Brooklyn police arrested the Rev. Chester LaRue, rector of St. John's Episcopal Church, for selling cocaine out of his church. When police arrived, LaRue was seated at his desk, writing a sermon while smoking crack. The former rector of St. John's, George Hoeh, was murdered by his gay lover in Atlantic City in the 1980s.

At about the same time LaRue was arrested, two other Episcopal priests in Brooklyn were brought up on charges, one for tax fraud, the other, by the church, for sexual misconduct.

The previous year, Penthouse magazine featured a photographic spread of another priest, the Rev. William Lloyd Andries, having sex with his 25-year-old Brazilian "husband" while wearing clerical garb. According to witnesses, Andries, sometimes dressed as Marilyn Monroe, regularly hosted orgies on the alter of his Brooklyn church.

Following this long string of unseemly incidents, Bishop Orris G. Walker Jr. explained that despite appearances, he had not been negligent in his oversight of the priests—just the opposite. "One of my sins is I'm a workaholic," Walker said. "I need to take some time for me." A fellow priest, the Rev. Sara Louise Krantz, told Newsday, "It's the most courageous thing he could have done."

†