2024

With apologies to George Orwell.

Winston Smith's route to Mass took him past the People's Aborturama. Here, citizens were encouraged to punish their unwanted children with painful execution, so that their organic components could be recycled for the good of the state. Seeing officers of PrayPol, the Prayer Police, standing nearby, Winston hastily put his hands in his pockets and arranged his features into a large smile. That way, nobody would accuse him of praycrime.

A scene of explicit praycrime.

Naturally, Big Brother had no objection to the use of prayers, provided that they were taken from the Synod 2021-2045 Handbook. This had been compiled by the late Citizen Ivereigh of the Ministry of Religion on the instructions of Pope Francis the Godly, whose remarkable brain was now operating for eternity thanks to the miracles of science.

The Pope (aged 148) continues his work.

State-approved prayers were mostly addressed to Pachamama, the People's goddess, and involved repentance for environmental wrongs, such as plasticstrawsinning or candlecrime. Unauthorized prayers outside the People's Aborturama, the Youthinasia retirement home, or DragonQueen, the children's gender reassignment playground, were of course severe examples of praycrime, and the offender was liable to compulsory re-education.

A doubleplusungood example of praycrime.

Re-education mostly consisted of the guilty citizen being imprisoned in the Greta Thunberg Education Facility (formerly Oxford University), where the offender was forced to listen to endless lectures on Critical Race Theory, Gender Theory and of course Climate Change (scientists had recently revised their estimates, revealing that the World would be consumed by fire no later than 2090).

Winston arrived on time at the Pachamama Cathedral Mosque. Mass would start with a two-minute Hate of White People, who, it had been established by the Big Sister of Oceania (formerly President Meghan of the United States), were responsible for all the evils of the world...

To be continued? I hope not. Just read the newspapers if you want more.

The National Trust takes over Animal Farm

With apologies to George Orwell.

"I am an old donkey now," said Benjamin, "and old enough to remember those days fifty years ago, when we had the sexual revolution, and threw Farmer Jones out of his farm. For he would not let the male animals mate with male animals, nor the females with females. What a great day for freedom that was! As a Catholic donkey, I was taught that such deeds were acts of grave depravity, but we should not speak ill of them."

Benjamin, the Catholic donkey.

Clover the old mare nuzzled up to him. "It was necessary at the time," she said. "We were told that Napoleon and Snowball were deeply in love, and suffered great persecution. Everyone said that a revolution was necessary. But it seems to me that the world is a different place now."

"My Catholic guides are very weak," said Benjamin. "Squealer the Jesuit Pig is enlisting the animals in a bridge-building programme, and we have new slogans. The motto 'VIRTUE GOOD, SIN BAD' that I learned in my catechism has been dropped."

Just at that moment, as though at a signal, all the sheep burst out into a tremendous bleating of "VIRTUE GOOD, SIN BETTER! VIRTUE GOOD, SIN BETTER!"

Things turn out badly for the sheep.

Clover led him round to the end of the big barn. "My sight is failing," she said. "But it appears to me that that wall looks different too. Are the Ten Commandments the same as they used to be, Benjamin?"

Benjamin read out to her what was written on the wall. There was nothing there now except a single message. It ran:

NATIONAL TRUST: MANOR FARM
ALL ANIMALS MUST WEAR RAINBOW BADGES
OR BE MADE INTO SAUSAGES.

FREEDOM IS SLAVERY. (Sorry, wrong book.)

However, there was worse to come. As the animals turned back, they saw Squealer the Jesuit Pig welcoming the famous Stephen Fry to the new "gay" farm. The creatures looked from pig to man, and from man to pig, and from pig to man again; but already it was impossible to say which was which.

The suit and tie bloggers have lost

A special report by Damian Thompson.

It started at the Telegraph, moved on to the Catholic Herald, the Spectator, and ever onward: the demise of the professional "suit and tie" blogger, who was actually paid for writing his or her piece for a newspaper or website. For it was discovered that the "pyjama" or "underpant" commentators, who offered their services for free, had so much more to say, even if they were never allowed out of their bedrooms.

"Would you care to write a blog for us, your Majesty? Any old rubbish will do."

Originally designed as learned essays on matters of common interest, in the tradition of Bacon, Swift, Chesterton, Orwell and so many others, the professional blogs gradually declined, as people were invited to read them and comment on them. Would Francis Bacon have written a piece on whether James I ate too much custard? Would Chesterton have criticised Cardinal Vaughan's haircut? Did George Orwell have a crush on Judy Garland? No, these were heavyweight essayists.

Scarecrow, Dorothy (Judy Garland), Lion and Tin Man in the Izzard of Oz.

In the end, it was not necessary to write a full blog post in order to generate the valuable "clicks" that so delighted the advertisers. A simple one or two-word title, such as "UKIP" (mysteriously written "Ukip" by the Telegraph), or "Islam", or "David Cameron", or - in the great days of "Holy Smoke" blogs - "Vincent Nichols", would guarantee pages and pages of mouth-foaming nonsense, as shelf-stackers, donkey-obsessives, drunken journalists, sinister deacons, bad-tempered Australian grandmothers, mollusc-molesters, implausible priests, and perverts from Stockport would tumble over each other as they rushed to issue insults, to suck up to the blog's author, to dump the contents of their brains, to explain why the Catholic Church was damned and they alone were saved, or to tell tedious anecdotes about life in Adelaide. Or perhaps it was just one person using an army of sockpuppets.

Of course, an army of semi-literate "muddlerators" was required to keep them in order. Sometimes the blog author himself was muddlerated, sometimes rival bloggers would drop in to join the fun.

"I see they've moderated my comments about giving communion to adulterers."

Curiously, the Guardian, a newspaper that will be totally forgotten by about 2025, took an entirely different approach. To write for Comment Shall Set You Free, you had to buy into the liberal consensus, where men could become female just by putting on a dress, where an abortion was considered to be every woman's dream, where Shami Chakrabarti was actually taken seriously, where a man could marry another man - or his mother - or indeed his pet hamster, and where Keith Vaz was regarded as a saintly character of irreproachable morals. Then, any comment below the line other than "I agree with you, Fr Fraser" (or whoever the writer was) was rewarded with instant banishment and accusations of "hate crime". But nobody read the Guardian so it didn't matter.

The fate of "professional" bloggers was inevitable. The best writers went off and wrote their own spiritually nourishing blogs, in a world where deadlines did not exist, the writer was not obliged to produce any old tosh if he or she didn't feel like it, and no money changed hands. Hence there were casualties among the professional bloggers: Fr Dwight Longenecker's family starved to death when his own blog was drowned in a sea of rivals; Fr Zuhlsdorf had to sell coffee to make ends meet; and as for that huge army of brilliant Telegraph bloggers - Thompson, Delingpole, Hannan, Hough, Mary Riddell no not Mary Riddell - they disappeared without trace. Although sometimes you may see Ed West selling matches in Trafalgar Square; he still wears a suit and tie.

"You will leave the EU..." Hannan has a new career as a stage hypnotist.

P.S. Comments are welcomed. They're usually better than anything I have to say, anyway.

Cardinal says that Jesus had two heads

The Vatican's logo for the Jubilee Year of Mercy is proving controversial, as it is based on a new theory of Cardinal Kasper ("the Pope's jester") that Our Lord had two heads.

Sr Wendy Beckett writes: What a delightful painting this is. We see a two-headed man on skis, wearing an unusual scarf.

Although the Dicephalist heresy is already embodied in pagan culture, and expressed in sayings such as "Two heads are better than one" (or the Orwellists' "One head good, two heads better"), it is certainly unsupported by scripture and tradition. Cardinal Kasper's revival of this heresy is distinctly worrying, and we are waiting for Cardinals Burke, Pell, Napier, Sarah, etc. to give definitive guidance on the matter.

St Zaphod of Beeblebrox (St Z): so holy that he grew a second head.

We did interview Cardinal Kasper, but he was having one of his less coherent days, and told us in no uncertain terms that he himself had seven heads, like the dragon in the Apocalypse. We made our excuses and left.

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IMPORTANT. Some readers of this blog have questioned whether its author is really as saved as he claims to be. However he has now installed an "Ecclestone" in his garden, which should put the matter beyond doubt.

The Ecclestone.

George Orwell's "2014"

It was a cold November 2nd, and in England the Catholic Church was celebrating All Saints Day. For by orders of Comrade Nichols of the Ministry of Truth, all holy days had been moved from their correct dates, as part of a general break with that evil thing known as "tradition".

Winston Smith looked outside, and saw a poster bearing the portrait of an old man in white robes. BIG FATHER IS WATCHING YOU, the caption beneath it ran. Big Father, the man who had seized power eighteen months ago, driving into exile President Benedict the good. Big Father, who kept an iron grip on the Church.

BIG FATHER IS WATCHING YOU.

On another poster were written the slogans produced by Big Father's right-hand man, Comrade Kasper.

SIN IS VIRTUE
JUDGEMENT IS IGNORANCE
CHANGE IS STABILITY
IMMACULATENESS IS FILTH

Winston Smith checked his watch and turned back to his television set, which could never be switched off. It was now broadcasting endless programmes of puppet masses and tango dancing from St Peter's, Rome. The Mass had reached the point where the comrade deacon was instructed to announce the Two Minutes Hate.

Comrade Burke, Enemy of the People.

As usual, the face of Raymond Burke, the Enemy of the People, flashed on to the screen. Comrade Burke had once been one of Big Father's most loyal supporters, but had now disappeared from public life. Some said that he was already dead, smothered in his own cappa maxima, while others claimed that he had merely been exiled to the barren wastes of Malta. On the screen, Smith saw crowds of Catholics screaming words of hatred for Burke, the enemy of the people. "AIRPORT BISHOP!" they yelled. "SELF-ABSORBED PROMETHEAN NEO-PELAGIAN!" "BAT-LIKE CHRISTIAN!"

A bat-like Christian in traditional Cappa Maxima.

The two-minute hate being over, the Mass continued on its way, with the usual liturgically-approved procession of clowns towards the altar. Winston turned his head away from the screen, and opened his copy of the State Newspaper, the Tablet. "Arrange the following virtues of Big Father in order of importance, then complete the following sentence in not more than ten words. I love Big Father because... First prize: a two-week holiday on Tina Beattie's luxury houseboat, the Tinatanic." Theological debate was not what it used to be.

The Tinatanic.

There was a hammering on the door. Was it a gang of ACTA thugs, demanding "dialogue"? Or had the thought police discovered that Winston possessed a copy of the suppressed Catholic Herald? Should he have been expecting the Spanish Inquisition...?

Guest blogger, Snowball the pig

Snowball the pig, star of Animal Farm.

Today we are pleased to be able to print an abridged version of the Telegraph blog by Snowball the pig, winner of the prestigious Orwell prize for his role in Animal Farm and his pioneering slogan about marriage: One man bad, two men better!

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What cheek! Vincent Nichols invoked the spectre of an Orwellian, totalitarian state in his Christmas Day sermon, when he referred to the Government's attempts to bring in same-sex marriage. Christmas is a time for preaching a message of love and sex, for getting drunk and watching The Wizard of Oz on the television, and for wearing red hats with white trimmings. It is NOT a time for talking about morals, for trying to explain good and evil, or for mentioning controversial figures like Christ.

If Vincent Nichols had merely done what most priests do on Christmas Day: talked in vague terms about Father Christmas, and elves, and perhaps told us what Christmas presents he'd received, then nobody would have taken any notice. But he deliberately outraged non-Christians by taking a moral stand.

My partner, Napoleon, agrees with me.

What makes it more outrageous is that the Pope is an ex-Nazi - yes, he is, he is, he was a personal friend of Hitler, I tell you. That alone should stop him from condemning totalitarianism, fascism, dictators, or anything else. Bog off back to your bunker, Ratzinger, what makes you think you have any authority? Did you get an Orwell prize like me, or Polly Toynbee, or even Johann Hari?

The Pope, in the uniform of the Hitler youth, does a Nazi salute.

Well, that's put the Catholic church in its place - as the paramilitary wing of the National Socialists - so let me drone on a bit about Clause 28, that infamous piece of legislation which said that every day schools had to conduct a compulsory Two Minutes Hate for homosexuals. My own school didn't do this - in fact, they didn't mention homosexuality at all, except in geometry lessons, where some of the diagrams taught me how to find a loving life with another man.

Clause 28 banned diagrams like this, which taught me about sex.

Gosh, we had enough trouble reducing the age of consent to 16. You may say that boys of 16 aren't ready for sex, but of course the person they have sex with is often a fat man 20 years older, and he's not only ready, he's dying for it! Anyway, we won that battle, and now we're ready for the final battle - the complete take-over of marriage.

The Archbishop's relentless campaign - which lasted all of ten minutes - makes me more determined that the change must come. As I'm typing this I can hear the howling winds, still, loudly outside my window; the waves crash onto the shore, and the rocks on the beach are slowly worn down. Which is very odd, as I'm in a padded cell in London. I think I need more medication. Nurse!

Beasts of England, Beasts of Ireland...