Fools that we are, we thought it was impossible to top the inanity of Senator Larry Craig’s Wide Stance defense.

We thought no excuse could ever hope to dim the otherworldly moonshine of Ted Haggard’s I Was Only Seeing a Male Escort To Buy Crystal Meth Which I Immediately Threw Away — So What’s the Big Deal?

But we were wrong — so very wrong.

Never underestimate the power of the closet to breed hot-house disclaimers and spawn brazenly absurd cover stories. Stand back you amateurs, you squirming senators and glary-eyed pastors with manic grins, we have a real master coming through!

Let us set the scene. Fade in: Rome.

Brilliant sunlight floods a busy piazza. It is right in front of Saint Peter’s Basilica, which looms over the square like the giant dome-capped head of the pope himself, who, of course, lives in one of its upper tiers. Around the square, which is not square at all but global in shape, are colonnades to either side, like round, embracing arms. St. Peter’s casts no shadow at this hour, for it is noontime and the piazza is filled with tourists, pigeons … and one black-clad monsignor making haste across our field of vision.

He is a well-know Vatican spokesman who often goes on Italian TV and puts a friendly face to some of the pope’s increasingly bizarre and desperate pronouncements (hell, Pope Benedict recently insisted to an audience of 21st Century parishioners, is a real place with real fire that burns real skin over and over and over again). The mongisnor is known on TV as “an expert” on family life and the holiness of the married state, though he himself, of course, is a lifelong celibate — or is he? A sudden downturn in the music seems to beg the question.

Now the mongsignor is scanning the piazza — somewhat furtively for the sake of our imaginary reenactment. He has a pleasant face at age 60, one would almost say a sappy, soft gayface if one were inclined to talk self-loathing shit like that.

A young man, sitting at an outdoor table, sipping a tiny cup of espresso, meets his gaze. He is a handsome young Italian with a vaguely familiar face, but then so many Roman men are handsome in just this civilized way, with all their features in harmony around a strong noble nose. The young man is not only meeting the monsignor’s gaze, he is holding it. The good father approaches…

Rapid edits. The music bursts into triumphant martial chords: the theme of breaking news. Newspaper headlines swoop into focus: ”Vatican Official Caught in TV Sex Sting.” “Told Man He was ‘Hot.’” “Homosexuality ‘No Sin,’ Claims Wayward Prelate.”

In this way we are shuffled quickly though a playlet in which the Roman equivalent of Chris Hansen — the host of our own version of gotcha salaciousness To Catch a Predator — comes out from behind a curtain. And doesn’t this Italian Chris with his Roman nose turn out to be the very same young man who was sipping his espresso so availably in the piazza of St Peter. Jagged handheld footage shows him to best advantage: entering a lift with his new black-clad friend, going to the monsignor’s office, the leading questions, the turning of the conversation inexorably to the solicitation of sex, and not vanilla sex either — S&M, thank you very much.

And when it all comes down — the scam, the tape, the S&M — how does Monsignor Tommasio Stenico explain himself. We hope you’re seated:

From the U.K.’s Times Online:

Yesterday Mgr Stenico claimed that he was pretending to be gay in an attempt to unmask a Satanic plot to seduce Catholic priests to homosexuality and thus discredit the Church. “I only pretended I was gay to study how priests are seduced,” said Mgr Stenico, a frequent guest on television programmes discussing religious issues. “There are people who go after them . . . I really believe there is a diabolical plan by groups of Satanists.”

Is that brilliant? Is that stunning? All those nasty-faced rent boys hanging around Roman fountains , all those diddled altar boys — nothing but the cherubs of Beelzebub. (Odd, why didn’t Satan send a full-blown Sophia Loren to temp this scholar of the marriage bed?)

MEMO to the MONSIGNOR: please contact us so we can send you the award. Act now. Your record probably won’t stand for long. No matter how preposterous the lie, our experience has taught us that some new and exotic denial will come kicking and screaming out of the closet any minute now.

Details from The Times Online:

Mgr Stenico admits inviting a man whom he met on a gay website to his office, across the piazza from Saint Peter’s Basilica, after expressing an attraction to sado-masochism. What he did not know was that the young man was working for a TV investigation on homosexuality among Catholic priests and went to the tryst with a concealed video camera. The footage was shown this month by La 7, the national TV channel.

It shows the young man entering the lift to Mgr Stenico’s office and then speaking with the priest in his office. The faces and voices are heavily disguised to respect privacy laws but with the help of subtitles the topics being discussed are obvious.

Mgr Stenico asks the man, “Do you like me?” and tells him that he is very good-looking. When the young man expresses fears that having sex would be “a sin in the eyes of the Church”, the priest replies: “I do not feel it would be sinful.” Drawn on the subject of sado-masochistic sex, the monsignor says that these are “inner choices, the psychological basis of a personality”. The young man continues to raise moral and religious objections to actually having sex, until the priest becomes irritated, says that he has no time left and takes him back to the lift. On parting, the Monsignor tells him that he is “really tasty” and that he can telephone him or send him a message…

Father Federico Lombardi, SJ, the Jesuit who is official spokesman for Pope Benedict XVI, said that Mgr Stenico had been suspended from office.

“Naturally the matter is being dealt with by his superiors with the reserve due to the person involved. But they must act with the decisiveness and severity warranted by behavior that is incompatible with priestly service and with the Holy See.”

Aurelio Mancuso, the president of Arcigay, the largest gay rights movement in Italy, expressed his solidarity with Mgr Stenico: “He is only a scapegoat. Everyone knows there is a close relationship between homosexuality and the Catholic Church.”

Truth be told there is a strong connection between homosexuality and every profession. We are, after all, a common human variation. We are everywhere, thank whatever God or heaven you like, but preferably not one underlit by distant flames or disturbed by the occasional stink of charred flesh rising whenever the wind is high.