Father Jonathan Morris Veers Off Course By Appearing With Devil....Er, Imus

Father Jonathan Morris, a Fox news analyst, heads up St. Patrick's Old Cathedral in New York City's SoHo neighborhood. But he made his way uptown today to decipher for Imus the best path to salvation for Tiger Woods (and maybe for the rest of us, too).

Jesus, Morris believes, is "very creative" when it comes to saving people, and that not all paths — whether Buddhist, as in Woods's case, or Jewish, or Hindu — are equally good.

"That's the gobbledy-gook that we have bought into in our society: all paths are exactly the same, and that's what it means to be open-minded," said Morris. "No, it doesn't. If I say something is true, then I have to be coherent with that, what that means."

The goal for all faiths, he continued, should be salvation, eternal life, and happiness on this earth. Predictably, he thinks that goal is best attained through Christianity, but he would never tell someone with different beliefs that he or she was wrong.

"That's tough to say," said Morris. "Especially if you say it as a jerk: 'If you don't convert, you're going to hell right now!'"

(Which, for the record, is how Imus would phrase it.)

This past week on Fox News Sunday, Fox's Brit Hume didn't use those exact words, but said that Tiger Woods, given his recent transgressions, would have an easier path to redemption were he to become a Christian. Hume has caught some flack for his remark, but Morris said it essentially proves he's not a fraud about his faith.

"If I'm going to help somebody going through a crisis in his life, I'm not going to say, 'Listen, do whatever you feel like doing,'" he said. "When you talk about analyzing this stuff on the news, you have to say, 'This is what I believe to be true, and this would be the fastest way.' And all of a sudden everybody says, 'Oh my gosh, he is proselytizing on the air!'"

While Morris obviously believes Christianity offers an easier road to salvation, ("Otherwise, I'd become a Buddhist"), he would never claim that a Buddhist, for instance, didn't have their own, radically different course.

"I think there are a lot of Buddhists who are on their way to accepting the grace of God in their lives, and to redemption, in ways that are more creative than I could ever come up with," he said. "I think God — his heart and his mind are bigger than mine."

Imus therefore reached this conclusion: That Woods would "probably be okay if he just stopped sleeping with women who aren't his wife." Morris agreed. Hallelujah!

As for the state of the world right now, Morris sees a lot of hope in this generation, which he said relies less on rules and more on spirituality than any previous one. "I think the thirst and the hunger that young people have for something more is going to be met," he added, calling the world "a better place now than it was in the 60s and 70s."

Imus, however, will just have to take his word for it, since he can't recall much of anything before the 90s.

-Julie Kanfer