so well known for. The lowlands were a grand place to be for a preacher. He had been lucky with his call, to land in such a wonderful area. And the Church! It was not a mere Church, but an enormous work of architecture. Yet here he was, Pastor of the largest Church in the countryside, sitting in a dank, smoky, barroom.

Clunk.

Startled, he turned to see that it was only the bartender putting his drink on the bar. He took a sip and glanced around the bar. He spied the groom-to-be teetering on the top of a table, dancing with one of the strippers.

Disgusting, he thought to himself, this is why I took a vow of celibacy, all this philandering and grotesque behavior. And to think, none of them come to confessional!

“Father! What is ye doin here!” called the groom catching him staring and snapping him from his train of thought.

“Seamus O’Rourke you best be behavin’ yourself this night. Mary been worrin’ about you goin’ and philanderin’ the night away. Don’t you do nothing to spoil that grand wedding she’s got planned for tomorrow.”

“Aye, Father, but this be my last night as a free man and I’m gonna be rasin’ all hell! Now another round on me!”

This garnered more hoots and hollers from the depths of the bar.

Shaking his head, the Father left the dingy bar and headed back to the Church. He still had a sermon to write for Sunday, and he wasn’t about to waste another minute on these sinners.