It was parents’ evening at a nice grammar school and a Catholic Priest and a Rabbi find themselves sitting next to each other while the presentations part of the evening is going on.
They start whispering to each other.
The priest says to the rabbi, ‘Excuse me, i don’t want to be rude but can I ask you a personal question? Have you ever tasted pork?’
The rabbi says, ‘No, absolutely not. That is forbidden in our religion, as you know. And I was brought up in a very Orthodox home.
But the priest presses on.
‘What? Not even, when you were a boy, just to see what it tasted like?’
So, the rabbi tells a story of how when he was a boy he went round to one of his friends’ houses and they were having bacon sandwiches for tea. Just out of curiosity, he had some.
‘I tried it,’ says the rabbi, ‘I had a bacon sandwich, but please don’t share that around, eh?’
So the two of them go on sitting watching the presentation. After a bit, the rabbi whispers to the priest, ‘I don’t want to be personal but can I ask you about celibacy? Have I got this right? You’ve never had sex of any kind? Is that right?’
‘That’s right,’ said the priest. ‘The Catholic Church calls its priests to a life of celibacy, and I chose to embrace that commitment completely, even before my ordination.’
‘Really?’ said the rabbi, ‘not even once? You know, when you were a teenager, and people were…. you know…. experimenting?’
‘Well,’ whispers the priest, ‘as you’ve asked, and you were frank and honest with me, I can honestly say, yes, there was one occasion, when I was with a delightful girl in my year at school and, yes, we… er… did… you know… as you say, have a sexual experience together.’
There was a long pause.
And then the rabbi says, ‘Better than bacon, isn’t it.’