All masses to be replaced by cartoons

After ticking off Catholics who object to church closures, sensitively labelling his flock as suffering from self-pity, Cardinal Vincent Nichols has announced the next stage in the transformation of the Catholic Church in England and Wales: from now on all livestreamed masses will be replaced by cartoons.

A new cartoon character, Vin the Red.

"There will be several advantages," explained his Eminence. "There is no need for social isolation of our clergy, as cartoon characters can approach each other without catching any illnesses. Also, we can show the cartoons over and over again, and edit them as we wish."

Cardinal Dolan, who recently whispered "I thought we were skipping these boring things" during a Mass, is anxious to adopt the same policy in New York, especially as he has himself long been regarded as a cartoon character.

"Dolans, meet the Dolans..."

It is clear that from now on churches will be competing to produce the most attractive cartoons. In the past, when the faithful had to get up and travel to a Mass, the choice was often rather limited. Now that we can dip into masses from Rome, London, New York, Paris, Beijing no not Beijing, the Amazon Jungle, ... whenever we wish, and sometimes switch from one to the other whenever we reach a "boring thing", the possibilities are endless.

Count Jimbo welcomes us to his Horror Mass.

Naturally, there is no need for the priests represented in the cartoons to be human. Many people prefer to watch lovable furry creatures like kittens, rabbits, or Cardinal Marx. We conclude with a scene from The Sign of Peace, where the animator may just have gone a little too far.

Fr Thomas prepares to say the Agnus Dei.

Thanks to cartoonize.net for some of the pictures. I won't say which.

Stonewall visits a Catholic School

And now over to St Mary's School, where Fred Flintstone of Stonewall, the organization which knows all about bullying Catholics, has come to explain bullying.

Fred Flintstone knows all about bullying.

Now, Kristin, I understand that you are a victim of homophobic hate-crime, because Tony said your shoes were "gay"?

A "gay" shoe. Note how Kristin hides her face in embarrassment.

Yes, Fred. It's a real problem for me: my shoe would be happiest if paired with another left-foot shoe, but I am forced to match it with a right-foot shoe.

And what would happen if you bought another left-foot shoe?

Well, I tried that, but it didn't fit, and I kept falling over.

Problems in the 100 metres event for people with two left-foot shoes.

Well, this is a typical case. Now, children, there is one way to deal with anyone who expresses a different opinion to you. Do you know what it is? Yes, Eric?

BIGOT! BIGOT! BIGOT!

Well done, Eric. If you scream "Bigot!" this shuts down all further debate, and you don't need to come up with any other arguments. Now, I want as many of you as possible to grow up as Catholics in happy same-sex relationships, so we're going to show you how much fun that can be.

A happy couple from Stonewall

You see, when two men love each other, what they do is they go out into the countryside and build a stone wall together. Well, I'll be telling the over-9s a little bit more about this later - for example, how to place your stones together in an intimate conjunction - but that will do for now. If you have any further questions, do ask your local archbishop.

Archbishop Peter Smith demonstrates an essential piece of stone-walling equipment.