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.

The apparitions of Muddlejorge

It is likely that the Vatican will soon rule on the authenticity of certain apparitions that have manifested themselves to Pope Francis, apparently with the aim of confusing him (hence, "Muddle Jorge"). Since their messages appear to contradict all Catholic teaching, it is likely that they will be declared bogus.

A vision of St Caspar

St Caspar, one of the three Magi, is said to have appeared in a dream to the pope, telling him that divorced homosexuals should be allowed to marry other homosexuals in church - and by the way, the Holy Father should ignore everything that St Balthasar said, because he was "a bit African". It is unlikely that this vision of St Caspar will be authenticated.

Peter ("Cardinal Pell ate my hamster") Saunders

Peter Saunders, the Chairman of the SBGPE (The Society for Blaming George Pell for Everything), is another who pops up regularly with unconvincing pronouncements. It is hoped that he will soon be "moved aside" to a place where poisonous rubbish isn't out of place - so perhaps a career at the Tablet awaits him.

Pope Francis and the late Fr Volpi

Well, De mortuis nil nisi bonum, as the Latin Mass has it, or So, farewell, then, as the modern translation puts it, so we can't say more here. Anyway, we're just off to a champagne party organized by the Franciscan Friars of the Immaculate.

But the visions of Muddlejorge are a load of nonsense, aren't they?

A Christmas Carol

Martini was dead: to begin with. There is no doubt whatever about that. The Catholic world was stirred but not shaken to hear that Martini, the "Commie Cardinal", had gone to meet his Maker, to tell Him where he had gone wrong.

Berscrooglio knew he was dead? Of course he did. How could it be otherwise? Berscrooglio and Martini were partners for I don't know how many years...

Cardinal Berscrooglio, living humbly.

(Get on with it, will you, Eccles, nobody wants to read an entire novella. When do the ghosts appear?)

All right then. Berscrooglio looked out of the window at the jolly Franciscan Friars of the Immaculate, as they processed towards St Traddy's Church in order to celebrate a Mass in the Extraordinary Form. "Bah! Humbug! Self-absorbed Promethean Neo-Pelagians" he sneered, and retired to bed.

Berscrooglio lay, half-awake, until the clock had struck midnight; then the curtains were drawn aside; and then, starting up into a half-recumbent attitude, Berscrooglio found himself face to face with the unearthly visitor who drew them.

"I am the Ghost of Synod Past," exclaimed the spirit, "also known as Vatican II. Come and see what we did!" The ghost took Berscrooglio back to the 1960s, to a vast meeting of the Great and Good. And Basil Loftus. There the Wise Fathers of the Catholic Church decided to follow the Spirit of the 60s, and encourage the faithful to become hippies. Well, actually they didn't, but somehow sex, drugs and rock-and-roll crept into the spiritual life of the Church soon afterwards.

"I, the Ghost of Vatican II, took most of the credit for this," explained the spectre. Every night in the Vatican there was a rumbling sound, as of an earthquake. It was an army of dead popes, all turning in their graves.

The Ghost of Synod Past.

Moving on quickly, now: the next night Berscrooglio was visited by the Spirit of Synod Present (or at least, only just past), which manifested itself as a smiling man with a fanatical expression on his face. "I am Kasper, the Spirit of Synod Present," said the grinning spectre. "I have come to change the church's teaching on the family; that of course includes homosexuality, divorce and adultery, which are jolly good things that can only make the family stronger. O Berscrooglio! Beware Burke! Send him to Africa, we don't take any notice of people down there. Or even as far as Malta will do."

The Ghost of Synod Present.

Berscrooglio woke at dawn with a shudder, but he knew that his torments would continue. Sure enough, when midnight arrived, a third horrific phantom slowly, gravely, silently, approached him. When it came near him, Scrooge bent down upon his knee; for in the very air through which this Spirit moved it seemed to scatter gloom and mystery. "Am I in the presence of the Ghost of Synod Still To Come?" he asked. "Strange Spirit, who art thou? Cormac? Vin? Tiny Tim Radcliffe? Surely not Catherine Pepinster or Tina Beattie?"

"I am all these, and none," said the Spectre. "My name is Legion, for we are Many. See how the Church fades away, as we make it conform with the world!"

The ghost of Synod Still To Come.

"Horrible! Horrible!" said Berscrooglio. "After all, Uncle Benedict was right - it is time for us to become religious again! It is not too late for me to repent - away with my giant Pinocchio puppets, my copy of 'Tango-for-Dummies', even my CD of 'Paul Inwood's Greatest Bath-Time Gurgles'!" Hurriedly dressing, he made his way through the early morning mist to the livestock market, where he bought the largest tiger you ever saw, and left it at Cardinal Kasper's door as a Christmas present.

A present for Cardinal Kasper.

"God bless us, every one!" said Berscrooglio. "Even Eccles!"

How to be a popular Pope

In the spring of last year I received an urgent telephone call from Rome: "Eccles, I have just been elected Pope. I've done the 'Oh my goodness I never expected this' routine and the 'I'd like to thank my parents, my teachers, my auntie Carmen, my pet donkey Diego, and all the cardinals who voted for me' speech, and even the 'I love you all' bit. So what can I do now to become the most popular pope in history?"

It would be wrong of me to say who consulted me.

My client comes from South America, where the forms of worship are rather different from those in Europe and North America, for example. There it is considered de rigueur to give the Mass the air of a wild party - so Pinocchio puppets, tango dancing, dodgy footballers, angels on roller skates, etc. are all considered a necessary part of the liturgy, in a way that is rarely seen, for example, at the Brompton Oratory. Despite being Latin American, my anonymous friend is not a fan of Latin, and he would be quite happy to make Italian the universal language of the Catholic Church.

"Well, George," I told him (I call him George because I have known him since he was a humble cardinal). "The main problem popes have is that they are Catholic. As a result they get bad publicity in the liberal press. SEXIST SKY-FAIRY BELIEVER IN SILLY DRESS REFUSES TO ALLOW GAY PRIDE MARCH IN VATICAN - as the Tablet put it. You must become a liberal yourself."

"Did the Tablet really say that?" asked George.

"Yes, it was in Prof. Eamon Duffy's learned commentary on the Acts of the Apostles. Harsh words about St Peter, there."

Chilling out with Eamon Duffy (R).

"Now, what people don't like about popes is that they think they have a fairly comfortable lifestyle," I continued. "What can you do to counter that?"

"Comfortable?" asked George in amazement. "I have to go to two-hour masses in the middle of the night, I have to meet all sort of crazy people from lands where the Catholic Church is in disarray - have you met my stalker - he's a chap called Cormac - by the way? - and then I have to travel around the world and kiss airport runways when I land. Ugh."

"Still, you could dress more humbly than Benedict did. No papal fanon or red shoes - give them to the poor. Get down with the 'yoof' by wearing a papal baseball cap, tee-shirt, jeans and trainers. It works for the Anglicans."

Getting down with the yoof.

"Now, how about rewriting Christian teaching?" I suggested.

"I can't do that - I'm the pope!" said George. "It may be all right for German cardinals - they're basically Protestant anyway - but if I start taking a soft line on divorce, abortion, or homosexual acts, then I'll be eaten alive! Mundabor and Rorate Caeli will call me an anti-pope. Father Z will be perplexed. Father Hunwicke will say something learned and incomprehensible, but all his readers will know he's calling me a heretic. Even Damian Thompson will start criticising my hairstyle."

"Tricky, isn't it?" I agreed. "How about making a few off-the-record throwaway remarks that are obviously foolish, but which can be taken up as liberal soundbites? Ask 'Who am I to judge?' when some ghastly sin is mentioned. Have a go at self-absorbed Promethean neo-pelagianism - nobody knows what it is, but it sounds as if you are getting tough on traddies. For that matter, why not persecute some very devout but rather traditional order of friars? Tell them that unless they bring in clown masses toot sweet they will be closed down!"

Yo-ho-holy! A new look for the Franciscan Friars of the Immaculate.

"I know - I could hold a synod!" said George delightedly. "I'll spin it that we are rewriting the New Testament so that the more embarrassing parts of Christ's teaching can be quietly dropped. Then if one of those awkward customers like Burke and Pell starts complaining, I can deny it all and blame it on 'loopy' Kasper. By the way, I'm going to have to do something about Burke: he keeps accosting me in the Vatican tea-rooms and sneering 'Are you really the Pope? Oh good grief!' Now I can sack him!"

"Good thinking, Holy Mate," I said (I call him Holy Mate because we used to go drinking together). "Don't worry about offending orthodox Catholics - they would have preferred Benedict anyway, and besides they'll go to Mass whoever the pope is. Dumb down, take the Christ out of Christianity, add an N, and what have you got?"

George contemplated my brilliant wordplay for a moment, before replying "Inanity. Yes, what the world is looking for is a Pope of Inanity!"

Cardinals quarrel over which television show to watch

More controversy has broken out in Rome at the Extraordinary Synod on the Family, where senior cardinals have been arguing over which Vatican television station to watch in the evening, when they relax after a hard days synodding. As readers will know, there are two Vatican television stations, Vatican Trad and Vatican Mod, and they broadcast "Vetus" and "Novus" forms of the same television shows.

The sisterhood of Karn, from the Brain of Morbius.

It is believed that the quarrel started when Cardinal Kasper decided to switch over from Vatican Trad, which was showing a Doctor Who story, The Brain of Morbius, starring Tom Baker, to Vatican Mod, which was showing a Matt Smith story about lesbian lizards. Apparently, he felt that the (chaste) order of the Sisters of the Sacred Flame, as featured in the Morbius story, was too old-fashioned, and he considered it to be nearly as bad as the Franciscan Friars of the Immaculate. In any case the sisterhood did not sufficiently respect the value of homosexual relationships, and they certainly showed no sign of being Tablet-readers.

It is reported that Cardinal Pell, who had been enjoying the Tom Baker story, went over to the television and switched channels back again - being a traditionalist he would not use a TV remote control - and the evening continued with bickering and channel-switching for several hours.

The Brain of Kasper, said to be guiding the Synod.

The next evening, Vatican Trad was showing an old Sherlock Holmes film starring Basil Rathbone, while Vatican Mod was showing the modernist version, Sherlock. This time Cardinal Burke arrived first, and was comfortably seated in front of the Hound of the Baskervilles, when his enjoyment of the film was ruined by the arrival of Cardinal Kasper, who sat himself down and switched over to the Benedict Cumberbatch story, Sherlock, while asserting confidently, "Pope Francis prefers this version of the story, it's much more tolerant and merciful towards divorced, remarried, unmarried, or multiply-married families."

Basil Rathbone and Nigel Bruce, in a pre-Vatican II story.

In the end, it was decided to let Cardinal Napier - invited in as a token African - decide which television station would henceforth be the preferred medium for Synod 14, although at the time of writing his decision was not yet known. However, we have heard on the grapevine that Pope Francis himself is not interested in television, but prefers the humbler and simpler life of a radio-listener. We must wait a little longer to see whether he prefers modern programmes or more traditional ones.

Pope Pius XII was a great fan of the Goon Show (suitable for saved persons).

The Latin Mass

A manuscript attributed to the Franciscan Friars of the Immaculate.

The Friar asked 
His Superior,
Who spoke to 
The Commissioner:
"Could we please use 
Latin in
The Mass 
That we hold?"
The Commissioner, 
Named Volpi,
Said "No way, 
How dare you?
You may be Friars
Immaculate -
But you'll do just what 
You're told!"

And you can put that skull away, too!

"It's daft," 
Said the Friar,
"We can't have any 
Latin now."
"It's daft," 
Said his Superior,
"You heard what he 
Just said?"
"Look here," 
Said the Commissioner,
"We're giving up the 
Latin tongue.
From now on it's 
Shine, Jesus, Shine and 
Inwood (Paul) instead."

What Pope John-Paul II had in mind for the FFI.

The Friar said, 
"But surely -
The EF Mass is 
Valid still?
I've read 
Summorum Pontificum:
We're told it's  
All O.K."
The Commissioner said 
"Right, mate!
We're closing down 
The seminary.
We're sacking 
The Superior.
You'll do just as 
I say!"

You're fired!

"Gosh!" 
Said the Friar 
As he prayed a 
Fervent Rosary.
"Gosh!" 
Said his Boss, 
As he packed 
His bags.
"Nobody, 
Dear Lord, 
Would call me a 
Fussy man
But I do like a little bit of Latin in my Mass!"

This poem is incomplete, but a possible ending is the following:

There, there! He didn't really mean it.

The Pope said, 
"There, there!
He didn't really 
Mean it."
The Commissioner said 
"Oh Hell!
The Pope thinks 
I was wrong."
The Superior said 
"Ha ha!
Can I have my 
Job back?"
He unpacked 
His suitcase
And he burst 
Into song.

The Friar celebrates.

The Friar 
Was delighted,
When he heard 
His boss returning.
The Friar did
A handstand, 
And said
"Deo Gratias!"
"Nobody," he said,
As he turned 
A cartwheel,
"Nobody," he said,
As he slid down
The banisters,
"Nobody,
Dear Lord,
Could call me
A fussy man -
BUT
I do like a little bit of Latin in my Mass!"

With apologies to A.A. Milne.

NO 5: how to receive Communion

In our guide to modern practices, written with the shocked traditionalist in mind, we have reached the point where you may receive Communion. The actual words for the consecration may have been a little unfamiliar, and recent news from the Franciscan Friars of the Immaculate suggests that Elvish, Esperanto or Klingon may soon become more common than Latin. However, it is usually fairly clear - possibly by the ringing of a bell - when it is time to receive.

Now, can you please form an orderly queue?

In many EF Masses I have attended, people pile out of the pews, knocking over the weak and feeble, so as to be first up to kneel at the altar rail. This wouldn't work in an OF Mass, for, as likely as not, there is no rail, just the priest and a helper - maybe a deacon, or, if he's indisposed, an old lady - standing in front of the altar. If you rush up to the front you may well knock over the old lady, and this is a BAD THING. If you bump into the deacon he'll probably flatten you.

So probably, "aeroplane etiquette" is safest. The people from the front pews step into the aisle first - this may well include the organist, the guitarist and the girl with the out-of-tune flute - and then people come up, a pew at a time. (Of course things work slightly differently if the aeroplane happens to be on fire.) Usually you will end up tripping over the hand-luggage of anyone who chooses to stay in their pew at this time.

Please don't all rush up at once.

In busy and disorderly masses, there may be several places where you can receive - random helpers will loiter in various corners of the church and, in the confusion, you may find yourself offered the Cup before the Body. I have not been able to find out whether it is a sin to accept, but try not to do it, anyway.

If you are used to kneeling and receiving Communion on the tongue, then forget it. Apparently, Vatican II was very keen on stopping this practice. Kneeling is out. Give it another ten years, and genuflection will be out too - the custom will simply be to give a little skip as we face the altar.

Probably, there'll be a hymn sung while you receive. If the organist starts too soon, it'll be a solo from him; if he leaves it too late, then it will probably continue until well after Communion is over, and the priest may be obliged to come across and force him to stop.

And now for verse 37!

Well, that was the most sacred moment in the Mass, and deserves to be treated with respect. On the other hand, you may be lucky enough to have a South American bishop present, and then you can be sure that things will go with a swing.

Getting down with the "yoof".