Christmas gifts for Catholics

The chocolate Luther

Give your loved one a statue of his or her favourite heretic, made entirely out of chocolate! Bodily nourishment as well as spiritual nourishment! Warning, may contain nuts.

Also available: Arius, neo-Pelagius, Mohammed, Kasper, Tina Beattie, etc.

The Dubia game.

Fun for all the family. The players divide into two teams, and one person is designated "pope". The members of the other team are allowed to ask five questions in order to try and decide whether the pope is Catholic. The members of the pope's team must do all they can to prevent the pope from giving a direct answer: legitimate tactics include threats, insults, and claims that the answers have already been given. Dice not supplied.

Pope Francis dressing-up kit.

Let your kids dress up as their favourite pope (not counting Benedict)! Includes white vestments, book of insults, etc. We even provide a scribbling book in which your children can write their own apostolic exhortations! Deluxe set also includes a small "aeroplane cabin" in which they can invent new doctrines.

The Eccles Heresometer^TM.

Fun for all the family. Point this at your friends, and it gives off a piercing screech if it detects any heresy. Use the "Report" setting to shop Grandma directly to the Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith! WARNING: this device may overheat if used in Jesuit communities.

The miniskirt of Mercy is no longer available, but a miniskirt of Anger will be released soon.

Or buy the latest DVD.

In Martin Scorsese's The Silence of the Popes a Jesuit pope is elected, who manages to remain silent in spite of numerous questions from his flock. Recommended by Fr James Martin SJ!

New Vatican appointments

The Vatican has announced a batch of urgent appointments as a response to the scandalous, cheeky, impudent, and impertinent request from the Four Cardinals (and most of the rest of the Catholic Church) for the pope to answer some yes/no questions about Catholic teaching.

Mgr Vino Tinto, Dean of the Rota-Weilers.

Mgr Vino Tinto has been appointed to the elite team charged with issuing silly threats against cardinals who ask the pope for spiritual leadership. "I'll sack 'em all. Then I'll cut their throats. Then I'll jump up and down on their corpses! See if I don't!" he explained to a conference in Spain.

Apparently, the cardinals' crime was to make their dubia public, whereas traditionally asking for spiritual nourishment was done in secret. See, for example, this passage from the Gospel according to St Blase.

1. And one of his disciples asked Jesus a question.

2. And Jesus answered.

3. But we shall never know what the question was, nor what the reply was.

4. For that is how our Lord always operated.

"Mercy??? I'll give them Mercy!"

Another prestigious appointment is that of Fr Antonio Spadaro, currently the chief papal lap-dog. He has been charged with new duties, namely to generate insults and snide comments about Cardinal Burke and his supporters.

However, his responsibilities do not stop there. He has also been charged with feeding the papal sockpuppets, so that he he may appear on Twitter in such disguises as @hablafrancisco and @pope_news, screaming insults at anyone who dares to suggest that Amoris Laetitia is non-magisterial, the personal opinion of Pope Francis, and almost nothing to do with what was agreed at the Synod.

"Things are getting desperate, Holy Father. I'll send in some more sockpuppets."

Fr Tom Rosica of the Salt and Vinegar corporation is still in charge of issuing charm offensives, so no change there for the time being. However, an interesting lay appointment has also been made: Austein Ivereigh of Catholic Voices, author of the best-selling book, Pope Francis, the new Messiah, has become another papal spokesman.

"Thanks, Austen. I shall lose no time in reading your book."

Ivereigh has been charged with explaining to the the sceptical that the five dubia have already been answered, and everyone know what the answers were, in fact it's so obvious that we don't even need to talk about them any more, and I'm certainly not going to give you the answers, children, go and work them out for yourselves and you will become better Catholics.

Pope attacks distinguished cardinal

Somewhere near the Mediterranean, 63 AD.

Controversial Pope Petrus has savagely attacked Cardinal Paulus in his latest Apostolic Letter, called simply 43 Francis 2 Peter. In chapter 3 of this letter he writes as follows:

Vatican commentators regard this as exceptionally strong language for a pope to use, and a sign of the undying hatred that "boiling with rage" Petrus has for Paulus. His own "attack poodle" Antonius Spadarus, has joined in the fun, tweeting "Nah, nah, nah, nobody can understand his letters! What a Wormtongue Paulus is!" (a tweet he later deleted).

Blases Cupichus (seen here trying on some clothes "just in case") agrees with Petrus.

On the other hand Father Jacobus Martinus of Jesuitum has commented that he sees nothing wrong with twisting Paulus's words ("It's all in a day's work for a Jesuitan").

Petrus's papacy has long been regarded as controversial. Very early in his papacy, he was sent an enquiry, consisting of three Yes/No "dubia" as follows:

1. You were with Jesus of Galilee, weren't you?

2. Are not you also one of His disciples?

3. Did I not see you in the garden with Him?

Answer the questions, Holy Father!

Although the pope did provide answers to these questions, the answers were considered heretical, and Petrus was later subject to a formal correction - something that would never happen these days, oh no.

A few years later, Paulus made another formal correction of the pope, which he records in his Letter to the Catholic Herald Galatians as follows:

For this act of insubordination Paulus was exiled to Malta, and later to various other islands scattered round the Mediterranean, although he has continued to send letters to all and sundry.

Petrus has recently described Paulus as "rigid", and questioned his mental health, after Paulus insisted (see Acts 22) that he had been a Roman citizen all his life.

This blog will do its best to keep you up to date with future developments in the biggest crisis to hit the Catholic Church since the time of the Resurrection, when - according to Jacobus Martinus of Jesuitum - feminist icon Mary Magdalene succeeded in taking over the Church.

At last - the answers to those five dubia

Two months after a group of cardinals sent a letter to Pope Francis with five yes/no questions or "dubia", we have a definite answer from Fr Antonio Spadaro SJ, the pope's key adviser and well-known comic genius.

The pope's fool, er spokesman, Fr Antonio Spadaro.

Now, the old "traddy" answer to the five dubia would have been "NO, YES, YES, YES, YES," but that's not the way that Jesuits answer questions, so we have five rather fuller answers. Just to keep you on your toes, Spadaro the Holy Father has put his answers in a random order.

Q1. It's not easy to discern the answer to this one. Start by asking yourself: are you in Germany? For the answer will be different.

Ve ask ze qvestions!

Q2. Well, yes and no. Or to put it another way, no and yes. Which doesn't mean that I don't have an answer, just that you haven't asked the right question.

Q3. Let me answer this question with another question. Why don't you go away and stop bothering me? You may think Malta is a come-down but remember Napoleon was sent to St Helena. Know what I mean, Ray?

Cardinal Burke reflects on his new appointment.

Q4. It's a definite "maybe" to this one.

Q5. If you answer yes or no, then you deny your own Buddha-nature. However, according to the hermeneutic of confusion, you may answer "Mu". Or, in Italian, "Cosi Cosa".

Your special subject for Mastermind was "Catholic doctrine", and you passed on 5 questions.

I hope that this puts an end to all the unseemly Catholic bickering. Roma locuta est, causa finita est, as my rigid friends would say.

My favourite things

To redress the balance, as some people think this blog is too "traddie".

With apologies to Rodgers and Hammerstein.

Masses with puppets and tambourine jingles,
Long-lasting "kisses of peace", where one mingles,
Rich German bishops all wrapped up in bling,
These are a few of my favourite things.

Cardinal Kasper and all his new teaching,
All of Pope Francis's aeroplane preaching,
Amoris Laetitia, and all that it brings,
These are a few of my favourite things.

Wacky professors who'd ordain some females,
People who sit in the Mass reading e-mails,
Paul Inwood's music, which everyone sings,
These are a few of my favourite things.

When the priest prays, when the choir sings,
When I meet a "Trad",
I simply remember my favourite things,
And then I don't feel so bad.

How to be a Good Pope 5

Continued from Part 1, Part 2, Part 3. and Part 4.

The story so far: you have issued a spicy exhortation Appassionata Erotica, in which you and your ghost-writers put forward several controversial opinions. It is deliberately confusing, and, whatever it is you're trying to say, it's certainly not what was agreed at the Synod you held last year.

Pope John XXII - also knew a thing or two about inventing new doctrines.

Feeling unloved, you have also decided to create some new cardinals, for which the main criterion you use is not "Is he a good Catholic?" but "Is he a yes-man?" Accordingly some very strange people, including Cardinals Farrago, Kewpie, and Toblerone, are now ready to become princes of the Church, as you approach the end of the Jubilee Year of Hospitality.

However, all is not well. A few months ago, some of your most respected cardinals wrote to you, asking whether you were still a Catholic. Apparently they had come to the conclusion that some of the opinions stated in Appassionata Erotica, if interpreted by a sufficiently mischievous person - say, a Jesuit - were quite possibly heretical. So they posed a few test questions to give you a chance to clear your name. Such questions are called "dubia", and any truly conscientious pope is expected to respond to them.

Pope St John-Paul II replies to dubia.

However, you are now in a real dilemma. Your own Jesuit training has taught you never to give a straight answer to a straight question. At Jesuit seminary it was: "Do you renounce evil, Fr Antonio?" "Well, I'd like to answer that question in two ways: first, by calling you names, and secondly, by running away."

So, as a good pope, you ignore the cardinals' letter - pretend, perhaps that it was lost in the post. Anyway, you have far more important duties as pope: there are still several groups of Catholics that you never got round to insulting, so, as a distraction, you call young devotees of the Latin Mass "rigid", and question the mental health of anyone who dares to ask you for clarification on any matter at all.

Meanwhile, your cronies will be describing Appassionata Erotica as "magisterial" and "part of the depoisit of faith", even "necessary for salvation", in spite of the fact that it is not even an encyclical like your famous Phew Wottascorcha on the environment, but merely an apostolic exhortation loosely based on what you wish the Synod had actually agreed.

Meanwhile, your attack dogs are slavering at the mouth...

Your pet pooch, Fr Wormtongue, attacks the cardinals who wrote to you.

Now, there is a real problem here, as you need to hold a consistory, before which you would meet your cardinals. They are getting increasingly disrespectful, and you expect embarrassing questions like "Did you get our letter, chum?" and "Haven't you resigned yet?"

The answer is simple - cancel the pre-consistory meeting!

However, if the cardinals responsible for the dubia are really serious about upholding the Catholic faith (sheesh! we thought that this sort of thing ended with Vatican II) then they may even go so far as to issue a formal "act of correction". So you'd better stuff some copies of Appassionata Erotica down the back of your cassock, Holy Father, in case someone comes round with a big stick!

Where's that naughty pope got to?

More wise advice in due course, no doubt.

Saint of the Week - St Antony of Spadaro

St Antony of Spadaro is a much-loved saint, and in many ways the opposite of his namesake St Antony of Padua. When people wish to lose objects - or even to pretend they never existed - they pray to St Antony of Spadaro, and if their prayers are answered, then the embarrassing items disappear and can be totally ignored.

A truly holy man.

A grateful customer, J. Bergoglio of Rome, writes:

I was severely embarrassed when four cardinals wrote a letter to me containing a list of five "Dubia", or embarrassing questions about Amoris Laetitia. However, I prayed to St Antony of Spadaro, and the letter miraculously disappeared as if it had never existed, and I was able to ignore it!

See! All your doubts have disappeared! Just like that!

Since the letter from the four cardinals clearly never existed, we can only speculate what the five Dubia might have been, but here are some likely guesses:

1. Are you still a Catholic?

2. We know you didn't write Amoris Laetitia, but have you actually read it?

3. Is a person in a three-way marriage involving one man and two women, who has murdered a previous wife, who keeps a sex slave in his cellar, and and who is now contemplating a "sex-change", while at the same time feeling an unhealthy attraction to his goldfish, allowed to take communion?

4. Can Jesuits be saved?

5. As cardinals we feel it is our duty to advise you, so will you please take our advice and put Cardinal Kasper in a padded cell?

"Just like that!" A devotee of St Antony of Spadaro attempts to make things vanish.

Another grateful customer, L. Baldisseri of Rome, writes:

Last year we held a synod whose purpose was to think of new ways of undermining family life. However, it was nearly sabotaged when five cardinals produced a book explaining Christian doctrine - which, we all realise, was made obsolete in the 1960s. They attempted to post their book to participants at the synod. However, I prayed to St Antony of Spadaro, and the books miraculously disappeared from the Vatican postal system (Cardinal Pat, with his black and white cat), never to be seen again! Thank you, oh thank you, St Antony of Spadaro!

Cardinal Pat of the Vatican postal service.

Our religious experts comment on Trump's victory

Pope Francis.

My children, you know that I never make judgements on people, I'm just not that sort of person. So, although Donald Trump is a dangerous man who will destroy the world, I would never dream of saying so. The man wants to build walls, and there is nothing worse than walls...

... except Latin Masses of course. What is it about people who still yearn for the pre-conciliar liturgy? They are RIGID, RIGID, RIGID. Don't they know that the Catholic Church was founded in the 1960s, and not back in ancient times? These people make me sick. They probably even have walls in their houses.

Bastards, the lot of them. They don't know how to show love. Why can't they follow my example, instead of acting like a lot of insecure hate-filled wall-worshipping neo-Pelagians?

Donald Trump - a dangerous man, although I'd never dream of saying so.

---

Fr James Martin SJ.

Lord have Mercy! Christ have Mercy! Lord have Mercy! The Spirit of Vatican II have Mercy!

These words from the Jesuit liturgy summarise how I feel today. The election of Hillary Clinton would have led to advances in all the areas that we Catholics see as important: LBGTSJ rights, the ordination of women... and more consideration for the really wretched and despised members of the population - Jesuits. After all Vice-President Kaine was brought up by our lot.

Did you see today's Gospel? In it Jesus gets REALLY CROSS about the election of Herod, a powerful man with strange hair. He speaks out, saying "If only we could have elected a thieving woman with a sex-maniac husband, then the Kingdom of God would be with us already."

Er, don't worry if your Bible says something different. This is perfectly normal.

I'm sorry, I'm going to have to go and have a good cry.

All dressed up for a celebration party and nowhere to go!

---

Professor Tina Beattie.

Woe, woe and thrice woe! God the Mother, forgive them for they know not what they do! America is doomed!

It's clear that the American people rejected Hillary because she was a woman. All my friends at ACTA agree with me.

Look, her policies were soundly built on the principle of human flourishing. Her main aim in life was to get incredibly rich, and if that isn't flourishing, then what is? She was a great advocate of women's abortion rights - and although I wouldn't go quite as far as her policy of killing all children under the age of two, you must admit that there is a Biblical precedent!

But, most important of all, Hillary has two X chromosomes, and that means she has a BETTER BRAIN than any of those sexist male people. All right, OFFICIALLY she is not a Catholic, but can you tell the difference? I can't.

America, I weep for you. Father Jim, can I borrow one of your hankies? The pink one with flowers on will do nicely...

A few unhappy faces in Tina's support group.

Hillary demands back her soul

Following her unsuccessful campaign to be the first woman president of the United States of America, Hillary Clinton has sent a stern e-mail to the demon Mephistopheles demanding the return of her soul.

A young Hillary negotiates a deal for her soul.

The arrangements promised by the demon included the presidency for her husband (delivered), all the women he wants for her husband (delivered, although some of the women weren't too keen), vast quantities of money to be spent on anything she chose (delivered, via the Clinton Foundation), and finally the presidency for herself (not delivered).

"I did not have sexual relations with those 500 women."

Many people had suspected that Hillary's soul was no longer her own, having seen her fanatical hatred for unborn children - and her support of the Plant Parenthood "Buy your loved one some baby parts for Christmas" organization - the disgusting "Spirit Cooking" habits of her friends (unmentionable in a blog like this, which is read by innocent children and priests), and her general dishonesty.

That embarrassing moment when your dinner guests insist on discussing politics.

So what went wrong? Well, there came into the world a modest, virtuous, chaste, and holy being called St Donald of Trump, who fought the evil dragon Hillary and captured the presidency from her. He thus made America great again, and brought the dawn of a new era of prosperity and world peace, and an end to famine and disease. (I've copied this from a press release, but I am sure that St Donald is being scrupulously honest here).

However, demons are completely unreliable, and should not be trusted, and so it is unlikely that poor Hillary will get a refund.

St Donald of Trump slays the dragon.

As a side-effect, we learn that Fr James Martin SJ has finally "got religion" - at least his reaction to the events was to say "Lord, have mercy!"

The Book of Brexodus, Chapter 8

Continued from Chapter 7.

1. And the children of Bri-tain continued to wait for May-gog to trigger the 50th article, so that the seas could part and they might leave the land of EU-gypt.

Waiting for the seas to part.

2. And the summer ended, and autumn came, but still nothing was done.

3. Although it is said that, behind the scenes, the three wise men, Bo-sis, Li-am the Fox, and David that is called Davis, were discussing trade.

4. However, trade agreements with EU-gypt were hard to arrange, as the people of Canaan-da had learned.

5. For the mighty Walloons (or Belgites) refused to agree about anything with anyone: thus it became uncertain whether essential foodstuffs, such as the sprouts of Brussels and the chocolates of the Belgites, would still be obtainable after the great Brexodus.

Would this food continue to drop from Heaven?

6. However, all this debate was suddenly swept aside, because there spake out three learned judges, led by the mighty Baron Thomas of Cwmdancyn (or, in English, Luton).

7. Saying "May-gog, ye cannot leave the land of EU-gypt without taking a vote among the most wretched and despised people in the land, namely, the House that is known as Common.

8. For without the benefits to be gained from the mighty brain of Lam-my, the morals and virtue of Vaz, and the wisdom of Cor-byn (he that sitteth upon the floor in the temple of the virgins), no decision can be taken.

9. For the people have shewn themselves untrustworthy, since they have voted against the advice of Cam-aaron, he who is now fled into utter obscurity."

Cam-aaron taketh off all his clothes, and disappeareth from sight.

10. And indeed, the unwisdom of the people was already seen in how they elected the members of the House of the Common.

11. For it was written "In this land of demo-cracy, a mere nobody can be elected to the House of the Common, and he may take decisions on behalf of the people."

12. And indeed, the people had responded by electing a multitude of nobodies.

13. Still, the judges had spoken. So May-gog lamented greatly, and sought out some even more important judges.

To be continued.

The Pope's new Beatitudes

1. And FRANCIS went up unto a high place, namely the Alitalia flight from Malmo to Rome, and spake these words.

The Sermon in the Plane.

2. Blessed are they who look to the right and to the left before crossing the road: for the years of their life shall be lengthened.

3. Blessed are they who recycle their bottles, and do not simply throw them out of the window at passers-by, as do the heathen.

4. Blessed are they who clean their teeth after meals, for their mouths shall shine forth with the Light of the Lord.

Fail.

5. Blessed are they who turn off their heating, and dwell in the houses that are frozen; and blessed are they who walk or cycle to their labours rather than taking the chariots of fire: for they shall be called the children of the Earth, and feel very smug about the whole thing.

6. Blessed are they who wear organic, low-fat, locally sourced, hand-knitted, gluten-free, Fairtrade, free-range socks: for their feet shall bring joy to the world.

Blessed feet in holy socks!

7. Blessed are they who stand in an aeroplane, and speak words from their hearts, even if these words do not come from the head: for someone will be on hand to correct, explain, and interpret their utterances.

8. Trust me, I know all about this.