When can a pope tell lies?

With what the Americans call the "passing" of Pope Francis (and the rest of us call "failing") we did not expect to see much more in the "How to be a good pope" series of posts, but even after his death Francis is the gift that goes on giving.

Let's get the Rex Mottram school of thought out of the way first. Rex (in "Brideshead Revisited") is talking to his priest.

'Supposing the Pope had consulted his bishops and he said "They all want to suppress the traditional Latin Mass". Would that be definitely true?'

'Oh, yes, Father.'

'But supposing it wasn't?'

He thought a moment and said, 'I suppose it would be sort of true spiritually, only we were too sinful to see it.'

Poor Hoho Rich Raho Rex Mottram consults his priest.

But we are jumping the gun. As pope you are anxious to give the "backwardist" "rigid" trads a final kick before you shuffle off your mortal coil, and what better way to do this than by suppressing the Mass so many of them attend? Cardinal Sally has retired from the Flying Circus for Divine Worship and you have promoted his former deputy Arthur Quiche the Cake-lover, who will do whatever you want.

So you consult your bishops on your proposals. The replies are very varied, and here are some of the examples (the last two written by Grok, which 95% of bishops use for their pastoral letters):

"You must be out of your tiny mind, Holy Father!"

"Holy Father, I think your mitre's on too tight if you’re suggesting that!"

"That's mean and vicious, Holy Father, and I don't mean that as a compliment."

"Your so-called 'suggestion' is a vile, heartless edict that exposes your true colors—cloaked in piety but dripping with cruelty. You sit on your gilded throne, spewing malice while pretending that it's divine wisdom. This isn't leadership; it's a disgusting abuse of power, and history will judge you as a hypocrite who delighted in others' suffering. Shame on you."

One response is slightly favourable:

"Your Holiness, your suggestion, in its profound wisdom, carries a depth that surely transcends my humble understanding. Its boldness, though some might misjudge it as harsh, reflects a divine clarity aimed at guiding us toward a higher purpose. I am but a lowly servant, awestruck by your infallible vision, and I grovel in gratitude for the privilege of witnessing such sacred counsel. May your merciful brilliance forever illuminate our path. Signed, Blase Soupdish."

There's always one ally.

Anyway, in spite of the fact that the vast majority of bishops think you are bonkers to try and overturn the decision of your predecessor Pope Ben, especially while he is still alive, you decide to go ahead and write Trads Cussed.

The Vatican's overall assessment of the consultation process is to be filed away carefully in an underground tomb marked "Relics of St Eccles the Humble. Do not open until the Day of Judgement." Your legacy is assured and you can die happily.

Unfortunately, it all begins to unravel when two months later Miss Marple stumbles across the Vatican report and realises that you were lying. Luckily the "popesplainers" (and why, I wonder, did no previous popes employ an army of 'splainers?) are ready to respond.

"Miss Marple made the whole thing up. She is a known liar, and cannot be trusted."

"Well, maybe she didn't invent the story, but she misunderstood the report."

"OK, perhaps the report is just as she said, but it doesn't mean the pope lied. It's all the fault of Arthur Quiche."

"All right, perhaps Pope Fred lied, but popes are allowed to do this if they are not being infallible. That would mean sitting in a special chair, saying 'Here is something infallible, so pay attention!" and talking about Catholic doctrine, and he didn't do that."

Arthur Quiche decides to retire to Yorkshire to spend more time with his cakes.

Finally, there is the Jane Austen-Ivory attack-poodle response.

"Every time I insult those scumbags who defend the TLM, they accuse me of being nasty: Pope St Fred was a Paragon of Cosmic Wisdom and Indomitable Bravery - or you might say a Seer of Infinite Prudence and Lionhearted Resolve - when he called out this new Gnosticism, and how necessary it is to stamp on the heads of traditionalists. The whole movement is corrupt. We hates them, we hates them."

This must surely close the issue once and for all.

How can a Pope tell lies?

As the latest instalment in our self-help guide, "How to be a good pope," intended for those of our readers who are already getting themselves measured for the white zucchetto, "just in case," we address the thorny problem of whether a pope can tell lies.

The simplest answer, of course, is no. Infallibility guarantees that, whatever you say, it is automatically true. Of course, as Rex Mottram would put it, you were actually telling the truth in a spiritual sense, but others are too sinful to see this.

"This is the complete dossier on McCarrick."
"I'll say I know nothing."

Let's take a case in point, the sordid story of "Uncle Fred," once one of your favourite cardinals, and now sadly disgraced. Your predecessor as Pope knew about some of his activities, and, when the St Gallstone Mafia launched a coup and got you the top job, he told you all about him, and advised you to keep Uncle Fred chained up in a dungeon. So you let him go.

This is the story told by Archbishop Vinegar, and now other evidence is coming out. Donna Whirly was involved too. In fact it seems that everyone in the Vatican knew about Uncle Fred EXCEPT YOU.

The Pope says he knows nothing!

So many people say you're lying! They really don't understand how Holy Fathers work, do they? Luckily you have friends who know that popes cannot lie (when Peter denied knowing Jesus, it wasn't a lie, it was simply because he had forgotten who He was, it could happen to anyone).

First, there's little Austen Ivory, telling the world that He didn’t know about McCarrick's past, or the sanctions (how could he know?) while at the same time throwing in a few character assassinations, in line with your new Motu proprio, AD HOMINEM. Other mates will rush to your defence, such as Robert Muckins, who still hasn't recovered from the news that your predecessor, whom he called "The rat" refuses to die. He manages to be even less coherent than Austen, no mean feat!

Unfortunately Fr Martin James LGBTSJ is not available to join in the fun, as he is in hospital having an operation. We have no idea what it is, but when she comes out, she will no doubt support you too.

The Archbishop of Barcelona also knows nothing.

Anyway, here are a few useful phrases which should help you get through this tricky time:

I know nothing.
I have an alibi.
Nobody told me.
I wasn't there.
I plead infallibility.
It's a case of mistaken identity.
It must have been some other Pope.
You don't have any DNA evidence, do you?
If I have a weakness, it's my inability to lie.
If you can't trust the Pope, whom can you trust?
I reserve the right to remain silent.
     (Well, it worked for those Dubia...)

What is truth?

What to do if a cardinal hands you a letter

It's time for another instalment in our "How to be a good pope" self-help guide, for those readers who may one day get dumped in the Hot Seat.

Suppose, just suppose, that a few years ago one of your cardinals handed you an eight-page letter detailing some really nasty things that happened in Chile with the connivance of one of your bishop pals. You have gone on record as saying you never received any such letter. But then, OOPS! Cardinal O'Malley insists that he did give you the letter.

Cardinal O'Malley, or maybe some other O'Malley.

Admittedly you don't have a very good record of dealing with letters from cardinals. Burke and co. might wish to remind you of those dubia you never got round to answering. Zen may remind you that he told you that the real Chinese bishops are all being tortured in dungeons while you cut deals to allow communist puppets to take their place.

Should you admit that you've been caught "doing a Kasper"? You remember that your mate "screwy" Kasper said some stuff which basically boiled down to "I don't like darkies," and then denied it. But it had actually been recorded, possibly on the advice of top Jesuit Fr Sosa, who believes nothing, including the Gospel, unless it is tape-recorded.

"No really, some of my best friends are Africans."

No, of course you don't admit anything. You can get your stooges (Spadaro, Faggioli, etc.) to deny that the letter was ever received. If it was important, why wasn't it sent recorded delivery and handed over by a properly qualified postman, rather than a totally unqualified cardinal?

There is also the Rex Mottram / Stephen Walford "infallibility" argument. In a spiritual sense the letter was never delivered at all, but, being sinful, Cardinal O'Malley failed to realise this.

If you imagine a letter in this picture, you are unsaved.

Just remember, you're the Pope. You are infallible. You cannot lie. There was no letter.

Still, check behind the sofa, just in case! .

Correctio Filialis to appear in weekly instalments

The recent letter Correctio Filialis has gone viral, and received all manner of feedback: indeed, "We're almost certain that Pope Francis has heard of it, although of course he hasn't read it," said a spokesman. However, the Holy Father has continued to produce a blizzard of puzzling statements (to put it charitably), and it is now felt that the best needs of the Catholic Church will be served by producing a slim 200-page magazine each week, listing the most recent errors.

A cruel caricature on the cover of the new magazine.

For example, this week Pope Francis told us that capital pubishment was "contrary to the Gospel", presumably thinking that - as Rex Mottram would have said - there is a particular text in which it is condemned, at least spiritually, but most Catholics are too sinful to see it. As one of the editors of Correctio Filialis put it, "Don't get us wrong, we're not great fans of the death penalty either; still previous Popes were clear that one should reserve it for serious offences such as possessing one of Fr James Martin's books."

Some say an (early, safe and legal) death penalty is OK for the crime of being a disabled baby.

In addition to correcting docrinal utterances of Pope Francis, the new magazine will also pick out his insults to the ordinary Catholic in the pew, and explain what Francis should have said.

Examples:

Uncorrected: Fomenters of coprophagia!
Corrected: People who publish embarrassing stories about my friends in the Vatican.

Uncorrected: Self-absorbed Promethean neo-Pelagians!
Corrected: Catholics following the traditions of long-forgotten figures of the past, such as Pope Benedict XVI, Pope Pius X, St Paul, or Jesus Christ.

Uncorrected: Creed-reciting parrot Christians!
Corrected: Oh by the way, I am about to rewrite the Nicene creed to reflect my new "development of doctrine".

Page 3 boy (Catholic of the Week).

Each week's issue of Correctio Filialis will highlight one of the hive of heretics that buzz round Pope Francis, and this week's Page 3 boy is Cardinal Blase Cupich, who is co-hosting a conference in Boston with the general theme of "How can we destroy Catholic teaching?" Since the conference has not been condemned by Pope Francis, and indeed features some of his greatest admirers such as Spadaro, Farrell, Scicluna, Beelzebub and Moloch (I may have got some of these wrong), it seems appropriate to give Cupich a page to himself. It will be someone else next week.

We wish the new magazine every success.

Following a suggestion on Twitter, let me help you create your own heretic. Simply take the last Italian food (or drink) you consumed, and add Cardinal/Father/Sister/Professor/etc. in front, and optionally an SJ at the end. Mine was Fr Penne Rigate SJ, and some of the replies received were: Dottore Cioccolato Gelato, Cardinal Zabaglione, and Sister Puttanesca (that's enough heretics, Eccles). Most of these people were in Boston this week.

Dinner time, and I'm having a delicious plate of Faggioli al Spadaro.

Reading Francis through Rex Mottram

In Evelyn Waugh's Brideshead Revisited the character Rex Mottram gives us a useful way to interpret Pope Francis.

'Supposing the Pope looked up and saw a cloud and said "It's going to rain," would that be bound to happen?'

'Oh, yes, Father.'

'But supposing it didn't?'

He thought a moment and said, 'I suppose it would be sort of raining spiritually, only we were too sinful to see it.'

A simple exercise: can you see Francis sitting in this chair, or are you too sinful?

The above picture is a useful test: early in his reign, Pope Francis was reported to have stayed away from a Beethoven concert in his honour. Of course, that would have been simple rudeness: the fact is that he was there, but only very spiritual (saved) people could see him. The rest of you are simple sedevacantists.

We should take the words "Tu es Petrus" literally. Pope Francis is Peter. Send him off to sea in a boat (something that many Catholics have felt like doing recently), and he will come back with a catch of fish. Although you may be too sinful to see them, or even smell them.

"Look at the size of this fish!"

Likewise, when the four cardinals submitted five dubia to Pope Francis, checking that he wasn't attempting to "develop" Catholic teaching on marriage, the Holy Father responded by return of post, affirming that the answers were "No, yes, yes, yes, yes" (a cry often heard in Jesuit seminaries on a Saturday night). However Cardinal Burke and his colleagues were too sinful to realise this.

Pope Francis presents an ecstatic Cardinal Burke with a copy of Amoris Laetitia.

Which suggests that Bishops Scicluna and Grech, in thinking that doctrine had been changed developed, were grave sinners. But we knew that anyway.

This brings us to the latest crisis involving the Order of Malta. It has been claimed that Pope Francis has - like his compatriot General Galtieri - annexed another sovereign state and installed his own puppet government. After all, the order of Malta is/was an independent subject in international law, like the Vatican.

"Thanks for the advice, Vladimir!"

Of course Peter wouldn't do such a thing, and it is your sin that gives you this impression. There is no way you will see the Pope behind bars. Forget it.

Just visiting!