Why Eccles will tell no more jokes

Eccles's new law states that it is impossible to tell any joke without someone being offended.

Take for example the Tommy Cooper joke: "I bought some pork chops and told the butcher to make them lean. He said, 'Which way?'"

With this joke the late Mr Cooper (99 today) has managed to offend Jews and Muslims (mentioning pork), fat people (mentioning "lean") and people with one leg shorter than the other (the other meaning of "lean"). So watch out for Mohammed Ben Fatwa, the overweight Muslim with a limp!

One man's comedy is another man's tragedy.

The same law has applied to me recently, and here are three examples.

Case 1. Someone on Twitter asks what she should do during the present crisis, if it is impossible to get to Confession.

Witty Eccles reply: Stop sinning.

Audience reaction: Let's be more charitable here, please. Accusing S. of being unable to stop sinning is the height of rudeness.

Well, that went down well!

Case 2. We have the usual St Patrick's Day dispute about whether St Patrick was English, Scottish, Welsh, or something else. Someone says that he was Scottish.

Witty Eccles reply: You're thinking of St Andrew.

Audience reaction: (patiently). No, no, he's the Patron Saint of Scotland. If he was Scottish, his brother Peter would also have been Scottish.

St Andrew relaxes after a hard day's apostling.

Case 3. An American priest (who claims to have a sense of "humor", whatever that may be) tells us that he tried to give up chocolates for Lent, and failed.

Witty Eccles reply. "This is the face of true evil."

Audience reaction (and this, if anything, proves that British irony doesn't travel well): I hope you didn’t give up "calling priests evil" or "exaggerating" or "joking not joking" or what New Yorkers called "joking on a square" for Lent.

Pope Francis will not eat his choco-Luther until Lent is over.

O.K. from now on I will stop telling jokes. Here instead is a purely factual piece of spiritual nourishment.

New Catholic helpline.
Worried about / whom to consult.

Climate change - Pope Francis.
Coronavirus - Cardinal Nichols.
Sexual problems - Cardinal Marx.
Sin, redemption, etc. - Er, position still vacant.

To which someone added: Liturgical Dancing / Cardinal Tagle. See? People are starting to appreciate my serious comments.

Pope Francis II?

How to preach a Royal Wedding sermon

Some day you may be invited to preach the sermon at a royal wedding, at which some lesser piece of royalty is joined in holy matrimony with a celebrity. There are not many unattached princes of marriageable age around at present, but who knows, Prince Andrew may have hit it off with Oprah Winfrey. So be prepared!

Don't be discouraged if someone looks the other way and turns off his hearing aid.

"Why me?" you ask. "Why can't Welby do it himself? All right, he's a great bore. But how about Nurse Sarah Mullally, the bishopess of London? Ten minutes of politically correct waffle, that will go straight to the heart, won't it?"

No. For whatever reason, the lot has fallen on you. An estimated 2 billion people will be listening in, so you must DUMB DOWN. No learned discourse on the spirituality of the lesser kings of Judah, or the precise translation of some particular word in the synoptic gospels. No, they want SEX.

I'm sorry. They want LOVE. Statistically, it has been shown that nearly 30% of people who get married are actually in love. Now, no C.S.-Lewisite subtleties about "Four loves" - Storge, Philia, Agape, Eros. Just bundle them all together and dig out some quotations about Love.

Obviously Jesus talked a lot about Love, and you can mention this. But don't forget to bring in some more important theologians such as Martin Luther King, and - if you like - Groucho Marx and Tommy Cooper ("Heard the one about two aerials meeting on a roof, falling in love, and getting married? The ceremony was rubbish but the reception was brilliant.")

The ideal preacher, but sadly no longer with us.

After about 5 minutes of LOVE we can move onto another theme. Two ideas in one sermon may seem a little excessive, but let's use FIRE as well. Without fire there would have been no industrial revolution. Without fire, there would have been no cars to bring you to church. Without fire the fire brigade would be unemployed. Keep going.

Somewhere about now you can throw in some Biblical reference. Maybe to Balm in Gilead (also taken up by Edgar Allan Poe in "The Raven"?). Of course this will be over the heads of the non-religious.

When Mr Catholic Voices went a little balmy.

If you have any say in the wedding hymns, you can get them to sing that old Gospel Song "Stan Balmy", which seems to consist of this magic phrase repeated 946 times. This is what we call liturgical coherence.

Oh, slip in a reference to Teilhard de Chardin, even if you do call him "Tired Day Chardan". This will go down well with your celebrity audience, who will mostly think he's a fashion-designer.

Anyway, finish off now. Get back to LOVE, and hope that the happy couple haven't already got tired of each other. Money can't buy me love. Love is a many-splendoured thing. Thirty-love (one for Serena Williams there).... There is power in LOVE, which is why it is like FIRE.

A new palace for the Duke of Sus-sus-sus-sex.

See, easy, wasn't it?

Saint of the Week - St Antony of Spadaro

St Antony of Spadaro is a much-loved saint, and in many ways the opposite of his namesake St Antony of Padua. When people wish to lose objects - or even to pretend they never existed - they pray to St Antony of Spadaro, and if their prayers are answered, then the embarrassing items disappear and can be totally ignored.

A truly holy man.

A grateful customer, J. Bergoglio of Rome, writes:

I was severely embarrassed when four cardinals wrote a letter to me containing a list of five "Dubia", or embarrassing questions about Amoris Laetitia. However, I prayed to St Antony of Spadaro, and the letter miraculously disappeared as if it had never existed, and I was able to ignore it!

See! All your doubts have disappeared! Just like that!

Since the letter from the four cardinals clearly never existed, we can only speculate what the five Dubia might have been, but here are some likely guesses:

1. Are you still a Catholic?

2. We know you didn't write Amoris Laetitia, but have you actually read it?

3. Is a person in a three-way marriage involving one man and two women, who has murdered a previous wife, who keeps a sex slave in his cellar, and and who is now contemplating a "sex-change", while at the same time feeling an unhealthy attraction to his goldfish, allowed to take communion?

4. Can Jesuits be saved?

5. As cardinals we feel it is our duty to advise you, so will you please take our advice and put Cardinal Kasper in a padded cell?

"Just like that!" A devotee of St Antony of Spadaro attempts to make things vanish.

Another grateful customer, L. Baldisseri of Rome, writes:

Last year we held a synod whose purpose was to think of new ways of undermining family life. However, it was nearly sabotaged when five cardinals produced a book explaining Christian doctrine - which, we all realise, was made obsolete in the 1960s. They attempted to post their book to participants at the synod. However, I prayed to St Antony of Spadaro, and the books miraculously disappeared from the Vatican postal system (Cardinal Pat, with his black and white cat), never to be seen again! Thank you, oh thank you, St Antony of Spadaro!

Cardinal Pat of the Vatican postal service.

Piers Morgan elected Pope

A startling prediction by the pundit Piers Stefan Pughe-Morgan (I didn't make that up), commonly known as Piers Morgan, that he would be elected pope in August - see below - has come to pass. England has won the Ashes, and Pope Francis has bowed to the inevitable and resigned. The alleged alternatives, to have the papal phone hacked, to see invasive photos of himself in the American edition of the Daily Mail (Ed. P. Morgan), or to read headlines such as "SURRENDER! FOR YOU JORGE BELGRANO DA PONTIFICATE IS OVER!" were too much.

The secrets of Fat-head. Mystic Morgan foretells the future.

For those Catholics disgruntled with some aspects of Pope Francis's reign, we can assure them that Pope Piers will be far worse. The forthcoming Synod on the Family will be replaced by a special series of Vatican's Got Talent featuring acts from all the leading clergy, with the winner being allowed to decide the question of Catholic doctrine on marriage and the family. Already, certain cardinals are practising their acts.

Walter Kasper performs "I'm singing in the rain".

It is also expected that Pope Piers will also take direct control of the Vatican Bank, using his undeniable gift for prophecy to make infallible purchases of shares that are will then increase in value. A special encyclical "QUOMODO PECUNIA TUA SALVATA SIT" ("How your money may be saved") will give financial advice to the faithful.

"You are in my power." Reinhard Marx with his hypnotism act.

One thing that will not change is the papal habit of insulting people. Pope Francis is well known for this, and Pope Piers will maintain the tradition. However, it is feared that the new papal vocabulary will not match the subtleties of expressions such as "self-absorbed Promethean neo-pelagian", and be more of the nature of playground insults such as "idiot". A pity, really.

"Not like that, like that!" William Levada does his Tommy Cooper impersonation.

Church rocked by "gay lobby" allegations

The church of England was reeling in shock today after the existence of a highly influential "gay lobby" at its heart was finally admitted.

The Union Flag is replaced with the Rainbow.

The first signs of such a lobby came when the secular wing of the church of England, which trades under the name "British Government", started enacting legislation to overturn the ideas of marriage, fatherhood, motherhood, men, women, etc. David Cameron, the person who appoints the church's bishops, has been identified as one of the people responsible for attacking family life in this way.

Things came to a head today, when the British Embassy in Paris decided to raise the rainbow flag in solidarity with the "Gay Bride" march in London. "Mon dieu," said a French commentator, "it's true what they say about le vice anglais, then?"

Not the sort of wedding we expect to see much longer.

The Queen herself, although Supreme Governor of the church of England, is not intending to take part in the "Gay Bride" march, and nor indeed is Archbishop Justin Welby, her deputy. However, Her Majesty has herself been seen visiting the "third arm" of the Church of England, the BBC, which is itself blamed for sex scandals dating back to the 1960s.

Blimey! It's the Supreme Governor!

The Catholic Church has its own problems, of course, and it was rumoured today that rebel forces in the Vatican had tried to raise the "Gay Bride" flag today, but had been repelled with holy-water cannons.

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Meanwhile, this weekend also sees the return of the Glastonbury Festival. Curiously, a copy of the programme of the very first Glastonbury Festival has come to light, dating from 50 A.D.

The aftermath of Glastonbury.

Topping the bill is Joseph of Arimathea, who will be performing his popular hit Jerusalem.

Joseph of Arimathea sings: And did those feet in ancient time...

Another name that will be known to modern readers is that of a very young Cliff Richard, who has of course performed at all the Glastonbury Festivals since the first one.

A promising young singer.

Many celebrities attended, including the lovely Princess Boadicea (or however you want to spell her name), although her insistence on coming by chariot caused some problems to passers-by.

Merlin asks: "Has anyone lost this?"