The late George Carlin—comedic evangelist for the profane, antagonist of the faithful, author of When Will Jesus Bring the Porkchops?—is getting a Manhattan street named after him, and thanks to a paperwork failure, it will run past the childhood Catholic parish he embarrassed so badly in life.

Representatives of New York's Catholic Diocese had long fought the plan to dub 121st Street in Morningside Heights "George Carlin Way," arguing the name would profane Corpus Christi Church, the parish whose nuns helped rear a young Carlin in the ways of the Lord—and apparently failed in spectacular fashion, the New York Times reports.

The Church and Carlin's champions came to a compromise that would rename just one block on 121st—but an administrative error led to the bill for that compromise, signed yesterday, renaming a two-block stretch of the street, including the part on which Corpus Christi stoops:

It will only be temporary. All sides describe the mix-up as a simple mistake, to be amended in the fall, when the City Council votes on another batch of street renamings. And church officials have been assured that a street sign bearing Mr. Carlin's name will not be posted until the problem is sorted out...

The one-block compromise came about after years of community board hearings and negotiations between comedians hoping to honor the trailblazing comic and members of Corpus Christi, whose school Mr. Carlin attended and later mocked in his stand-up routines.

Mr. Carlin's daughter, Kelly, said that her father had positive feelings about the church.

"He was really nurtured by the nuns there," she said, also noting that its members appreciated his often-vulgar routines as cultural commentary. She laughed when told of the error in the bill.

Carlin would probably have a big laugh about all this if he were alive. But he's dead, and an atheist, so maybe he'd just think it's a waste of our time.