1. You are a young woman vicar in the Anglican church, hoping for a successful career. You have seen
how Kate Bottley has managed to draw attention to herself by self-centred fooling around in the
House of God. Do you:
(a) Go one step further, and become the first stripping vicar, after which media fame and fortune
will await you?
(b) Learn to play the saxophone, so that you will quickly be promoted to the executive
position of bishop under sax-discrimination legislation?
(c) Pray "God help us"?
Ite, Missa est!
2. You are a member of the Magic Circle of English and Welsh bishops, and
currently a lowly Blessed Prestidigitator, but
hoping to be
promoted to the inner ring of Sacred Conjurers. Unfortunately, one of your deacons has set
up a blog "Safeguard the Bishop of Rome" in which he lists many threats to orthodox
Catholic doctrine (ACTA, The Tablet,... all the usual suspects). The Grandmaster of the
Magic Circle is leaning on you to do something. Do you:
(a) Tell the deacon that he will spend the rest of his life in a brief period of voluntary prayer and contemplation
if he doesn't want to end up locked in a garden shed?
(b) Set up your own rival blog in which you tell of all the exciting things bishops do, such
as eating cake with nuns?
(c) Tell the Grandmaster to mind his own business, and take the plank out of his own
diocese before trying to remove the speck from yours?
3. You are a fairly inexperienced pope, who is very popular with atheists but totally distrusted by Catholics. Do you:
(a) Pick an easy target such as the Curia, and insult them in fifteen exciting new ways?
(b) Promise to write an encyclical on a topic almost totally unrelated to the Catholic faith, e.g. climate change,
pizza toppings, or which football club Catholics should support?
(c) Look around for anyone who may be more popular than yourself (Burke, Müller, Pell, ...), and appoint them to an "invisible" position
looking after the Knights of Cyprus, the Bishops of Crete, or the Rooks of Gibraltar.
(d) Proclaim some new and absurd piece of doctrine infallibly, e.g. "From now on, everyone is saved"?
"My usual fee for an audience is $100,000, your popeship."
4. You are a young priest whose well-meaning but totally clueless aunt has given you a gift subscription to
the Tablet. When the first copy drops through your letter-box, do you:
(a) Phone your bishop and ask if he will come round and exorcise it?
(b) Read it from cover to cover, and comment "My, that Tony Flannery's a smart young chap, isn't he? If only
he were on our side"?
(c) Thank your aunt kindly and wonder whether it would be any good for lining the parrot's cage?
5. You are an embittered old Swiss Catholic priest and theologian. Although you are not allowed
to teach Catholic theology, you have written 348 books, with titles such as "My struggle for freedom"
and "Why I am still a Christian". But you are still not regarded as a Great Prophet. Do you:
(a) Fill your garden with more statues of yourself?
(b) Phone up Tina Beattie and ask her if she can get you a job at Roehampton?
(c) Buy yourself a New Testament, to find out exactly what Jesus really said.
And finally... a horror story.
6. You have been appointed priest at a parish that has a regular Tridentine Mass,
attracting worshippers from other parishes. The worshippers have been led to believe that
things will carry on as normal. Do you:
(a) Carry on as usual, in an attempt to become as well-respected as your distinguished predecessor?
(b) Close down the Latin Masses, for that is surely the will of God, as expressed in the Spirit of Vatican II?
(c) Like (b), only you get in some good ranting at the butcher, the baker and the candlestick-maker?
Answers: there are no right answers. But you didn't get the job.
Opportunities always exist for people with failed vocations. If you are an ex-Franciscan Liberation Theologian in Latin America, you could always re-brand your failed Marxist politico-economic nonsense as Green politico-economic nonsense, and get the ear of the Pope who is preparing a new encyclical on disappearing polar bears.
ReplyDeleteYou could always write about Pelagianism, Arianism,Fairy Rings and the like as a column for The Catholic Times.
ReplyDeleteLow IQ for NO
ReplyDelete