How to run a Coronation

I was (of course) invited to the Coronation of King Charles III, and so I picked up a few tips on how such events should be run. Indeed, since a Coronation is just a sort of Mass run by Anglicans with a few traditional add-ons, some of the features I observed could easily be incorporated into a Novus Ordo Mass (or, with more difficulty, the Traditional Latin Mass).

Proof that I was there!

Now, when the celebrant enters the church, it is not appropriate to have someone carrying a cross in front, as this may offend Muslims, Hindus, Anglicans, Jesuits, and anyone else who has dropped in to keep out of the rain. No, what we need is a Valkyrie with a giant sword.

"Smite ye the ungodly" (Psalm 160).

If it is a Catholic Mass you will need some special guests to give it a spiritually nourishing flavour. A man dressed as the Pope, perhaps. A ballet dancer practising Ignatian Yoga. Or this:

It's G.K. Chesterton!

An interlude - in America they have different notions of the proper procedures for a Coronation Mass. For example, the presence of a QAnon shaman is considered desirable on ecumenical grounds.

Zadok the Priest and QAnon the Shaman anointed Joe Biden KING!

Back to Westminster Abbey. The best Masses have gospel dancers singing and cavorting around but it is not strictly necessary, so we'll skip that. You may also have young people who have been dragged into church kicking and screaming - they don't want to be there, and you don't want to see them. The answer is to hide them behind a lady with a big feather on her hat.

In a minute he is going to sneeze...

Well, that's all, folks. And remember, if you have celebrated your Saturday Mass with some high-quality music, then you can always organize a Glastonbury-type concert for the tone-deaf masses the next day; this is a Sunday, and therefore need not be regarded as holy.

"You is not saved only we is saved." (Suitable for either event.)

The last eight saints

We have reached the quarter-finals of the World Cup of Uncrowned Saints, and because Elon Musk, in his wisdom, is changing the rules of Twitter polls, this may be the last one we run. It also has to be completed by Easter Saturday.

So - unless we can find a way round this - no more world cups of bad hymns (Lord of the Dance), bad cardinals (Cupich), ugly churches (St Francis de Sales, Norton Shores, Michigan), instruments from Hell (vuvuzela) etc. etc.

So we'll use this post to record the results of the final rounds of the (last?) Twitter World Cup.

Pope Leo XIII 61.8 v Fulton Sheen 38.2

Leo takes it, surprisingly easily. Well, they are both very strong candidates, whatever Cardinal Dolan thinks.

G.K. Chesterton 51.8 v Karl I of Austria 48.2

The lead changed hands several times, but finally GKC won the contest. The vote was 52-48, but all requests for a second "people's vote" that might give a different answer will be rejected.

Pope Pius XII 58.9 v Pope Benedict XVI 41.1

Experience tells, as the old campaigner beats the newcomer in the Pope v Pope quarter-final.

Thomas à Kempis 51.4 v Marcel Lefebvre 48.6

A lot of SSPX fans voted in earlier rounds, but Tom managed to scrape through this time.

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Semi-finals (starting on Easter Sunday).

Pope Leo XIII 71.7 v Pope Pius XII 28.3

A "two popes" semi-final. Leo takes this, surprisingly easily, and declares himself "fighting fit" as the final approaches.

G.K. Chesterton 47.6 v Thomas à Kempis 52.4

A "two writers" semi-final. A close match, and Thomas heads for the final, leaving GKC to contest the bronze halo.

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THIRD PLACE PLAYOFF

Pope Pius XII 55.6 v G.K. Chesterton 44.4

Pius takes the bronze halo. John Cornwell bites his leg off in embarrassment.

FINAL

Pope Leo XIII 64.1 v Thomas à Kempis 35.9

A surprisingly easy win for Leo. Gold halo for him, and silver for Thomas.

Comedy award for Martin and Ive

The popular comedy duo, Martin and Ive, has just swept the board in the prestigious Francis Awards, defeating Cardinal Becciu's solo routine ("I would have been pope if only the press hadn't kept telling the truth about me"). So it seems only fair to share some of their finest jokes with our readers.

As with Morecambe and Wise, one of the duo has short fat hairy legs.

Let's start with Jimbo's comments on the Holy Spirit.

Great gag, Jim!

You see, unlike Vatican II, which was only inspired by the Holy Spirit, this new Vatican III is managed by the Holy Spirit. Take note, it wasn't Pope Francis waking up with a hangover one day and saying "How can I best undermine traditional Catholic teaching? I know - get a lot of heretics to write in, together with moaning Minnies with grudges, and turn the lot into an Even Newer Testament, saying it was inspired by the Holy Spirit." No, the Trinity in His Wisdom decided that the time had come to throw away 2000 years of teaching and start again!

Ivereigh explains blasphemy.

Yes, for 2000 years the disciples, saints, popes, doctors of the Church, etc. have been committing blasphemy. Simple doctrine like "No murder", "No adultery" and "No theft" can't be regarded as set in stone. Especially not adultery, which became "OK" again after Amoris Laetitia.

Note the way that the great comic Austen turns round Catholicism in order to parody it. In the old days it was blasphemy to subvert Catholic teaching, but now - ho ho - it is blasphemy to insist on it.

One more joke from Ivereigh to finish off? Yes, why not?

A new reversal of Catholic teaching.

The recipe is the same here, but still effective. It is modernism to reject modernism - have I got that right? What popes said in the past has to be interpreted using the totally contradictory wibbling of the present incumbent. But we must remember that Austen is an Oxford don - at Camp Hall (memo: check name), and this is what we call Oxford humour, and like "alternative" comedy, is not usually funny.

I've got it - contra-Chestertonian, that's what these guys are. GKC was a master of paradox, saying things that seemed absurd but turned out to have wisdom in them. Jim and Austen go in the opposite direction.

Anyway, congratulations on your "Francis" award, team!

"We wuz robbed."

No halo for G.K. Chesterton

The Madness of Peter Doyle, by Saint G.K. Chesterton.

Father Brown always used to say that the strangest case he ever came across was that involving the unaccountable behaviour of a Catholic bishop called Doyle. He encountered that eccentric cleric on a visit to Northampton, an obscure midland town which had mysteriously been designated the seat of a Catholic bishop. Equally mysteriously, Pope Benedict had chosen one Peter Doyle as its bishop, having watched a documentary called "Father Ted", and somehow having been led to believe that young Peter was the son of the devout Mrs Doyle.

Bishop Doyle's mother.

Thus, Father Brown was strolling through the streets of Northampton when his attention was attracted by cries of "We want Gilbert!" and "Down with Doyle!" A large crowd had gathered outside the bishop's house, and Father Brown entered, to observe an elderly cleric jumping up and down on the photograph of a large jovial man and screaming "WE HATES CHESTERTON! WE HATES HIM! WE HATES HIM!"

"I think, sir," said Father Brown, "that I would like to hear why you hate Mr Chesterton. Many people have spoken out in favour of his canonization, which is considered less controversial than those of Oscar Romero and Pope Whose-turn-is-it-this-week of Vatican II."

Bishop Doyle is happier speaking with James Martin at conferences on LGBT issues.

"First, there is no local cult," said the bishop, gulping down a handful of REES-MOGADON tablets ("guaranteed to bring total calm").

"Not even in Beaconsfield, where one can find the grave of Chesterton, which attracts pilgrims on a regular basis?" asked Father Brown. "Just seventy miles from here."

Evidently Bishop Doyle had not heard of Beaconsfield, for he continued his enumeration of the apparent defects in the character of Mr Chesterton.

Definitely not a pilgrimage. Just a chance meeting at GKC's grave.

"There is no pattern of personal spirituality," continued the bishop.

Father Brown choked slightly, thinking of "Orthodoxy", "The Everlasting Man", "Heretics", "Eugenics and other evils," "St Francis of Assisi", "St Thomas Aquinas", and numerous other writings of spiritual nourishment, as well as G.K.C.'s more personal proselyting on behalf of the Church.

"You are going to play the anti-semitism card next, are you not?" he said. "The man who was condemning the Nazi persecution of Jews as early as 1934. The friend of Weizmann. The encourager of Zionism."

The bishop stared at Father Brown in dismay, as if he might be regretting the huge blunder that he had made.

"I am a priest, Bishop Doyle," said Brown, "and I am ready to hear your confession."

However, things did not conclude as Father Brown had been expecting. Getting to his feet again, Bishop Doyle resumed jumping up and down on the photograph of Chesterton, shouting, "WE HATES HIM! WE HATES HIM! WE WAS RIGHT! WE WAS RIGHT! NASTY NASTY CHESTERTON! WE DOESN'T WANT HIM TO BE A SAINT! WE DOESN'T! WE DOESN'T!"

The actual photo upon which the famous jump of Bishop Doyle took place.

As Father Brown freely admitted later, this was not one of his most successful cases.

Snopes fact-checks the Eccles blog

CLAIM: Snopes.com, the left-wing fact-checking site, motto: "Don't believe what they say about Obama, but do believe what they say about Trump," recently investigated the truth of a piece on the sometimes spiritually-nourishing satirical site "The Babylon Bee" (which is basically like the "Onion" but occasionally quite clever).

RATING:
  TRUE

Snopes decided that the BB piece was Fake News, and, as a result, Facebook decided to threaten Mr Bee with sanctions. Apparently, some morons actually believed that a certain BB article was factual.

We have now received the Snopes verdict on various other claims put forward on this blog, and the news is grim.

---

CLAIM: 2+2=5.

RATING:
  FALSE

ORIGIN: Fr Antonio Spadaro, a bosom pal of Pope Francis, tweeted the following: "Theology is not #Mathematics. 2+2 in #Theology can make 5. Because it has to do with #God and real #life of #people..."

So far this teaching has not been confirmed to be infallible, magisterial, and part of the Catholic Deposit of Faith. Snopes consulted several well-known brilliant people, including Stephen Hawking, Mary Beard, Stephen Fry, and Richard Dawkins, and - although most of them admitted that they didn't know much about real life - they agreed unanimously that 2+2=4. Indeed, this fact was apparently known to the ancient Greeks ("Pythagoras's Theorem"), although some claim that the discovery was first made by the Babylonians or even the ancients in India.

Anyway, although Snopes wouldn't approve of him, G.K. Chesterton made a similar pentaphobic comment:

Snopes also wouldn't approve of the self-evident observation that a person born male remains male for the rest of his life, whatever drugs and surgery he uses to support his delusion that he is really female. Let's move on.

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CLAIM: The Pope is Catholic.

RATING:

MOSTLY TRUE

ORIGIN: On the one hand, some people would say that by definition Pope Francis, personally appointed by the Holy Spirit (with a little help from the St Gallen Mafia), cannot be other than Catholic. On the other hand, the old chap is not known for asserting Catholic teaching, preferring to make muddled statements that can be intepreted in several ways, and usually are. Still, any definition of "Catholic" that includes Fr James Martin, Nancy Pelosi, Austen Ivereigh, and Tina Beattie must definitely include Jorge Bergoglio.

To please Archbishop Mark Coleridge, Cardinal Zen forgets the problems of China, and reacts to the Snopes verdict with joy.

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CLAIM: Prime Minister Justin Trudeau believes he is a teapot.

RATING:
  UNPROVEN

ORIGIN: This claim appeared on the Eccles blog as part of a totally serious article on the problems faced by people who self-identify as teapots and wish to transition to a full teapotic lifestyle. Justin Trudeau is well known to be totally insane (this is a charitable way of saying that he is the second most evil world leader around at the moment, and is challenging Kim Jong-un strongly for first place), and thus anything is possible. However, although little Justin pushes abortion and same-sex marriage for all he's worth, his aim is to be a DESPOT not a TEAPOT.

"I'm a little despot, short and stout..."

Fr James Martin Brown investigates

With apologies to G.K. Chesterton.

Through the quiet streets of Manhattan there walked a short, dull Catholic priest. Nothing about him suggested anything out of the ordinary, unless it was the rainbow-patterned socks that he wore. With him was a chunky, flamboyant man, also dressed unconvincingly as a priest. This was "Flambeau" Rosica, the communications expert whose Lightly Salted media empire had brought him worldwide fame.

The Innocence of Father Brown.

The two priests were discussing deep theological questions, and had come to an agreement that if, as the great theologian Spadaro had proved, it was possible to argue that 2+2=5, then many of the conclusions drawn in the Bible must have been wrong.

"It is an impenetrable mystery to me," admitted Flambeau. "How could the Catholic Church have been wrong for 2000 years? It was not until the era of Pope Francis the Great that we realised that the old Doctors of the Church were completely ignorant."

New York's got Talent!

Father Brown thought for a while, and, as they walked the dusty streets, he saw a sign, IGNATIAN GAY BAR. "Let us stop off there for a while," he suggested, "and perhaps build a few bridges."

They plunged into the red-curtained tavern, which was not only cosy, but even luxurious inside. Once seated, Father Brown explained some of the other parables that had been misinterpreted for so long.

"The sower and the seed," he began. "It was always thought that the seed that fell onto fertile soil and grew was somehow the most worthy. But did not the seed that fed the gentle birds have a more sacred destiny? The farmer was clearly a capitalist, trying to exploit the workers, and he probably supported Donald Trump."

A mystery for Flambeau: how did this man ever become a cardinal?

"Then again, Jesus totally misunderstood the parable of the Good Samaritan. It was the Jesuit who walked past the injured man - stopping only to sell him a copy of his new book - who was the real hero of the story."

"Too true," commented Flambeau, sticking his leg out to trip up a passing waiter and roaring with laughter. "Then there was the Prodigal Son. What a wretch he was, deserting those happy pigs, who wanted him to feed them, and rushing back to stuff himself on fatted calf!"

"Talking of which, why don't you have another plate of fatted calf yourself?" urged Father Brown. "Your chair doesn't seem to be collapsing yet."

"When you practise Ignatian Discernment," he added, "you see all the parables in a new light. Take the rich man and Lazarus, for example. Obviously the villain here is Abraham, who refused to accept the rich man into his bosom. I would never refuse to accept a rich man into my bosom."

They left the tavern, and Flambeau drew Father Brown's attention to a photograph. "Can you explain this?" he asked.

No headscarf?

"It seems that this is Karen Oliveto, a Methodist Minister who accused Jesus of being a 'bigot'" noted Father Brown. "She is apparently a lesbian, so we should make her welcome. However, the Islamic connection is not entirely clear to me..."

Everyone's scared of Christians

Student union chiefs at Balliol College, Oxford, have admitted that they are "terrified of Christians" after trying to ban the Christian Union from its Freshers' Fair. This is an event where students can see all the clubs and societies on offer: from the Amateur Terrorists' Association, to the Llama-Porn Club, to the Cocaine Society, all student interests are catered for, EXCEPT Christianity.

A much healthier hobby than Christianity.

They are right of course. Having a spotty nineteen-year-old accosting you to say "Have you got a personal relationship with Jesus? I have, ever since I met Him on the number 6 bus. Will you come to our service on Sunday and sing 'Lord of the Dance' with us?" is nearly as dangerous as encountering a Jehovah's Witness or a Jesuit priest trying to build bridges. Much better to have someone sidle up to you and say "Have you ever considered taking up serial killing? Join OXSERKILSOC, meet new people, and kill them!"

Well, enough of Balliol, or Baal. Let's move on to the Rosary, which is one of the main weapons of Christian Terrorism. Some Muslim MP called Rupa Huq is anxious to avoid its being "weaponised" outside abortion clinics - we mustn't stop the production of little corpses, must we?

They say that, following Rupa's warning, airport security is to be tightened up, and special Rosary-detectors installed, to prevent any "weaponised" Christians flying.

Possibly luvvly Rupa is related to Captain Huq, who also had problems with kids.

Of course Muslims are very sensitive to the power of the Rosary, especially after they got a bloody nose at Lepanto (cheers!). The Poles have recognised this and have been praying in an aggressive and tactless manner on their borders. But that's a Catholic country, so they don't know any better, unlike we British who are mostly Muslims anyway.

Mr Bean puts us straight. Just say NO to the Virgin Mary.

I had been planning to write some extra verses for Chesterton's Lepanto to celebrate the anniversary, but Dan Sheehan beat me to it:

Don John of Austria
Has loosed the cannonade,
But Massimo of Italy stayed home from the Crusade.

Perhaps next year?

Even atheists use the Rosary, but they don't know how it works.

Fr James Martin turns down prestigious award

In a surprising move, Fr James Martin SJ, the world's most prominent Catholic, has turned down the offer of a prestigious award from the New Ways Ministry, a group that rejects the moral teachings of the Catholic Church.

Fr James Martin SJ, a known pillar of orthodoxy.

In declining to accept the Judas Iscariot Prize for betraying Christianity, Fr Martin was apparently worried that accepting it would have brought shame upon the Jesuits, an organization that has long been known for its honest teaching, straight dealing, and reliable theology. "We Jesuits have a reputation to keep up," he insisted. "It's all very well saying that we want to see a lesbian pope giving birth to children while occupying the throne of St Peter, but at the end of the day we must accept that St Ignatius of Loyola never actually expressed such sentiments."

St Ignatius, another known pillar of orthodoxy.

Fr James Martin has in the past been known for floating unusual ideas on Twitter, in a spirit of comedy; it is thought that the New Ways people may somehow have taken some of these seriously, and thereby got the impression that he was a rebel against Catholic teaching. For example, consider the following recent Martin joke:

Fr James has an almost Chestertonian gift for paradox.

Still, all is not lost for the Oscar Wilde de nos jours. He still has the much-coveted Giles Award for Comedy to put in his trophy case.

What would Henry do?

Well, it's been a bit of a rough week for the Catholic Church, as it seeks to cope with the Pope's 58,000-word answer to Finnegan's Wake, but let's spare a thought for the Anglicans.

This week Justin Welby, the Archbishop of Canterbury, discovered that the Father of his Church was not Jesus, as he had originally supposed, but the well-known medieval king, composer, tennis-player, and bon viveur, Henry VIII.

The defender of the faith.

Those of us who try to live by the maxim "What would Jesus do?" find life difficult enough as it is (perhaps it was a mistake for me to charge into the cathedral with a rope of knotted cords), but living one's life by "What would Henry do?" is also likely to be problematical.

Still, it resolves the problem of divorce and remarriage, which is so vexing the Catholics. Already Anglican clergy can divorce and remarry without any problems, and indeed some of the country's most famous Anglicans have done it. For disposing of second wives, divorce is not a permitted option, but, as Henry showed us, beheading is the best way out. I do hope that Camilla and the second Mrs Giles Fraser are aware of this.

Another good "WWHD" moment occurrs in the Dissolution of the Monasteries. The Anglican Church does its best to commit similar vandalism, for example in ripping out pews from its churches, and making the places as ugly as possible, but of course, they are not alone in this. Clearly, one does need extra space for clowns, puppets, and dancing, and this can best be produced by getting rid of the worshippers.

The next step - a totally dissolved church.

In these ecumenical days, burning people whose beliefs we disagree with - or even simply hanging and disembowelling them - is merely an aspiration rather than standard church policy, but a weakening of "WWHD" was only to be expected when they allowed liberals to dictate the agenda of the Anglican church. As G.K. Chesterton put it, "The Henrician ideal has not been tried and found wanting. It has been found difficult, and left untried."

Some people are simply clueless! A failed Anglican.

It's time to mock Charlie Hebdo

Although this blog is primarily for spiritual nourishment, we do occasionally tease the arrogant and powerful; likewise, we receive criticism in good humour.

For example, if Pope Francis insults my mother by calling her a self-absorbed promethean neopelagian, then I do not feel it necessary to punch him. In fact, since he was once employed as a nightclub bouncer, he probably packs quite a good punch himself.

Pope Francis demonstrates the Catholic "punch of peace".

Likewise, if a deacon from Hell devotes a blog post to a character assassination of me, simply because I don't have a high opinion of Bernadette Farrell, then I take it in good humour, simply making a few cryptic references to idiots in garden sheds.

Now, how should we react if people insult Jesus, Mary, etc.? In Chesterton's The Ball and the Cross, there is the distinct suggestion that we should fight them:

The glass fell in ringing fragments on to the pavement, and Evan sprang over the barrier into the shop, brandishing his stick.
  "What is this?" cried little Mr. Turnbull, starting up with hair aflame. "How dare you break my window?"
  "Because it was the quickest cut to you," cried Evan, stamping. "Stand up and fight, you crapulous coward. You dirty lunatic, stand up, will you? Have you any weapons here?"
  "Are you mad?" asked Turnbull, glaring.
  "Are you?" cried Evan. "Can you be anything else when you plaster your own house with that God-defying filth? Stand up and fight, I say."
  A great light like dawn came into Mr. Turnbull's face. Behind his red hair and beard he turned deadly pale with pleasure. Here, after twenty lone years of useless toil, he had his reward. Someone was angry with the paper. He bounded to his feet like a boy; he saw a new youth opening before him.

Never mind this blog: here's something much better to read.

Obviously we do not approve of fanatics murdering cartoonists, even talentless prats who couldn't make a decent joke. Still, if Cardinal Vingt-Trois had horsewhipped the Charlie Hebdo editor on the steps of Notre Dame, many would have thought it no more than he deserved. Cartoons about the Virgin Mary giving birth, or Jesus being sodomized, deserve some response. Curiously, a lot of the Charlie Hebdo stuff is sexual: I suspect that its staff pinched most of their ideas from toilet walls.

So, Cardinal 23 definitely shouldn't have been ringing the bells of Notre Dame in memory of Stéphane "Charb" Charbonnier and his bunch of talentless freaks - a gesture mocked in the new issue of Charlie Hebdo:

"What made us laugh the most is that the bells of Notre Dame rang in our honour," the editorial stated. "We would like to send a message to Pope Francis, who, too, was 'Charlie' this week: we only accept the bells of Notre Dame ringing in our honour when it is Femen who make them tinkle."

No, it's a gesture they don't appreciate. What they appreciate is tasteless abuse.

Charb has some awkward questions to answer at the Pearly Gates.

Got that? Je ne suis pas Charlie. Charlie Hebdo is a blasphemous Christ-hating pile of garbage, written by some very creepy people indeed. As you see from the picture above, Charb himself wore a shirt which his mother bought him when he was a teenager. Also, he couldn't even shave properly. A Peter Pan character stuck in the 1960s. A man whose hobbies included pulling the wings off butterflies and writing on toilet walls. His only friend was a pet rat called Eric, and even Eric decided he was too repulsive and ran away.

A bunch of fools sticking up for radical secularism.

Ring the bells of Notre Dame for the thousands killed by Boko Haram, or for the millions killed by abortionists. Given the quality of French driving you might even ring them for the thousands killed in road accidents. Just don't honour people who insulted your God.

The Bells! The Bells!

All right, rant over. Let Chesterton have the last word. Our duellists, Evan MacIan (Catholic) and James Turnbull (atheist) have reached France.

"Yes, France!" said Turnbull, and all the rhetorical part of him came to the top, his face growing as red as his hair. "France, that has always been in rebellion for liberty and reason. France, that has always assailed superstition with the club of Rabelais or the rapier of Voltaire. France, at whose first council table sits the sublime figure of Julian the Apostate. France, where a man said only the other day those splendid unanswerable words"—with a superb gesture—"'we have extinguished in heaven those lights that men shall never light again.'"
  "No," said MacIan, in a voice that shook with a controlled passion. "But France, which was taught by St. Bernard and led to war by Joan of Arc. France that made the crusades. France that saved the Church and scattered the heresies by the mouths of Bossuet and Massillon. France, which shows today the conquering march of Catholicism, as brain after brain surrenders to it, Brunetière, Coppée, Hauptmann, Barrès, Bourget, Lemaître."
  "France!" asserted Turnbull with a sort of rollicking self-exaggeration, very unusual with him, "France, which is one torrent of splendid scepticism from Abelard to Anatole France."
  "France," said MacIan, "which is one cataract of clear faith from St. Louis to Our Lady of Lourdes."
  "France at least," cried Turnbull, throwing up his sword in schoolboy triumph, "in which these things are thought about and fought about. France, where reason and religion clash in one continual tournament. France, above all, where men understand the pride and passion which have plucked our blades from their scabbards. Here, at least, we shall not be chased and spied on by sickly parsons and greasy policemen, because we wish to put our lives on the game. Courage, my friend, we have come to the country of honour."

Of course, times have changed. And Charlie Hebdo isn't exactly Voltaire, is it?

What is a traditionalist?

The often-excellent Fr Dwight Longenecker has recently got himself into a bit of a pickle over a post Traditionalists Reject Divine Mercy, which in its original version appeared to give the impression that all Catholics calling themselves traditionalists believe exactly the same thing. In fact, pace* Fr Dwight, there are at least three sub-species of traditionalist, and here is a short guide.

* traddy Latin expression meaning "with peace", here meaning "with due deference to".

Pope Pius I (2nd century A.D.). Accepted by most trads.

Traditionalistus Sedevacantus. These are the extreme trads, who do not accept any pope since Pius XII (or Pius X, or possibly Pius V; one of the Pii, anyway) as being legitimate. They have severe reservations about the "modernistic" Tridentine Mass, preferring the Sarum Rite, although some prefer to celebrate the Whitby Rite dating from A.D. 664, in which "Yorkshire" Latin (lingua ebagumsis) was recommended. Some theories you may hear from T.S. include the notion that Pope St John XXIII was replaced by the demon Telbat, just before he summoned Vatican II, and that the next Pope - "who will come from a Minster to the West" - will be the last before the final Armageddon, the great battle between Conservatism and Liberalism.

Archbishop Lefebvre looks on in horror as a giant puppet walks up the aisle.

Traditionalistus Nonvaticanduensis. Next on the scale we have a variety of traditionalists who reject parts of Vatican II. Bishop Fellay, the head of SSPX, has said that his team accepts 95% of the teachings of Vatican II, which is not a bad score: an A* grade, surely? Of course nobody has ever read all the Vatican II documents (739 pages of fine print, as contrasted with 42 for Vatican I and 179 for Trent), although we are all waiting for the movie, which will star Stephen Fry as Hans Küng and Kermit the Frog as Basil Loftus. The documents have titles such as Decree concerning the sacred pastoral dogmatic constitution on the apostolate of the renewal of priestly mission through the divine ministry of the ecumenical activity of social communication with the laity, which roughly means Kick-starting our priests.

T.N. will of course only attend a Latin Mass, regarding the Novus Ordo as - at best - inferior, and - at worst - invalid. Although they accept that Pope Francis is the legitimate pope, they tend to dislike him so much that he might easily be the Beast of the Apocalypse in a white suit.

Flamenco dancing in church? At my age?

Traditionalistus Orthodoxus. These are the most numerous, and in fact tend to be totally orthodox Catholics who see no point in changing things just for the sake of change. They may well prefer the traditional Latin Mass for its universality, purity and beauty (enabling them to focus on God rather than worrying about whether they will catch a loathsome disease from young Ernie Grotchet in the Kiss of Peace); still, they accept that the Novus Ordo is a totally valid way of worshipping.

They have no particular quarrel with Vatican II itself (after all, if you look closely, you find that it stressed the importance of Latin). However, they go for the "hermeneutic of continuity" approach, and therefore believe that the so-called Spirit of Vatican II - motto "Anything Goes" - is just a snare and a delusion leading to liturgical dancing, clown masses and banal hymns such as Shine, Jesus, Shine. Often, they prefer Pope Benedict XVI's approach rather than Pope Francis's, but they console themselves with the thought that the Holy Spirit never promised that all popes would be supermen.

Not Pope Francis... or is he?

One could go on, with an analysis of watered-down Catholicism: does a fondness for Walk in the Light mean that you automatically subscribe to the weird views of Tina Beattie? If necessary, we can advise you.