Answering your Catholic questions

In these turbulent times, leadership of the Catholic Church is not all it should be, and so many people come to this blog for spiritual guidance. Let's go!

Q. Who is Luce? What is Luce? Why is Luce?

A. The year 2025 sees a Jubilee of the Catholic Church. Now, we had a very exciting Jubilee of Mercy in 2015-16, with the wonderful logo of a 2-headed 3-eyed cyclops on skis designed by Top Catholic Artist Marko Rupnik. This one will be different, and Luce, designed in the well-known Anime Christi style has been chosen to represent the true essence of the faith.

Of course this is not the first time a woman has had top billing in the Catholic Church. For many years the Blessed Virgin Mary was an object of veneration and adoration, but she has now fallen out of favour with the Vatican, perhaps for being too "traditional".

St Joan of Arc - also rejected for being too rigid.

Anyway, if you are a faithful Catholic, you probably already own a crucifix, some rosary beads, quite possibly a scapular. BUT IF YOU DON'T HAVE A LUCE YOU AIN'T SAVED! Got that?

Q. What is a synod on synodality?

A. Well, nobody really knows. Some say it is like a meeting on meetingality, or a workshop on workshopality. Perhaps it is more like a congress on congressality, or - like Vatican II - a council on councilality.

Of course, instead of putting a lot of moaning minnies in a room for several weeks, the whole business could have been settled more cheaply another way (see below):

Pope Francis summons his experts for a Zoom on Zoomality.

How to revive a dead Apostolic Exhortation

This is the latest instalment in our series "How to be a good pope", intended mainly for those who one day expect to be sleeping with the Keys to Heaven under their pillow, and giving out red hats to all their best mates. (To judge by the number of hits this blog gets, only people expecting the very top job will actually read this.)

Now, one thing that popes do is to write encyclicals and apostolic exhortations. Most of these are destined to gather dust in the Vatican library, and most of your cardinals will be borrowing copies of How to hide your drug habit and Money-laundering for beginners rather than one of Pope Leo XIII's 88 encyclicals (yes, really), and he was an Agatha Christie compared with you.

"I feel another encyclical coming on..."

So you decide to have a special year to celebrate your writings, and maybe clock up some more royalties. You are just over halfway through a year of celebration of "O SOLE MIO", your encyclical about the environment, and after an initial rash of jokes about plastic straws and Greta Thunberg, the world simply refused to take note, and went back to thinking about God instead.

They're not getting away with that! Even before the O SOLE MIO year of admiration is over, hit them with a new year (in fact fifteen months) dedicated to your other masterpiece AMOROUS LASCIVIA. In order to get it past the censors, attach the name of a great saint who won't answer back - Joseph, perhaps, who was well known for saying very little.

Ah, but you're saying, AMOROUS LASCIVIA went down very badly. Four cardinals spotted that it contradicts the previous 2000 years of Catholic teaching on marriage and the family, and sent in some Dubia. Two of them have since died, but the other two are beginning to suspect that you are never going to answer them - how faithless of them, in another twenty years or so you will have worked out which of the 32 possible combinations of YES and NO is the one least likely to embarrass you most reflecting Catholic teaching.

Sometimes, Dubia can be TOUGH.

Just ignore them and set up a website with lots of pictures of YOU doing family-type things - you know, smiling at children as if you liked the little beasts, blessing families, etc. Try to avoid the one featuring father, mother, father's previous wife, father's mistress, and mother's live-in lesbian lover, no matter what Fr James Martin says; also the one where the kids wouldn't smile and you hit them.

Now, you need a good programme of events to keep things going. Organize a "We love Amorous Lascivia" conference with distinguished speakers such as Austen Ivereigh and Massimo Faggioli. You may have to do it by ZOOM: some of the speakers will prefer this as they won't have to wear trousers. Next get those unsold AMOROUS LASCIVIA tee-shirts and coffee mugs from the cellar. Be imaginative!

There, that'll stop them worrying about the mess you got into with the Pachamama Synod!

The Dark Lord Bauron calls a meeting

So it came to pass that the Dark Lord (Bishop) Bauron called a secret conference of his allies: there came unto his online DOOM meeting a host of wizards, witches, orcs, trolls, balrogs, wargs, giant spiders, Jesuits, and many others.

Mordor on Fire!

And Bauron addressed his troops as follows:

"Friends, before we start may I just mention that I have a new book out, the Sellamillion, which you will all want to recommend to your flocks? If you have a book tolkien to spend, then you cannot do better.

Now, we are here today to declare war on the forces of tradition, led by my arch-enemy Radtradagast the Grey, Marshal of the tailors.

For too long have the Rad Trads criticised our ways, and refused to serve in my Mordor on Fire Empire. They shout out incantations in the old language of Latin, refusing to worship in Orcish, as agreed by the 2nd Council of the Vat Orthanc. They preach ancient doctrines, such as the existence of Hell, and they believe in the literal truth of scripture. They insult my good servant Father James Sarumartin the rainbow-coloured, builder of the Bridge of Elbigat and author of much fine new teaching.

Radtradagast.

Worse of all, they report on all are we are doing, with tabloid-style journalism, using the book of faces, the elvish twitters, the tubes of You, and the great web of the world."

"What shall we do, Master?" asked a young orc, with more courage than wisdom.

Vapourising the unhappy creature instantly for its impertinence, Bauron spake out in a voice of Doom: "FRIENDS, WE'RE ALL GOING TO HAVE A GOOD CRY ABOUT IT. But if Cardinal Gollan turns up, ask him to give me a ring, would you?"

Church of England goes on strike

The background for those who don't know it: Dominic Cummings, an adviser to Boris Johnson, took his child to Durham during the lockdown. Depending on whom you listen to, his reward should either be a knighthood, or an execution on Tower Hill. All shades of opinion in between are possible.

"I thank God that I am not a sinner like Mr Cummings."

Led by Dr Worzel Gummidge, Bishop of Manchester, the Church of England bishops have finally agreed on an issue for the first time since 1558 - Dominic Cummings must go! And they're cross, they're very cross - unless he does go, they will refuse to cooperate with the government!

Apparently the decision was reached by a ZOO conference - this is a bit of software that allows you to see lots of little cages on your screen, each containing a bishop. The "Cummings out" doctrine has proved so popular that it is likely to become the 40th article of Faith, with a wording something like:

Article XL: That DOMINIC CUMMINGS is denounced as a wicked and vexatious person, who ran rings round us over Brexit. Accordingly we curse him, reject all his works, and condemn him as an evil spirit.

After 2 months of lockdown, Dr Gummidge could do with a haircut.

So, if Cummings isn't going(s), what will the strike mean? No more bishops lounging around in the House of Lords, no more writing stiff letters to the Guardian about how ghastly Boris is, no more invitations for cabinet ministers to attend agreeable sherry parties, no more praying. Well, praying has more-or-less stopped anyway, since the churches are closed, and the Anglican bishops are anxious not to reopen them for the forseeable future (unlike the Catholic bishops who consider the churches to be the House of God).

Rare praise for Vincent Nichols!

In fact the only senior member of the Church of England administration who has ever been known to collaborate usefully with the government is the Supreme Governor herself, Queen Elizabeth, age 94. So far she has not told us whether she is also going on strike, but maybe Bishop Worzel knows.

You never saw me going on strike!