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."

Nul points for the UK bishops

Eurovision song contest news.

Well, it was "nul points" for the bishops of England, Scotland, and Wales this week, as their pastoral letter "Down with carbon", sung by Mad John Arnold and the Stooges, failed to convince anyone in this Pentecost-themed Eurovision Song Contest. Its strident chorus, "Build back better! Build back better!" wasn't the hit they had expected, and nobody could find anything much about Pentecost in the lyrics apart from a bit about how the Holy Spirit was backing mighty rushing wind power rather than tongues of fire.

Bad news for the bishops!

Why, even the Germans, with their fetching rainbow vestments and their song "We'll bless anything", sung by the heavyweight team of Cardinal Marx and the Schismatics, managed to get three points. Still no mention of Pentecost, however.

No entry from the Vatican, whose "Pachamama Blues" would have been a certainty for the 2020 competition; apparently the money reserved for preparing an entry is now resting in someone's bank account. However, they may take some credit for Italy's winning entry of "Tutti Fratelli ice-cream", sung by Massimo and the Beans.

"They're starting to throw rotten tomatoes, lads. Sing louder!"

Tonight their disgruntled manager Vincent Nichols complained, "We did our best to write a modernist song, throwing away all that old-fashioned stuff about the Holy Spirit leading us to truth, let alone St Paul's irrational prejudices against fornication, gross indecency, sexual irresponsibility, idolatory and sorcery. We concentrated on the message of St Greta of Thunberg, the Venerable Biden, and Boris the Green (formerly 'that fascist Boris Johnson')."

Well, we already knew that the days of Vincent Nichols, were numbered, as the Vatican struggles to find a worthy successor, but this fiasco can only hasten his downfall.

I invented Fr James Martin

All right, my secret is out. As revealed by the formidable @lamblock, the character "Fr James Martin LGBTSJ" doesn't really exist, he is one of my own creations.

So what's wrong with that? Lots of people find it desirable to spice up their blogs with comic characters once in a while (cf. Fr Z's Zuhlio, Fr Longenecker's Duane Mandible, and the Tablet's Tina Beattie). I've even had a few other visitors to this blog, such as Fr Arthur, Sister Judy Piranha, and Anti Moly, whose existence is not fully established.

So ludicrous you should have guessed it was photoshopped!

Yes, the concept of a Jesuit priest, living in New York, whose hobbies consist of (in no particular order):

1. Promoting LGBT issues;
2. Making up absurd bits of heresy;
3. Moaning about Trump;
4. Writing trashy books;
5. Self-publicity;
6. Making up absurd bits of heresy in order to moan about Trump and promote LGBT issues in his latest self-publicising trashy book...

is frankly absurd.

One of "Jim"'s favourites - pretending the Holy Spirit is female.

Look, you idiots. If Jim was a real person, he would have been disciplined by Cardinal Dolan, his ordinary, or General Sosa, the Big Cheese Jesuit. In any case a wise and orthodox pope such as Francis would never in a million years have asked him to advise on any issue more serious than the time of the next bus. Get real!

Bless you, folks, he is even supposed to have teamed up with New Ways Ministry, a well-known group of freaks, heretics, loonies, rebels, dissidents and all-round not-quite-Catholic fruitcakes. Or did I make them up as well?

"Mary Magdalene was the church." One of my silliest ideas, although I say it myself.

I'll tell you, it wasn't easy to hack into Amazon and make it seem that they were advertising a book called Building a Bridge which promotes LGBT stuff in clear contradiction to Catholic teaching. I hope nobody actually tried to buy the book, as what they will have received is a perfectly orthodox guide to civil engineering for children.

"I cannot recommend this book too highly" - Pope Benedict XVI.

Anyway, the cat is out of the bag now. So I will leave you to work out which of the following comic characters are also Eccles inventions:

1. Fr Thomas Rosica;
2. Cardinal Marx;
3. Dr Austen Ivereigh;
4. Cardinal Baldisseri.

HINT: One of them is real.

Another brilliant bit of photoshopping.

Everyone who disagrees with me is cancer!

A special guest post from Bishop Robert McElroy of San Diego, reprinted by kind permission of America magazine, the Jesuits' own journal of spiritual nourishment.

Bishop McElroy receives a certificate listing his merits.

There has been a lot of criticism of my friend Fr "E.L." James (Martin), on account of his new sex book, "Fifty shades of gay". Why, even Cardinals Sarah and Napier have spoken out against him. Still, the less said about that the better, let's consider the ordinary Catholic in the pew. THEY ARE CANCER. Yes, they are. Well, to be fair, some are blackwater fever, others are bubonic plague, and the mildest of them are probably just a runny nose. But YES, they are SICK.

And don't give me any of that "Sober up you loony old coot" stuff. Pope Francis called for diatribe, and that's what you're getting. Diatribe, dialogue, diarrhoea, we gottem all.

As Fr James says, "The Holy Spirit helped to sell my book!"

God the Father inspired the Old Testament, and God the Son inspired the New Testament. Now God the Holy Spirit (or Pope Francis as he prefers to be known) has given us a third testament - Amoris Laetitia. He has even installed a new Pontifical Institute for Adultery to guide us through this new Catholicism.

Since writing his book about gay sex on bridges, Fr James has been scorned, vilified, mocked, laughed at, and - I regret to say - told in no uncertain terms that he is a screaming heretic. But his books sell, and that's what really matters. Remember that Jesus Christ was very keen on LGBT issues, and all claims that He ever regarded chastity as a virtue are simply BIGOTRY. And those who make them are SMALLPOX.

We congratulate Fr James and his partner on their new son (although he is a little undersized).

Can't you spice this up a little, Bishop? Antonio Spadaro says this piece is weak and understated. Ed.

Fr James Martin finally "comes out"

It was long suspected from his lifestyle and the way he dresses; it will dismay many of his supporters, who still had confidence in him. However, we must admit that it is becoming increasingly common, among Catholic priests, as well as the laity.

Every year there are numerous marches and political campaigns on this issue, which irritate so many people. Even priests and bishops have been known to take part. But the movement seems to be unstoppable, and Fr James Martin SJ has finally nailed his colours to the mast.

Yes, Father James is pro-life!

Well, we on this blog are very broad minded, and we have come to accept the "love that dare not speak its name" - the preference for happy smiling babies to dismembered corpses. Fr James's own orientation has our full sympathy.

Of course, it was not always entirely clear which way Fr James swung. His preference for Hillary Clinton, the supporter of the Planned Parenthood "get your baby parts here, folks, and help make the lovely Mary Gatter an extremely rich woman" organization, was a little surprising. Still, we must remember that the alternative was Donald Trump, who is of course literally Adolf Hitler!

The flamboyant black and white costume is a bit of a giveaway!

Will other Catholic priests now come out, as Fr James has done? In the Vatican, there is said to be a large "pro-life" Mafia, although it is hard to see exactly where Pope Francis lies, following his suspiciously close relationship with Emma Bonino.

Well, our apologies for yet another post on the weird and wonderful James Martin SJ, theologian extraordinary, member of the friends of Canaanite women, builder of bridges, etc. But this bombshell could hardly be kept secret, and since "coming out" Fr James has been overwhelmed both by messages of support and by hateful misopedic abuse.

Still... as for his theology...

God announces retirement

Following the lead of Prince Philip (95), who is regarded as a god by the people of Vanuatu, God the Father Almighty (regarded on this blog as the only true god) has also announced His retirement at the age of 6021 plus infinity.

The Bishop of Vanuatu.

A spokesman said, "Most of God's best work was done in Old Testament times, when floods, smiting, fire and brimstone, plagues of boils, etc. were expected of a god. Now that love, mercy and general niceness have come into fashion, He feels it is time to let His Son take a more prominent role in things for a few millennia, taking a back-throne. In preparation for this, the family business was rebranded as Christianity two thousand years ago, rather than יהוה (which, frankly, only appealed to the Israeli market).

The destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah. Now regarded as a homophobic hate crime.

Other religions have found it difficult to persuade their deities to perform public functions, such as state visits, opening of supermarkets, etc. Prince Philip has always been willing to utter words of wisdom such as "You're too fat to be an astronaut," "How do you keep the natives off the booze long enough?" and "Aren't most of you descended from pirates?" but other gods have remained relatively silent. Only Pope Francis can match Prince Philip's ability to fire off insults at the faithful.

To take another example, Allah, although he started promisingly by dictating an exciting book to Mohammed, all about what a jolly good idea it would be to smite the infidel, has not given much evidence of following up on this, and indeed promises of sherbet and virgins in Paradise have been referred to the Advertising Standards Authority.

The tiger god - believed to be in retirement already.

Recent events in the Vatican have suggested that even letting God the Son run things is a bit old-fashioned, especially since His teaching on marriage etc. has been questioned by so many high-up Catholics (the Anglicans abandoned it long ago, along with the idea of a male priesthood). That only leaves one member of the Trinity waiting in the wings: letting the Holy Spirit drive for a while would have the great advantage that He (or She, according to the great theologian Fr James Martin SJ), has never actually said anything "rigid" in black and white: thus anyone can make up his own doctrine. Indeed, this is already happening.

Pope claims that most Catholics are bastards

Pope Francis, in his usual friendly I-hates-you-all-because-you-is-not-saved-only-I-is-saved style, has claimed that most Catholic marriages are invalid, thereby implying that the fruits of the marriage (kids) are technically bastards.

John Major - also thought that most of his colleagues were bastards.

As has already been pointed out by wiser people than myself*, it is quite likely that most ordinations were also invalid - we can give you a list of prime suspects on request - not to mention Masses, Reconciliation (Penance), etc.

*wiser, but less saved, perhaps.

Having spent the three years of his papacy in accusing Catholics of particular sins (Pope Francis has a particular objection to holiness, faithfulness, honesty, truthfulness and orthodoxy), the Holy Father has now decided to "go for broke" by issuing this general Commination on his Church.

"O God! I've just insulted my own parents!"

Some critics (not us) have responded by suggesting that certain papal conclaves were invalid, because either Cormac Murphy-O'Connor and his mates interfered, or simply because the the cardinals ended up electing a rather dim person who didn't understand canon law. I expect that dear brother Mundabor could tell you more.

However, we should remember that the choice of the Pope is made by the Holy Spirit, possibly influenced by the Spirit of Vatican II, and that God moves in a mysterious way His wonders to perform. He plants His footsteps in the sea, and rides upon the storm. After one saintly Pope, and one very learned Pope, it is clear that the time had come for the Church to be led by someone very different. You got it.

Fr James Martin wins Comedy Award

Fr James Martin SJ is known for his gifts as a humorist, often seen in his uncanny ability to draw the wrong conclusions from the Gospel or indeed anything else he comes across. Of course, in Jesuit circles, this is regarded as theological brilliance, while the rest of us simply appreciate it as light comedy.

Fellow-comedians Colbert and Rosica rush to congratulate Martin.

For those of us who hang onto his every word on Twitter, the following Martinism was a classic of the genre.

Wit from Fr James.

This is excellent humour. Nowhere in the Bible nor in Christian tradition is it ever claimed that the Holy Spirit is female. The Catechism of the Catholic Church uses "he". There is a weak argument based on the fact that certain Aramaic words (such as "ruah" or "ruach") are female - similarly, all German girls are neuter (it seems ungallant to point this out, Eccles, they don't all look like Angela Merkel) and cats are female, while French "personnes" are all female.

A female "personne".

Fr James (or should we say "Parent James"?) has had a long and successful career as a comedian. Another of his classic japes was to use the picture below as an argument for women priests. You see, it's a 3rd century woman in what looks vaguely like a dalmatic, so she's obviously a deacon, so...

Lady in a dalmatic (or possibly Demis Roussos).

Therefore we are delighted to announce that Fr James Martin wins the April "Comedy Vicar" award, also known as a "Giles", being a tastefully-designed statuette of Giles Fraser. Congratulations, Father, er Parent, James!

A prestigious "Giles".

For another take on this story, we recommend Faith In Our Families.