NEW YORK
New York Daily News
Denis Hamill
Take a hike.
This is a story about a Brooklyn guy who will take a 33-mile hike from one end of Fire Island to the other on Saturday to raise money for the sick children helped by Make-a-Wish Foundation of Metro New York.
I read the E-mail about this noble trek just minutes after I'd read one from a guy responding to a column I'd written about yet another priest scandal. The former wondered rhetorically how one was to keep his spiritual life alive amid the collapse of our religious institutions.
Listen, I'm the last guy anyone should consult on matters of faith and morals. My closet has more skeletons than Green-Wood Cemetery.
I only care that these scandalous headlines may cut off the flow of money to great Catholic charities that help the poor, the sick, the infirm, the hungry, the homeless, the mentally challenged, the orphaned and the forgotten.
Some people think Msgr. Eugene Clark should turn in the collar. I don't. I think maybe he should see a priest, fess up and as penance go take a hike.
He should go take a hike like a guy named Theo Davis, a lawyer from Park Slope, who in the predawn hours this Saturday will be ferried to the eastern tip of Fire Island at the Moriches Inlet, where he will paddle an inflatable dinghy to shore in the first rumor of dawn.