Sheriff of Nottingham sends palmer into exile

Sherwood Forest, A.D. 1192 (approx.)

Vassals of the Sheriff of Nottingham, Shearer West, have reacted violently to the news that a distinguished palmer, Friar "David" Tuck, is a perfectly normal Catholic, by exiling him as an outlaw. Fr Tuck had been named as chaplain to the Catholic youths in Nottingham by the local bishop, but it came to the attention of the Shearer's serfs that he was actually a serious Catholic, and not too keen on local customs such as abortion and assisted suicide. Apparently, Tuck used social media (tying a note to an arrow and firing it into the chambers of the Shearer) to communicate standard Catholic teaching, and this was badly received.

Rigid Catholics (outlaws).

A spokesman for the Shearer of Nottingham commented, "David the palmer is really quite a merry man, and he is welcome to any views he wishes, as long as he doesn't try to communicate them to others. Why can't he be a devout pilgrim, like Joseph of Afghanithea, currently on a crusade somewhere near the Holy Land? Joseph welcomes the slaughter of innocents, and nobody turns a hair!"

Friends of Friar Tuck have rushed to his defence. "Nottingham welcomes many heathen faiths: there are other Christian chaplains and even Saracen and Jewish chaplains. Most of these slavishly give their pronouns as 'he/him' or 'she/her' to show that they are truly woke," said Robin Hood (he/him). Little John (he/him) and Will Scarlet (also he/him) agreed, but wondered whether firing an arrow into the Shearer of Nottingham's arm might have been an unsuitable use of social media.

All facts verified by 1066 and all that.

Nottingham has a certain track record of harassing Catholics: Maid Marian Rynkiewicz (she/her), a pro-life student, had received her degree a year late because the local clerks objected to her beliefs, although she received a settlement involving bags of gold.

The Bishop of Nottingham (His Lordship/His Lordship) has been asked to nominate another chaplain, one who isn't too serious about the faith, but since no Jesuits will be available for several hundred years, he has refused.

2013 and all that (part 2)

Continued from Part 1.

In the third year of his reign, Pope Francis the Humble produced a papal encyclopedia, called Laudato Si'. Since they did not speak Italian, most people thought that this was a new type of pasta, and were very disappointed when it turned out to be something totally indigestible.

Re-arrange these letters into something spiritually nourishing.

Laudato Si' was all about the environment, and the Pope humbly explained that flying in aeroplanes and giving press conferences was bad for Mother Earth; indeed, every time a journalist asked a question, a polar bear burst into flames. Also, he explained that biodiversity was more important than anything else, even religion. This led to a great increase in the number of pandas, blue whales, and Sumatran tigers adopted by Catholics.

Pope Francis adopts a rare tiger.

It was also time for the second Sinner of the Family, so that lots of bishops could come to Rome and see which sins they most enjoyed. The bishops voted for their favourite sins, and in the end Cardigan Baldacchino told them they had got it all wrong, and that Pope Francis would have to write a humble Apostolic Expiration called Amorous Letitia, to tell them what they should have said.

Meanwhile, Pope Francis, being a merciful as well as a humble pope, decided that the Church should have a Year of Mercy. This was to be the first of a series of years celebrating the things Pope Francis held sacred, and future ones would be called the Year of Pizza, Year of Football, and Year of Tango.

Auditions for the Year of Tango.

In the Year of Mercy, all churches had to have a door called the Door of Mercy for people to enter by if they were feeling merciful. Those who did not feel merciful were allowed to enter by the Window of Cruelty instead.

Pope Francis's reign was known for the custom of using silly logos for all events, because all the sensible logos had already been used. One of his advisers said "Let's use a logo of a two-headed Cyclops on skis - we haven't had that one before, have we?" After checking the records of all Catholic logos used, all the way back to the 1st Century, it was confirmed that nobody had thought of that logo before, not even St John when he wrote his Logos Doctrine. So the logo was adopted, and the Catholic faithful were briefly united in crying for mercy whenever they saw it.

Mercy! Mercy!

In the next part, we meet Amorous Letitia; also Burke is Dubious, and Fra' Matthew stops Feasting.

2013 and all that (part 1)

With apologies to W.C. Sellar and R.J. Yeatman.

Pope Francis, a humble pope.

In 2013 Pope Benedict surprised everyone by resigning as pope and forgetting to die. Thus he was still allowed to wear his white coat, and did not have to be put in a tomb. The cardigans gave him the job of Emergency Pope, and met to choose a successor.

A humble pope, wearing the papal tiara.

Having had a saintly pope (John-Paul II) and a learned pope (Benedict), the cardigans decided try something completely different and choose their pope from Argentina, a man known as General Belgrano. He was strongly supported by the St Gay Mafia, which included Cardigan Dandruff, Cardigan Casper the unfriendly ghost, and Cardigan Comic Mercy-O'Conman.

General Belgrano was known to be a humble man, and indeed his papal motto was NON ESTIS HUMILES, EGO SOLUS HUMILIS, which means "You are not humble, only I am humble." He chose the name Francis in honour of Francis Ford Coppola, the producer of the Holy Father films.

The Holy Father.

One of the first actions of the new pope was to attack the Franciscan Friars of the Immaculate, who had been behaving too immaculately. Fr Fidelio Volpone was appointed to help them become less immaculate, so he helped them by dismantling the order. When he had done as much damage as possible, Fr Volpone decided that he had achieved his life's ambition, and died.

In the second year of his humble reign, Pope Francis held the first of two Sinners of the Family, which were meetings of bishops who wanted to try out new sins. A very powerful cardigan called Baldacchino was appointed to run these Sinners, and to tell the bishops which new sins they would be encouraged to commit.

Being a humble pope, Francis then decided that it was time to give an equal opportunity of humility to Cardigan Burke: it is said that he was jealous of him because he was an intelligent man who had read the Bible. Cardigan Burke had been a member of the Congratulation for Bishops, which chooses new bishops, but this was too important a post for a humble man, so the Pope told him to look after the Order of Malta instead. As we shall see, this was all part of a devious plan to cause more humiliation for Burke, although this took two more years.

How do you make a Maltese cross? A problem that Pope Francis solved two years later.

Finally, at about this time Francis realised that he had been elected to sort out the problems of the Roman Curious, who were the people who did all the hard work in the Catholic Church. Being a humble pope he identified fifteen disorders from which they suffered, including Spiritual Alzheimer's, Numinous Measles, amd Gnostic Arthritis. However, apart from insulting them as part of his Christmas greetings, he took no further action at that time.

In the next part we meet Loudhailer Si', the 2nd Sinner of the Family, and the Year of Murky.

The arms of a humble pope.

A guest post from Peter Hitchens (age 11)

In skool we have been studdying the CATHLIC MATERS under Queen Elizzabeth, who was CHURCH OF ENGGLAND cheers cheers, and not a nasty Cathlic like her sister BLODDY MARRY. Mr CRANNMER our histry teecher told us to go and read the "orthoritative text" on the refformation, which is 1066 and all that. This tells us that queen elizzabeth was a GOOD THING and was known as GOOD QUEEN BESS, especially by all the people she had executted.

The book is jolly exciting, as it hav lots of bludshed in it, and people being hung, drawn and quatered cheers. I asked mr crannmer if we could do a skool play with fotherington-tomas in the roll of edmund campoin, but he said no, hitchens, fotherington-tomas may be a cathlic but you must show MERCY. This is wot he calls being ECUMENICKLE chiz chiz. I discard him.

We hav also been reeding fox's book of maters, which explanes that all the angliccans that died were HEROES and all the cathlics were traitors. Who would have thort that religoin could do that my dere?

The hitchens-peason anti-cathlic trapp.

Anyway, in brief the story is that all cathlics were giulty of TREESON, because POP PUIS V in ROM said that GOOD QUEEN BESS was a HERETTIC and not SAVED and shuold not be the QUEEN. So it was ILLEGAL to be a cathlic preist, and also to go to MASS. In fact it was probabbly ILLEGAL to beleive in God, becuase I asked MR WELLBY the skool chaplin, and he says that the traditoin of ATHIESM in the church of enggland is very strong even to this day.

This is MAGARET CLITHEROE who was a secret agent for POP PUIS chiz.

We also studdied the MATERDOM of magaret clitheroe, who was a sort of MARTYR HARI spy for the POP and spent her time sheltering cathlic preists rather than doing the PATROITIC THING and handing them over to be hung, drawn and quatered. She was killed by having HEAVY WIEGHTS squashing her, which was a GOOD THING and made everyone VERY HAPPY.

Well thats all ive got time for now, but you can lern more about the GOLDEN AGE of RELIGOIN on my twitter account or the MALE ON SUNDAY.

1963 and all that (part 1)

With apologies to W. C. Sellar and R. J. Yeatman.

Pope Paul VI, a blessed pope.

A blessed pope.

After summoning the 2nd Vatican Conflict in order to decide whether the Church should be modern or not, Good Pope John found that he was enjoying it so much that he dropped dead (and 51 years later he went to Heaven). The cardigans got together and picked on Cardigan Montini, who changed his name to Pope Paul VI and carried on the Vatican Conflict, after removing all the wounded. In the end, the Conflict ended with lots of new decisions, which were instantly blamed on the Holy Spirit, viz.:

1. All Catholics must stop talking Latin and learn a new language called Vernacular.
2. All priests who faced east must turn round and face west. However, the common people were not allowed to face west.
3. All altars were moved from the end of the church into the middle, so that the priests could hide behind them.
4. Kneeling was forbidden in church, as it was not considered cool.
5. The common people were no longer to obey orders given to them by priests.
6. The Age of Aquarius had dawned and a new Spirit of Vatican II was abroad.
7. Sex and drugs and rock and roll were still sins, but not as bad as they used to be. Indeed there was to be a new prophet of rock and roll, called St Cliff Richard.

After the 2nd Vatican Conflict, all Catholics were naturally very happy, and so they stopped going to church (see Rule 5).

Catholics being very happy.

Another thing that happened in the reign of Pope Paul was that he wrote an encyclopaedia, called Humorus Vitae, or Isn't life funny? In it he explained that Catholics should not use contradiction to avoid having babies. Since many married couples spend most of the time contradicting each other, this was not very popular.

Pope Paul was so shocked by the reception of Humorus Vitae that for the next ten years he became very serious, and did nothing memorable at all. Finally, he was persuaded to die so that someone else could have a go.

Pope John-Paul I, a smiling pope.

Not really memorable.

After Blessed but rather Serious Pope Paul, the cardigans decided that they needed a smiling pope. After a smiling competition, they told Albino Luciani to take over, but only for a month, because he was not really memorable. The new pope chose the name John-Paul-George-Ringo, after a famous pope group called the Beatitudes, but this was soon shortened to John-Paul. Then one day Pope John-Paul decided to stop smiling, and died suddenly.

Pope John-Paul II, a saintly pope.

A shaved person.

When Pope John-Paul I died, the cardigans got together and decided to elect a young pope, so that he probably wouldn't die too quickly. Although the rules of the game said that popes had to be Italian, there weren't any young Italian cardigans left, so they chose a Polish pope, Karol Józef Wojtyła. He started off as a young pope, but then surprised people by becoming an old pope. The new pope was not expecting to be elected, because he wasn't Italian; indeed, he was so shocked that he could not think of a new pope-name, so he became Pope John-Paul II.

A cardigan greets the new pope.

Questions on the period 1963 to 1978. Candidates should sing their answers to a melody by Paul Inwood.

1. Explain why the 2nd Vatican Conflict encouraged the use of (a) clown masses, (b) puppet masses, and (c) dancing priests.
2. Write down all you know about (a) Annibale Bugsbunni; (b) the heresies of Basil Foltus; (c) Archbishop Marcel Leftover.
3. Compare and contrast (a) St Cliff Richard; (b) the Beatitudes; (c) The (cardigan) Whom.
4. Think of three memorable things that Pope John-Paul I could have done in order to live longer.
5. Translate into Vernacular: (a) Wojtyła; (b) Humorus Vitae; (c) Kumbaya.

To be continued.

Eccles adopts an angel

In the past, dis blogg has encouraged poeple to adopt cradinals, deacons, and even pops, all of which needs our help on occasoins. However, we was astuonded to hear from our slightly-saved but very rood and norty friend Mundabor that we now needs to adopt angles.

Ullo, Eccles, you is my gaurdian human!

Apparently, Man is no longer lower than the angles, at least according to a telephone conversatoin that Pop Francis may have had with an angle, and so we gotta forget Pslam 8:5, Herbews 2:7, and the rest, and become de gaurdian humans of angles.

Pussonally I always confuses angles wiv Anglicans, cos I read in a history book (1066 and all that) that Pop Gregory said that some kids was Non Angeli, sed Anglicani. When I heard about this adoptoin scheme I was scared that I might get Giles Fraser to adopt (and be woken up every mornin by him doin his silly bit on the Today program), but in the end it came out OK, and now I got a luvvly young creecher called Angela sleepin in the spare room. She's thinkin of startin a blogg called "On the side of the humans".

Is these angles? Not sure where the wings is.

Adoptin angles is reely very easy, as they doesn't eat anything, and they will often help with the housework. One night a week they goes off and has a Heavenly Choir Practice - and they does spend a lot of time in the bathroom, singin Hosannas as they wash their wings etc. But you gets used to that.

Angela also likes dancing on the heads of pins.

P.S. Sorry if the spellin aint up to its usual standrad this week. My secretarry, Ecclesiis, went off in a hough when Angela moved in, and we aint yet found a replaicement.