Edit: I've since concluded that he more likely said, "sacra templa poeta taberna quaerabat", which can be very loosely translated as: the priest seeks the temple, the poet seeks the pub. Hence Brother Mace's subsequent remark that a poet would like the joke, but a priest would consider it lousy.
Apologies if you already knew this, but I only just discovered that Brother Mace's "joke" is actually taken from a Latin textbook, where it's an example of a sentence that omits a repeated word. It's supposed to be "Sacerdos templum, poeta tabernam quaerebat", so he mangles it a bit!