This is me, Eccles

This is me, Eccles
This is me, Eccles

Monday 22 December 2014

Attack the Curia the Pope Francis way!

In an attack on the Vatican's bureaucrats this morning (warning, it's a link to the Tablet), Pope Francis listed 15 disorders that he said had infected the Curia, from "spiritual Alzheimer's" to joylessness and "existential schizophrenia".

Francis and Curia

"You're all afflicted with anagogical head lice!"

Now you too can attack the Curia the Pope Francis way! Choose one from each of Sections A and B below, and Voilà!

Section A

Spiritual
Existential
Philosophical
Numinous
Mystic
Conceptual
Transcendent
Ecclesiastical
Devotional
Asomatous
Sacred
Empirical
Sanctified
Metaphysical
Transmundane
Ineffable
Paranormal
Hermeneutic
Frankenstein and monster

"Give it straight to me, Doctor! Have I got gnostic housemaid's knee?"

Section B

Measles
Mumps
Alzheimer's
Schizophrenia
Kleptomania
Dyslexia
Rabies
Lumbago
Boils on the backside
Ingrowing toenails
St Vitus' Dance
Dreaded Lurgi
Hypochondria
Black Death
Space sickness
Lazar's Disease
Clone-Killing Nanovirus
Dragon Pox
ambulance

A cardinal is rushed to hospital with seraphic laryngitis.

Now, you can talk learnedly at dinner parties about the problems of the Roman Curia. For example, "Mrs Pepinster, I've always said that the Roman Curia was afflicted by Numinous Ingrowing Toenails. How wonderful that Pope Francis is there to sort out the problem!"

10 comments:

  1. Have long suffered from Mystic Dragonpox to my embarrassment. This news of a cure is a dream come true!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Not really. As Eustace Scrubb discovered, the cure can be worse than the disease

      Delete
  2. As my friend said, "I didn't know I was sick until I saw a doctor."
    Its time someone invented a high-tech digital double-duty hands-free headscratcher that would automatically reach to your head each time the Pope speaks. You, at least, will have a transcendentally well-massage scalp.

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  3. "The sickness of deifying leaders..."

    It is ironic that many of those who will applaud the Pope for this, like they do for everything, are those who have effectively deified him and created a sense of infallibility around every utterance.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Suffering an attack of Transmundane Disorientation after three bottles of Voll-Damm beer in a deserted bar in Ibiza town. Prolly leading to an attack of Advent Antiphonal Gout.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. An O Antiphonal attack of gout, for it is written
      O Rex Gentium, et desideratus earum,
      lapinque angularis

      Something about an English Rabit with desirable ears

      Delete
  5. The "sins" the Pope refers to are always rather odd, rather out-of-the-way, often not sins at all, or possibly sins only in special circumstances. They are very subjective. They sound trite, in fact, like a secularist's pet peeves, rather than amything to do with offending God or the objective moral law. If he's Catholic, he keeps it well hidden.

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  6. I am truly delighted that, as a nurse with many years of experience, there is still so much for me to learn. However, I fear I will never catch up. But one can always try...

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  7. Each Curial official should have been invited to the front to check off which of the 15 sins they believed themselves guilty of -- as in the tiresome interview question on one's greatest weakness, surely there would be a self-diagnosed epidemic of working too hard -- a trite response, but one the question deserves.

    Of course the smart Prefects would accuse themselves of glorifying their boss - it would take heroic virtue not to, after all! - and possibly another ingratiating moral illness, such as transmundane St. Vitus' Dance.

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  8. I'm guilty of monastic dyspepsia. Self-denunciations will be the order of the day soon, so I am getting in early. But I am not in the Curia! Does it still count?

    Oh the confusion...

    ReplyDelete