By Tom Deignan

This is not the first time Monsignor Eugene V. Clark — now embroiled in the “Beauty and the Priest” tabloid scandal — has made headlines.

Back in March of 2001, Clark officiated a controversial Mass at St. Patrick’s Cathedral which honoured Bobby Sands and other members of the IRA who had died two decades earlier in the infamous hunger strikes.

In his sermon, as The New York Times noted in its coverage of the Mass, Clark — who up until last week was rector at St. Patrick’s — compared Sands and his comrades to other Catholic martyrs such as St. Ambrose and St. Thomas More.

So now Clark — who had also served as private secretary to Francis Cardinal Spellman, and spokesman for Terence Cardinal Cooke and John Cardinal O’Connor — is embroiled in an embarrassing sex scandal. Court documents suggest that Clark has been accused of having an affair with a married woman from Woodlawn, the Irish enclave in the north Bronx.

She was even photographed on the cover of the Daily News on Tuesday emerging from Woodlawn’s St. Barnabas church wearing what the paper described as “short shorts.” The headline: “A Fling and a Prayer.”

The woman’s married name is Laura DeFilippo. Her father’s name, according to the Daily News, is Thomas Donahue. Mr. Donahue, reported the News, flashed his middle finger at reporters who were camped outside of his Bronx home.

That same paper went and talked to a number of psychologists who suggested that it was, in fact, a father figure Mrs. DeFilippo was looking for when she fell into the arms of the 79 year-old priest with whom she has worked since graduating from high school.

Does it matter that DeFilippo and Clark deny having any sexual affair? DeFilippo’s ex-hubby thinks this is hogwash and has a video tape which shows the priest and his much younger assistant emerging from a hotel dressed in clothes they were not wearing when they entered earlier.

Clark has since resigned. DeFilippo has presumably lost her job, which reportedly paid her between $70,000 and $100,000 a year.

Say, isn’t there a war on in Iraq? Didn’t the cause so dear to the aforementioned hunger strikers — peace in Northern Ireland — just take a mighty step forward?

Isn’t there something else to put on a front page other than these tawdry details?

Unfortunately, there is blame to go all around on this one. Clark was known to rail against declining moral standards in the U.S. yet had what is — at the very least — a weird relationship with this woman since she was 18 and he was in his 50s.

Inevitably, the broader questions of church and sex — which Irish Catholics have been wrestling with mightily for several years already — have once again been raised.

But in the end, this is an August front page story, one for the dog days of summer, when it seems there’s just not much else going on in the world.

You know, except for the historic withdrawal in Gaza, the Iraq war, the IRA announcement and the Space Shuttle boondoggle.

But okay, you still want a good story about sex and power? Here’s one the tabloids maybe should take a longer look at.

It involves another New Yorker with an Irish name who went very far in the world, one General Kevin P. Byrnes, a four star general who was recently relieved of his duties. Why?

According to U.S. Army officials Byrnes, born and raised in Manhattan, was involved in a love affair. This even though Byrnes had been legally separated from his wife for a long time and recently completed divorce proceedings.

Now, some have suggested Byrnes was on the wrong side of top Bush administration officials, up to and including Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld.

At a Pentagon press conference last week, asked about this very rare disciplinary action taken against such a high-ranking officer, Rummy said, “It’s something that’s being handled in the proper channels. And it’s not something that it would be appropriate for me to get involved with.”

Perhaps. Nevertheless, Byrnes’ reputation appears to have been impeccable, and it’s not as if he were — oh, I don’t know — checking into a hotel with a nun.

Does the Byrnes sex story raises more important questions than the Beauty and the Priest story? Inquiring minds want to know.

(Contact Sidewalks at tomdeignan@earthlink.net.)