CDF controversially prefers wheat to tares

In a surprise statement this week the CDF (Congregation of the Doctrine of Farming) insisted on traditional Agricultural teaching that tares (also known as darnel, cockle, or weeds) were not recommended, and that farmers should sow wheat instead.

This has not surprisingly caused a certain amount of dissension among the LGBT (Love Growing Big Tares) community, and the usual suspects - the Germans, Austrians, Belgians and Americans.

Surely there is a market for Weed-a-bix?

The passage in Matthew 13 about the farmer sowing wheat while his enemy sowed tares is often omitted, as being too offensive, and the CDF has made itself no friends by insisting that the farmer got it right when he gathered up the tares and burned them. Said Farmer James Martin, "Clearly Jesus misunderstood this parable, as he had not yet been properly advised by a passing Canaanite woman. What the farmer intended to do was gather up the tares and make bread with them."

In Austria 350 farmers have said that they will continue to plant tares. It is rumoured that unless ten better farmers can be found, Austria is likely to be hit by fire and brimstone. (Climate change can be tough.)

Farmer Marx goes off to sow tares on his German estates.

Other controversial farming dubia are likely to come the way of the CDF before long. Should the sower have thrown more of the seed onto stony ground, as a way of building bridges with those of a petrified orientation? Is mustard seed really a useful crop to grow? Should the farmer with the barren fig tree have shown more mercy to it? We await the answers with interest.

The racism of gardening

We are grateful to Fr Phil of the very liberal Catholic church of St Daryl the Apostate for permitting us to reproduce his homily little chat.

---

As Dr Ben Pitcher, a senior lecturer in sociology at the University of Westminster, has pointed out, gardening is a very racist activity, and it is mostly used by white people as a way of sublimating their racist desires. Pull out some ground elder, and you're doing it because you're not allowed to beat up Pakistanis.

Have you seen this man? Wanted for aggressively wielding a fork.

Well, as liberal Catholics we have to watch out for racist activities such as gardening in our own lives. Remember the parable of the wheat and the tares, or darnel? They lived happily together in a liberal tolerant multi-species field until one day a brutal racist farmer (probably a UKIP member) came along and destroyed the tares, merely on account of the fact that they were not racially pure wheat plants. Well, we liberals know that this was a metaphorical story - God is not going to judge us, is He? Indeed, Christ told us this story as a warning against racism!

Food for racists - contains no darnel.

Go back to the book of Genesis. In the garden of Eden we have all the plants growing together in peace and harmony. As Christ put it, the Taraxacum officinale will lie down with the Plantago major, or, in non-traddy language as recommended by the Blessed Spirit of Vatican II, the dandelion will lie down with the lamb's foot. What do Eve and Adam do? They aggressively eat some fruit - possibly an apple - and then rip leaves off a fig tree, merely to clothe themselves. Of course since the 1960s we have realised that they put on their clothes merely to reinforce the sexist hegemony; indeed, as a result of Eve and Adam's aggressive figtree-harassment they were thrown out of the garden, and serve them right.

God clothes Adam and Eve in non-racist unisex garments.

One final example before Señorita Caseta de Jardín entertains us with her flamenco dancing. Some people still take literally the story of the Resurrection. In the book of John we read of Mary Magdalene finding the empty tomb, and coming across Christ, whom she mistakes for a gardener. A gardener! A professional racist who might at any moment rip out a nettle from the place where it was living peacefully with its neighbours! A man who would spread malicious gossip about the Urtica dioica, saying that it carried poison, and would sting people! No wonder she felt so silly when Christ turned to her and she realised who it was!

Fr Phil's sermon appears by kind permission of the Tablet.