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On that fateful Sunday morning, I learned something that I'd like to think Bernie Madoff or Alex Rodriguez reflect on from time to time

In my youth, whenever somebody in a position of moral authority told those of us who weren’t that we shouldn’t be having sex, or (rather more to the point) that we shouldn’t be thinking about having sex, there was always an addendum. We were informed -- in the same cheerful way that Sunday School picnics were announced -- that God has no objection to physical pleasure. This was welcome news. But it was a gesture similar in usefulness to an Air Miles card. Certain conditions applied.

That you had to be married to enjoy this physical pleasure was a caveat that made God’s open-mindedness extremely theoretical for thirteen year old boys in 1965. I might as well have wanted to fly somewhere worth flying-to, when I wanted to fly there, on points.

“After all,” our moral superiors pointed out, “It was God who created sex.” This seemed obvious to me. I understood clearly enough that God had created everything – a universality amplified by the fact that by the time I turned thirteen sex was everything. Church being a case in point.

I can’t remember very much about the first ten years of my career as a church-goer. I know I went faithfully – mostly because the weight of the bars on my Sunday School attendance lapel-pin were causing my left shoulder to droop noticeably by 1962. But my memory begins to clear that year. I see myself as if waking up – during a Processional.

There are a few recollections that come before that particular Processional – a kind of murky pre-history of sexual awakening. It’s interesting to note, for example, that high heels and fur coats are the fixations of half the fetish sites on the internet – and yet these were the routine accessories of most of the women who clattered across the narthex on those distant Sunday mornings. I’m not sure I yet knew which end was up, but still, there was something extremely disquieting about handing a calendar of worship to an attractive older woman (they all were older) who swished into God’s house enveloped in a cloud of mink and My Sin.

But these were only the first inchoate stirrings. It was really during a particular part of that particular Processional – the part when the women’s choir passed our pew -- that things picked up. Literally. This was a state of affairs that, so I eventually discovered, could only be made recessional by my focusing on times tables, or stained glass windows, or one of the ancient and wizened widows who sat in the pews in front of us.

There was also a men’s choir. They were leathery guys who boomed out the bottom end of “Oh God Our Help in Ages Past” and who, judging from the amount of time they spent outside the church’s side-door before the service, were untroubled by the damage cigarettes might do to their voices.

I’m told they were very good singers. But I wouldn’t know. The men were not the reason I developed so keen an interest in choral music.

It was difficult not to be obvious. In fact, it was impossible. Every Sunday, I turned my head well beyond any natural rotation, and slowly let my neck muscles unwind as I followed the passage of the girls’ and ladies’ choir up the church’s central aisle. This wasn’t subtle, but given the choice of being discreet or having a good view of Cathy Youngblood, I tended toward the latter.

You will think that I’m making the name up. But actually -- as the letters that I will receive from Cathy, or her lawyers, will attest -- I’m not. That was her name. And let me tell you: as evocative as it is, it’s not evocative enough.

I’d been going to Sunday School since forever. As a result of my flawless attendance I knew something of issues of morality. The lessons of the Good Samaritan, the Pharisee and the Publican, and the Faithful Servant were not lost on me. Thanks to a succession of concerned Sunday School teachers, I was also well aware that negotiating with the Devil is not a brilliant idea – even if the worldly possessions I might gain from such discussions were to include a certain Raleigh three-speed. I’d been warned to walk away from Satan’s bargaining table, and I had taken these warnings to heart. In fact, until the onset of puberty I’d felt, from a theological point of view, that I was pretty much beyond temptation. As seems to be the case with many of the miscreants in the news these days, I didn’t have a firm grip on reality.

That changed suddenly enough. One Sunday morning – a Sunday in the same year that Elly May Clampett’s cut-off jeans began to eclipse the Cuban Missile crisis in my understanding of world affairs -- there must have been a Processional that began in innocence and that ended differently. It must have begun as usual with the pipe organ’s booming refrain and the opening of the doors at the back of the sanctuary for the entrance of the choir. But its highlight was as unexpected as it was riveting: the gentle sway of Cathy Youngblood’s choir gown and the slight, shimmering swing of her blonde hair as she made her graceful way past our pew.

Something clicked into place. “Adulthood” is not a good description. And right there, in church, on that fateful Sunday, I learned something that I’d like to think Bernie Madoff, or Alex Rodriguez, or Conrad Black, or Larry Craig, or Mark Sanford, or Eliot Spitzer reflect on from time to time. I learned that temptation is a force I had foolishly under-estimated. Clearly, Satan has a few tricks up his sleeve that, somehow, until that Sunday morning, completely passed me by.