Zen and the art of Michael Lofton maintenance

The story so far:

You are a middle-aged man with a big head and a small beard, running a popular and lucrative website that some days has more than three viewers. Then guess what! Some jumped-up cardinal says cruel things about you!

It is your DUTY to put this Zen chap in his place!

This old man from Japan (memo: check this) dares to criticise Fiducia Supplicans - you know, that very important magisterial letter that told us that homosexual couples should be /blessed/ /shown the door/ /kissed/ /sent off to join the Jesuits/ ... well, we're not sure what, as the rules change every day. Still, priests can probably get away with blessing them provided that they cross their fingers while doing so, do not take more than 16.314 seconds over the task, and provided that the parties do not form a couple, but a pair, or possibly a brace, duo, or dyad. And the blessing must not look like a wedding - so no white dresses, bridesmaids, flowers, crying, or Wagner's immortal tune "Here comes the bride, short, fat and wide."

"I'll bet that this jumped-up cardinal doesn't even have tattoos all over his body!"

Well, you've got this Zen chap over a barrel now. He needs to be laicised, put on the rack, and (worst of all) forced to watch 200 hours of videos from your website "Reason and Theology - only joking, folks!" For he is clearly denying the Hermitage of Continuity, Vatican II, and the divinity of Pope Francis, and he is probably a Buddhist anyway, what with a crazy name like Zen.

Ha ha ha! Serve him right!

But HE BITES BACK. He tells people to stop wasting their "Michael's Pence" on your website, and instead to find a grown-up who knows what he's talking about!

You aren't standing for that! STEP 1: kick the cat. STEP 2: well, we'll think of something.

Next week: Cardinal Zen tells us what he thinks of Austen Ivereigh, Fr James Martin SJ, and "speedy" Cupich - who has just broken the record for the fastest ever Eucharistic procession.

Cardinal Cupich leads the procession (cue Yakety-Sax music).

Pope Francis's autobiography - the 3rd and last phase

In this final instalment of Pope Francis's autobiography Life: My Story Through History, subtitled Why I was right and all other popes were wrong, which is published today, the Holy Father explain his most brilliant decisions of the last few years.

Part 1 is here and Part 2 is here.

Traditionis Custodes.

My evil predecessor, Pope Benedict XVI, died in December 2022. I was very pleased to comfort him in his last few months by phoning him up three times a day to tell him that I was repealing his own Summorum Pontificum and banning the traditional Latin Mass.

My main ally, with one of his great interests, cakes.

It was not going to be easy. At the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments there was one of my arch-enemies, Cardinal Sarah. A man who not only read books without pictures in them, but even wrote them. Yes, an intellectual, and a backwardist who kept quoting the Bible!

Luckily his deputy was quite the opposite, and had never been accused of being an intellectual. An overweight power-mad bully, he reminded me of someone: who could it have been? Well, never mind. So out went Sarah and in came the Yorkshireman Arthur Roche. Uncle Arthur was delighted to have this opportunity to serve me. Provided that he was made a cardinal, he would do anything I wished: "Make the TLM compulsory? Hold all masses in the Yorkshire dialect? (I must admit that the idea of the Italians and Polish reciting 'Ee ba goom, tha Lord be with thee, luv!' was rather appealing.) Just tell me what you want and I'll do it!"

So we agreed to ban the TLM, and to lean on bishops to make sure it happened. It would take a while to remove these masses entirely, so we made it hard to find them. Advertising them in the parish newsletter was OUT. Even mentioning them was now a SIN. The bishops knew that promotion was now conditional on persecuting traditionalists. AND WE ARE WINNING!

Austen Ivereigh.

I first encountered Austen in the Vatican gardens.

Dr Austen Ivereigh has been one of most loyal allies. Because he keeps dogs, he is entitled to call himself an expert on Canine Canon Law, and as is well known, he has written many biographies of me. In the first he portrayed me as a wise and holy man, in the second he upgraded me to saint, and in the third he saw me as the fourth person of the Trinity.

Recently we have been holding a synod on synodality, and Austen has been a lively and vocal participant. I gave him a little badge marked EXPERT, and he is very proud of it. Of course I haven't broken it to him that whatever the synod decides is irrelevant since I will make the final decisions. Did I ever mention that I am infallible? Sometimes it embarrasses me, being so infallible!

The synod logo. Silly, but not by Rupnik. Sorry, Marko!

Fiducia Supplicans.

You will remember that the main message of Amoris Laetitia was "Hey, adultery's cool!" Now, more recently, I thought I would try out "Hey, same-sex marriage is cool!" To do this I needed the cooperation of someone at the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith. Ladaria was no good, he might actually have had some moral scruples, but I knew just the chap to replace him.

Yes, we had come full circle. I chose my old mate Víctor Manuel Fernández, known as Tucho. Since the days of our friendship in Argentina, he had made a career out of working as a male kissogram and also by writing dirty books. Just what we needed.

So - and here my Jesuit training came in handy - we decided to make it permissible to bless same-sex couples, provided that we didn't call them that. They could be described as an alliance, brace, coalition, confederation, deuce, doublet, duo, dyad, item, pair, partnership, twain, twosome or union, but NEVER a couple.

Unfortunately, Fr James Martin LGBTSJ gave the game away!

If you want any more, you'll have to buy the book. It should soon be available from second-hand bookshops for about 50p. Eccles.

Fr James Martin turned into pillar of salt

We regret that Fr James Martin LGBTSJ, the well-known activist and alleged Jesuit priest, suffered an incident today in which he was turned into a pillar of salt.

A photo taken just before the incident.

Father Martin was going about his normal clerical business, blessing a "gay couple" in accordance with his intepretation of the latest papal document "Fiducia supplicans" (we don't use Latin much these days, but it apparently means "Fiddled the accounts", and was written as an homage to Cardinal Becciu). Eye-witnesses of what happened after that are a little confused, but we do have a photo of the scene shortly afterwards.

Spot the difference!

At this point a witty pun, something like "That's your Lot, Jimmy," would be appropriate, but it would be in bad taste at a time when we are mourning one of the great men of our age. (Actually, Jimbo is said to be still alive, but his activities will henceforth be very limited by his saline nature.)

How to confuse the Catholic Church

Yes, another instalment of our long-running series on "How to be a good pope", designed for those readers who, by kenotic de-centering, respecting the protagonism of the Spirit, and finding a new way of being Church, have managed to make it to the top job in the new listening Church!

The story so far. After ten years, you sense that your days of Peronist dictatorship are coming to an end. All that remains is to nominate your successor - Touchy-Feely, Fat Arthur, or perhaps Pa-Oh Lin, the inscrutable Chinaman - and you can expire peacefully to cries of "Make him a saint!"

Santo Subito!

But all is not well. Obviously little Ivory, C.N.N. Lambchop and "Where Potato Is" Mike are too polite to mention it, but there is some unrest among the faithful. What can you have done that could possibly upset Catholics? Was it your naughty story Amorous Letitia? Could it be your devotion to Pachamama? Surely not your treatment of the Church in China? Or was it Trads Cussed (memo: get Arthur out of the cake shop and send him off to close down more TLMs)? Or is it your protection of dirty old Rapenik? Then again, surely nobody could object to your attempts to starve a certain American cardinal into submission?

It's all a big mystery, but you know your conscience is clear. So how can we confuse the Church today?

"I do wish he wouldn't stand so close."

In walks Cardinal Touchy-Feely, blows you a kiss (this time you have taken care to keep behind a solid table), and makes a suggestion. "Tell them that priests can bless burglars," he suggests, "but only if they leave their masks, striped pullovers and bags marked SWAG at the door of the church. The burglars, I mean, not the priests."

"They already can," you reply, puzzled. "What difference will it make?"

"I've come for a blessing, Father. Because I've got another job planned."

"Can't you the the headlines in America Rag, the National Catholic Fishwrap and the even more secular press? "POPE FRED SAYS THAT BURGLARY IS OK", "NEW CATHOLIC TEACHING ON THEFT", "TEN COMMANDMENTS? THROW THEM OUT!" "WHO IS THIS SAINT PAUL ANYWAY?" "GERMAN BISHOPS VOTE TO ORDAIN BURGLARS", "FATHER MARTIN JAMES SJ SAYS 'COME INTO THE CLOSET AND HELP YOURSELVES!'"

Of course! Nobody is going to talk about anything else from now on. As you draft your new letter "Fiddling the Supplies" (an homage to Cardinal Becciu), you reflect that Touchy-Feely will make a great Pope Fred II.