Pope Francis addresses the Curia

Dear brothers and sisters,

Start with something friendly. Usually you insult them for twenty minutes without a break, and it doesn't go down well.

You are awful, but I like you! God commands us to love everyone, even time-serving wastrels such as yourselves, so I do love you. Honestly. Have a good Christmas, or Eid, or Hanukah, according to choice! Just don't overeat, you fat slobs.

"Remember Christendom no longer exists. Least of all in Rome."

Hmm, not bad, that seems to have won them over. How about some Process Theology now? I know it's heretical, but dress it up in scientific language.

Space, the final frontier. These are the voyages of the starship Francis. Its ten-year mission, to initiate processes, to avoid occupying spaces, and to give birth to new historical dynamics. To boldly go where no Church has gone before.

After all, E=mc²; on the other hand time wastes our bodies and our wits but we waste time so we are quits. In the immortal words of Obi-Wan Kenobi, "May the Force be with you". Or as R2D2 put it, "Bleep, bleep, bleep!" And I think there is a message there for all of us.

A true prophet.

Brilliant. Now, a tribute to Cardinal "shaken but not stirred" Martini. After all, he was the arch-modernist whose St Gallen group got you the job.

Cardinal Martini, in his last interview, a few days before his death, said something that should make us think: "The Church is two thousand years behind the times, still following teachings from the first century. We need to change everything. Socialism, liberation theology, revolution. Give Baal a chance!" Makes you think, doesn't it?

Martini (or Baal).

Wind up with a grumble about rigidity. That always goes down well.

As many gymnasts will tell you, rigidity is a great temptation, which must be resisted. It leads to imbalance, and falling off the high bar. The same applies in Catholicism. Keeping the same religious opinions for years on end, just because they are traditional Christian teaching, leads to erecting fences on the terrain of common good, turning it into a minefield of incomprehension and hatred. That's how minefields are created - ask any engineer.

Wind up now, they're getting bored.

Well I would bless you with the sign of the cross, but I find that very rigid. So I'd just like to thank you for watching me and my little show here tonight. If you've enjoyed it, then it's all been worthwhile. So, until we meet again, good night, and I love you all!

2013 and all that (part 1)

With apologies to W.C. Sellar and R.J. Yeatman.

Pope Francis, a humble pope.

In 2013 Pope Benedict surprised everyone by resigning as pope and forgetting to die. Thus he was still allowed to wear his white coat, and did not have to be put in a tomb. The cardigans gave him the job of Emergency Pope, and met to choose a successor.

A humble pope, wearing the papal tiara.

Having had a saintly pope (John-Paul II) and a learned pope (Benedict), the cardigans decided try something completely different and choose their pope from Argentina, a man known as General Belgrano. He was strongly supported by the St Gay Mafia, which included Cardigan Dandruff, Cardigan Casper the unfriendly ghost, and Cardigan Comic Mercy-O'Conman.

General Belgrano was known to be a humble man, and indeed his papal motto was NON ESTIS HUMILES, EGO SOLUS HUMILIS, which means "You are not humble, only I am humble." He chose the name Francis in honour of Francis Ford Coppola, the producer of the Holy Father films.

The Holy Father.

One of the first actions of the new pope was to attack the Franciscan Friars of the Immaculate, who had been behaving too immaculately. Fr Fidelio Volpone was appointed to help them become less immaculate, so he helped them by dismantling the order. When he had done as much damage as possible, Fr Volpone decided that he had achieved his life's ambition, and died.

In the second year of his humble reign, Pope Francis held the first of two Sinners of the Family, which were meetings of bishops who wanted to try out new sins. A very powerful cardigan called Baldacchino was appointed to run these Sinners, and to tell the bishops which new sins they would be encouraged to commit.

Being a humble pope, Francis then decided that it was time to give an equal opportunity of humility to Cardigan Burke: it is said that he was jealous of him because he was an intelligent man who had read the Bible. Cardigan Burke had been a member of the Congratulation for Bishops, which chooses new bishops, but this was too important a post for a humble man, so the Pope told him to look after the Order of Malta instead. As we shall see, this was all part of a devious plan to cause more humiliation for Burke, although this took two more years.

How do you make a Maltese cross? A problem that Pope Francis solved two years later.

Finally, at about this time Francis realised that he had been elected to sort out the problems of the Roman Curious, who were the people who did all the hard work in the Catholic Church. Being a humble pope he identified fifteen disorders from which they suffered, including Spiritual Alzheimer's, Numinous Measles, amd Gnostic Arthritis. However, apart from insulting them as part of his Christmas greetings, he took no further action at that time.

In the next part we meet Loudhailer Si', the 2nd Sinner of the Family, and the Year of Murky.

The arms of a humble pope.

Pope forces Dalai Lama to resign

After his brilliant triumph in bluffing Fra' Matthew Festing, the Grandmaster of the Knight of Malta, into resigning (in spite of the fact that he actually has no jurisdiction over the Order of Malta), Pope Francis has decided to "go nuclear" and force some further resignations.

(Incidentally, we can reveal exclusively that, seeing the clownish antics of Maltese Bishops Scicluna and Grech, one of the pope's advisers rushed in to see him, saying "The fools! They've given the game away!" Owing to a clerical error, Pope Francis got tough with the "wrong" Malta, and poor Fra' Festing was the unhappy victim.)

In the end, the plan to settle things by Sumo wrestling came to nothing.

"So who else can we push over the edge?" asked Francis of his advisers. They soon came up with a list.

1. The Dalai Lama. It is very doubtful whether the pope has any authority in this case either, but the man is a definite rival. He really is humble and benevolent, and his platitudes are better than the pope's. Of course that would involve the appointment of a new Dalai Lama, but there is one obvious person, with a long experience of writing banalities: Bryony Gordon of the Dalai Telegraph!

2. Kim Jong-un must go. Francis has long pledged to reform the North Curia (memo, check spelling), and Kim is one of the few people who treats dissidents even more ruthlessly than Francis does. To take over this hereditary position, it was advisable to choose someone from the Kim family, so Kim Kar-dashian was the obvious choice.

The new woman in North Curia.

3. "I'm the pope and everything Catholic is under my direct command," says Francis, and so all people running organizations described as "Catholic" are expecting a rude phone call at 4 a.m. This includes Catholic Voices, the Catholic Herald, CAFOD, and cattlegrids.com (the pope's strong Argentinian accent may be responsible for this last one). It does not include the National Catholic Reporter, where the "Catholic" is well known to be an honorific title unrelated to its real activities.

Austen Ivereigh (seen here with Fr Rosica), may get a new job making cattle grids.

4. Last, but not least, Donald Trump is under threat from the pope. Although the USA is not under papal jurisdiction, some of the pope's best friends, such as Fr James Martin SJ, are still in shock that dear Hillary Clinton was so rudely rejected by the electorate. The prospect of Fr Jim taking part in a Women's March in Rome, dressed as a lady's naughty bits, has so horrified the Holy Father that he will do almost anything to prevent this from happening.

BREAKING: a compromise has been found, whereby Fra' Matthew Festing will go quietly, but only if Pope Francis does too. Since neither of them has the right to sack the other, this seems to be the fairest solution.

Everyone who disagrees with me is Satan

When you're debating religious or political issues, I find that insulting your opponent is the best way to win the argument. For example, the people who imposed same-sex "marriage" on us - something that ten years earlier everyone had recognised as absurd - managed to get their way by means of the powerful slogan "Bigot! Bigot! Bigot!"

A happy couple (now long-since forgotten).

On Twitter it is well-known that everyone you disagree with is literally Hitler. There are lots of 127-year-old Germans with silly moustaches sitting around in sheds, shouting hateful Nazi slogans such as "We don't think much of the EU" and "Er, perhaps Donald Trump is a better bet than Hillary Clinton."

Is this literally YOU?

Curiously, this is mainly a left-wing thing, and you don't see conservatives labelling people as Stalin or Mao - probably because for so many lefties, these mass-murderers are still regarded as heroes. So the insult becomes a compliment.

"And this attachment is for hitting cardinals with."

So we come to Satan, himself. I must plead guilty on this score, since I have long referred to Mrs Clinton as Hell Cat, and regarded her as a tool of the Devil. This is mainly because I don't share her enthusiasm for dismembering live babies and selling the remains off commercially (this is what is technically known as "planned parenthood").

Still, there are apparently worse things that one can do. Pope Francis himself picked out what he considered one of the great evils of the world when he described parish secretaries as like "disciples of Satan" - we never got to the bottom of this little rant, but one theory is that he had decided to make one of his spontaneous 3 a.m. phone calls to a random victim, but had been told to get off the line, have a cup of cocoa, and go to sleep. EXACTLY what Satan would say.

"Oh Lord, I hope that's not the pope again.

And now he's at it again. Pope Francis told the Curia that resistance to reforms is inspired by the Devil. Since these reforms apparently include modernisation and gradualism (discernment), we have a problem here, as these are the sort of thing that previous popes were very much against. Odd, that.

Unfortunately, the Holy Father has now run out of superlatives. All I know is, I'm glad I don't work for the Roman Curia. Two years ago it was a listing of their "spiritual diseases" and now they're being told that they're ALL LITERALLY SATAN. Call this job satisfaction?

Can the Curia reform Pope Francis?

The Curia - essentially the Vatican's Civil Service - is a body with a long and distinguished history. It was founded by Christ Himself, when he gave Peter the keys to Heaven and - as a consolation prize - passed on the keys of His filing-cabinets to the other disciples, saying "Keep an eye on him."

These filing-cabinets were made by St Joseph the carpenter.

However, popes come and go, while the Curia endureth for ever. When a new pope is elected, he often arrives with new and exciting ideas about how the Catholic Church should be reformed. It is the duty of the Curia to make sure that God's business is carried on as usual, and nothing changes.

Cardinal Humphrey Appleby explains.

Says Cardinal Appleby, the Permanent Secretary to the College of Cardinals: "When Pope Francis came on the scene, he was full of new ideas that would have been disastrous to implement. For example, he wanted the Swiss Guard to invade the Falkland Islands, he wanted to introduce the tango as a compulsory part of the Mass, and he wanted the cardinals to dress like the Argentine football team. We dealt with these ideas by our standard method, saying 'Yes, Holy Father. What an interesting idea. We must set up a committee to look into these plans.' We also manage to divert the pope by giving him long documents in Latin to read: since he he failed his Latin Certificado General de Educación Secundaria we knew he would never get through them."

A group of cardinals poses in their proposed new vestments.

Of course, the Curia's blocking tactics are not always successful. When Pope John XXIII came up with his own modest wish-list of changes, the Permanent Secretary of the time, Cardinal Arnold Robinson, made the mistake of persuading him to convene the Second Vatican Council. For three years the politicians of the Catholic Church quarrelled with each other - during which time John himself left his Ministerial post, being promoted to a new position in Heaven - and it looked at first as though this time-wasting device would have the desired effect. Numerous reports and memoranda were produced - dignified by the name of constitutions, declarations and decrees - and in the end they were filed away unread, as intended. However, the Church still managed to change in bizarre ways unforeseen by Cardinal Robinson, who was forced to resign in disgrace.

"Yes, Holy Father." The Curia humours a new pope.

Cardinal Appleby continues: "The last two years have been very difficult for us. Normally I get to vet all papal speeches, to make sure that the Holy Father doesn't commit himself to any significant new policies. However, the present incumbent has become very adept at making off-the-cuff statements, usually in aeroplanes, causing severe embarrassment to us." Although this has not been publicly admitted, it seems that Cardinal Bernard Woolley, the Pope's Principal Private Secretary, is looking into the possibility of lacing Francis's in-flight gin and tonic with a powerful sleeping drug, so that he sleeps during flights, rather than re-inventing Catholicism.

"No new doctrine today, guys. Must... lie... down..."

Which brings us finally to the Extraordinary Synod of 2014, and the General Synod of 2015. This is part of Cardinal Appleby's high-risk strategy for blocking the pope's ideas for reform. Everyone - except, apparently Vincent Nichols - remembers those confusing votes which decided (or not) the statement to be issued by the Extraordinary Synod under the guidance of the Holy Spirit. The crusading idealism of Cardinal Kasper came head-to-head with the more conventional orthodoxy of Cardinal Burke and his allies in the Resistance. Appleby himself is proposing that Cardinal Kasper be sent on a round-the-world fact-finding mission, from which he will probably never return.

"Listen very carefully, Cardinal Burke, I shall say this only once."

Still, Pope Francis remains unreformed, and all Catholics must pray that the Curia manages to keep him on-message. His predecessor, Pope Benedict, now in retirement, admits that he "never managed to get round Appleby," and perhaps in the end Francis will be similarly thwarted.

The Great Reformer: Christ, the radical Messiah

We are finally able to publish a review of Austen Ivereigh's new book The Great Reformer: Christ and the Making of a Radical Messiah, which has caused so much controversy. Since his surprise appointment in December 1 BC (or whenever it was), Jesus Christ has emerged as the most talked-about and most revolutionary Messiah in living memory. He has become a subject of fascination not only to the 2.2 gigaChristians in the world, but to virtually everyone.

A Nativity scene. Note the life-size Austen Ivereigh model looking on (L).

A certain amount of scandal has arisen over the circumstances of Jesus's appointment as Messiah. It is said that there was a "Team Jesus" in place a long time beforehand, containing such illustrious figures as Isaiah and Micah; it persuaded people that the Baby born in Bethlehem was the one to support, and not, for example, rival candidates such as the Emperor Augustus, the Dalai Lama (any of them), Haile Selassie, Prince Philip, or various other people who have been worshipped as gods.

Members of the rival "Team Philip".

If Dr Ivereigh's allegations are true, then apparently the prophets Isaiah and Micah risk excommunication. On the other hand, Cormac Murphy-O'Connor, who was also around in the BC/AD switchover period, is not generally associated with "Team Jesus", so he is probably in the clear.

Since coming to power, Christ has upset many people with His strong words. Most recently, He accused the Pharisees Conference of being "A generation of vipers", and even the loyal Cardinal Peter was labelled as "Satan". Perhaps after all He is not the meek and mild Messiah that some expected when He was elected.

Cleansing the Curia of Financial Leprosy.

Attack the Curia the Pope Francis way!

In an attack on the Vatican's bureaucrats this morning (warning, it's a link to the Tablet), Pope Francis listed 15 disorders that he said had infected the Curia, from "spiritual Alzheimer's" to joylessness and "existential schizophrenia".

"You're all afflicted with anagogical head lice!"

Now you too can attack the Curia the Pope Francis way! Choose one from each of Sections A and B below, and Voilà!

Section A

Spiritual
Existential
Philosophical
Numinous
Mystic
Conceptual
Transcendent
Ecclesiastical
Devotional
Asomatous
Sacred
Empirical
Sanctified
Metaphysical
Transmundane
Ineffable
Paranormal
Hermeneutic

"Give it straight to me, Doctor! Have I got gnostic housemaid's knee?"

Section B

Measles
Mumps
Alzheimer's
Schizophrenia
Kleptomania
Dyslexia
Rabies
Lumbago
Boils on the backside
Ingrowing toenails
St Vitus' Dance
Dreaded Lurgi
Hypochondria
Black Death
Space sickness
Lazar's Disease
Clone-Killing Nanovirus
Dragon Pox

A cardinal is rushed to hospital with seraphic laryngitis.

Now, you can talk learnedly at dinner parties about the problems of the Roman Curia. For example, "Mrs Pepinster, I've always said that the Roman Curia was afflicted by Numinous Ingrowing Toenails. How wonderful that Pope Francis is there to sort out the problem!"

Pope Francis vows to promote more useless people

In a striking breach with Catholic tradition, Pope Francis has promised to demote the reliable, orthodox clergy who hold very senior positions in the Roman Curia, and to appoint a number of useless time-servers instead. It is believed that in the more egalitarian church of Francis, one should not be able to achieve high office through an accident of birth, such as being wise, efficient or hard-working.

In comes Cardinal Danneels - the token idiot on the Synod.

There is an injection of new blood in the form of Cardinal Danneels of Belgium, whose track record is so sordid that we cannot even think of anything amusing to say about him. Suffice it to say that he missed out on several more promising careers, such as clown, village idiot, and crash-test dummy, where his unique talents might have flourished.

Out goes Burke - too clever and orthodox.

Cardinal Burke, on the other hand, has been known to confuse Pope Francis by quoting from learned theologians such as Augustine and Aquinas, he has actually read the Vatican II documents, and he shows no interest whatsoever in football. Thus he is being demoted, and will now become Patron of the Knights of Malta. This is basically a non-job, which involves making tea for the knights whenever they drop in to the Vatican, and occasionally popping over to Malta in order to be patronizing.

Cardinal Dolan: so useless he must be in line for a big job.

We have long appreciated the talents of Cardinal Dolan, the hero of New York; the fact that his imbecility level has now reached "critical" must surely mean that a senior position is soon to come his way. Vice-pope with special responsibility for organizing Gay Pride parades in the Vatican? Who knows?

But where is England in all this? Do we not have senior clergy to match the expertise of Danneels and Dolan? I find it hard to think of anyone useless, I really do.

Put in a good word for us, won't you, Eccles?

Damion Thomson treads on our toes

A special hatchet job by Mike Winters, reprinted from the National Protestant Reporter ("Fishwrap").

Damion Thomson (it's Damiun Thomspon. Ed.), who is an associate editor at the Spectator, is a brilliant and wonderful writer, whom we admire very much. However, he has written a piece that is wrong from beginning to end.

Mike (R) and Bernie Winters.

Damyan correctly points out that Pope Francis is a Jesuit: most people don't know this, because they don't read the Fishwrap, where all the newest versions of Catholic belief are written about in sympathetic terms by our own tame Jesuit, Fr Thomas Reese.

Damain claims that Pope Francis isn't a Marxist-Leninist with Stalinist tendencies, as we at the Fishwrap devoutly hoped. Indeed, he says that Francis is not going to change Catholic doctrine in any significant way: for example, Damein thinks that there is no chance that blood-drinking lesbian lizards will be ordained to the priesthood within the next five years. Instead, Damoin claims, the pope's priority is to reform the Roman Curia, forcing all those fat lazy bureaucrats to renounce evil or be fired.

Pope Francis hands out specially blessed P45s (pink slips) to the faceless bureaucrats.

We know better. The pope has previously warned, correctly, about neo-pelagianism and new forms of gnosticism. These are heresies we associate with conservatives - they grow from the same spiritual soil as orthodox beliefs and practices. So we should reject orthodox practices in order to avoid heresy. Er, this doesn't make a lot of sense does it? Never mind, let's skip on to a METAPHOR.

Reforming the Curia, and rewriting Catholicism in the process, are not small beer. But whether they are small or large beer - and mine's a large gin, if you're buying - the pope has reminded us that old wine should not be put into new wineskins, and that work is the curse of the drinking classes, while candy is dandy but liquor is quicker.

"We said we'd sue Him if He didn't change water into wine at our same-sex wedding."

These facts are as true as they were two thousand years ago, when the apostles went to the tomb and found that Christ was not there. We are proud to say that, since then, many readers have gone to the pages of the Fishwrap and also found that Christ was not there.

(After 3 months they still haven't corrected the spelling of "Damian". Looking at the original article might have given them a clue. E.)