It's Laudato Si' mania!

What is the biggest event in the Catholic Church this week? Ascension Day? Oh no, you're so RIGID! The 100th birthday of the saintly Pope John-Paul II? Nearer, but still wrong. No, it's the 5th anniversary of Pope Francis's fantastic work of fiction, Laudato Si'!

But nobody noticed as they were all celebrating Laudato Si'.

There will be rejoicing throughout the Catholic world. Bonfires will be lit. Houses will be illuminated. The streets will be decorated with plastic straws. Pachamama idols will be brought out. There will be a performance of Paul Inwood's "Alleluia-puff-puff" by an orchestra of tuned air conditioners, boilers, revving car engines, etc. There will be jet fly-pasts. Clouds of dry ice will swirl everywhere.

This begins a WHOLE YEAR of Laudato Si' celebrations - the Jubilee Year of Laudato Si'. As for the Year of Mercy, there will be a specially-designed ugly logo, and each church will have an electric "Door of Laudato Si'" through which people can enter.

"How dare you?" The logo of the Year of Laudato Si'.

Pope Francis is naturally very pleased with Laudato Si' - it is nearly as ground-breaking as Amoris Laetita, but the year of AL won't begin until the 5th anniversary in March/April 2021. LS is described as the greatest work in theology since the book of Revelation, and burning copies have contributed more to the environment than for any other papal encyclical.

"It's very good, but I really can't accept a copy," says top Catholic Austen Ivereigh.

So what are the theological lessons that we can learn from Laudato Si' (now a best-selling novel, soon to be a major television series, an opera, a ballet, and a series of three long movies by Sir Peter Jackson)? Well, let Pope Francis himself show us some of the main hazards to the environment.

Don't use aeroplanes! Don't use plastic! And don't pollute the atmosphere!

Let joy be unconfined!

2013 and all that (part 2)

Continued from Part 1.

In the third year of his reign, Pope Francis the Humble produced a papal encyclopedia, called Laudato Si'. Since they did not speak Italian, most people thought that this was a new type of pasta, and were very disappointed when it turned out to be something totally indigestible.

Re-arrange these letters into something spiritually nourishing.

Laudato Si' was all about the environment, and the Pope humbly explained that flying in aeroplanes and giving press conferences was bad for Mother Earth; indeed, every time a journalist asked a question, a polar bear burst into flames. Also, he explained that biodiversity was more important than anything else, even religion. This led to a great increase in the number of pandas, blue whales, and Sumatran tigers adopted by Catholics.

Pope Francis adopts a rare tiger.

It was also time for the second Sinner of the Family, so that lots of bishops could come to Rome and see which sins they most enjoyed. The bishops voted for their favourite sins, and in the end Cardigan Baldacchino told them they had got it all wrong, and that Pope Francis would have to write a humble Apostolic Expiration called Amorous Letitia, to tell them what they should have said.

Meanwhile, Pope Francis, being a merciful as well as a humble pope, decided that the Church should have a Year of Mercy. This was to be the first of a series of years celebrating the things Pope Francis held sacred, and future ones would be called the Year of Pizza, Year of Football, and Year of Tango.

Auditions for the Year of Tango.

In the Year of Mercy, all churches had to have a door called the Door of Mercy for people to enter by if they were feeling merciful. Those who did not feel merciful were allowed to enter by the Window of Cruelty instead.

Pope Francis's reign was known for the custom of using silly logos for all events, because all the sensible logos had already been used. One of his advisers said "Let's use a logo of a two-headed Cyclops on skis - we haven't had that one before, have we?" After checking the records of all Catholic logos used, all the way back to the 1st Century, it was confirmed that nobody had thought of that logo before, not even St John when he wrote his Logos Doctrine. So the logo was adopted, and the Catholic faithful were briefly united in crying for mercy whenever they saw it.

Mercy! Mercy!

In the next part, we meet Amorous Letitia; also Burke is Dubious, and Fra' Matthew stops Feasting.

The Year of Mercy - your questions answered

Well, the Extraordinary Jubilee of Mercy is going swimmingly, but some people have sent us questions about it, so Uncle Eccles will see what he can do.

The logo by Marko Rupnik S.J., aged 7.

Today I accidentally went OUT through the Door of Mercy, rather than IN. Since then I have been feeling particularly merciless. Should I be worried?

It is permitted to leave church by the Door of Mercy, but to avoid any ill-effects you should reverse out, trying not to collide with anyone who may be coming in. Still, do take the opportunity to go IN again through the door, as soon as possible.

How many times do I have to go in through the Door of Mercy to get a badge?

You can be shown mercy even unto seventy-times-seven times. Make sure that your card is stamped by someone in authority.

I enjoyed Pope Benedict's Year of Faith, and now I am enjoying the Year of Mercy. What shall we see next?

It is unlikely that this pope will designate any more special years, even if he continues in office for a long time. However (according to the Jesuits) there should be many other cardinal virtues, so that we may see a Year of Hospitality, a Year of Humility, or a Year of Vigilance.

Pope-to-be Dolan enjoys the Year of Hospitality.

I want to use the logo as the basis of a cartoon strip Mercy Man about a skiing instructor with two heads. Would that be OK?

No, the logo is protected by copyright, and can only be used in spiritually nourishing contexts, such as this blog.

I have heard the Year of Mercy chant by Paul Inwood with amazement. Will he be writing any more music?

I'm afraid so. We did try to stop him, by sending in a rogue piano tuner to retune all his keys to the wrong notes. However, he never even noticed. What can one do?

"I'm playing all the right notes - but not necessarily in the right order."

Are there really two popes?

In the Catholic Herald Damian Thompson has written an interesting piece about the relations between Popes Francis and Benedict. However, he has not really captured the essence of the question, so here is an improved version.

It is nearly three years ago that Pope Benedict shocked the world by his sudden resignation. Probably he believed that he was too infirm and unable to cope. Was it the daily texts from Robert Mickens asking "Aren't you dead yet?" or the fact that every time he met Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O'Connor he was given a selection of brochures for retirement homes? Or maybe it was just the regular phone calls from Cardinal Kasper saying "You, Mr Pope, have been specially selected to try out our new range of heresies"?

Whatever it was, Benedict decided to quit, and handed over to a little-known ex-bouncer, ex-chemist and Jesuit called Imbroglio (memo: check spelling), who took the title of Pope Francis the Humble. But then Benedict refused to go away: this was possibly because the Vatican had never thought of providing a pension scheme for retired popes, and so the ex-pontiff was forced to hang around, stealing food from the kitchens.

"I wish he'd move along a bit."

Pope Francis found that, everywhere he went, Benedict was on his tail. His white cassocks were being borrowed by the former Pope - they needed cutting down to size, of course. In fact, the papal vestment issue was already a problem for Francis, after the day he caught Cardinal Vincent Nichols hiding in his wardrobe (Vin had been trying on Francis's spare cassock "just to see whether it would suit me"). Much more of this borrowing, and Francis would be forced to do his papal rounds dressed in jeans and an "I am the Pope" tee-shirt.

Pope Francis's sole victory was over the question of red shoes: luckily his feet are much larger than Benedict's so that the ex-pope has been unable to borrow the papal footwear without a grave danger of tripping over.

"Don't worry, I'll take care of things while you're away, Francis."

Benedict continued to haunt the Vatican. He would get up early and grab the post, so that anything addressed to "The Holy Father" or "The Pope" that did not mention Francis by name would be taken. Pages would mysteriously disappear from Francis's latest encyclical Non salvati estis, ego solus salvatus sum ("You is not saved, only I is saved" in Francis's rather poor English); so that proposals to allow people to marry llamas, to canonize Pinocchio, and to project Reservoir Dogs onto St Peter's Basilica never saw the light of day.

Of course, having two Popes - one retired and one still employed - poses all sorts of constitutional questions. Are they both infallible? What happens if they say contradictory things infallibly? Who takes precedence? For example, should Pope Francis really have pushed his way through the Door of Mercy first, knocking Benedict to the ground?

Who gets to feed the papal rabbit from now on?

It is known (to us insiders) that Benedict, as an art-lover and music-lover, is distinctly unimpressed by the Year of Mercy logo, and the Paul Inwood theme tune. It is said that he tore up the logo, and it was reassembled from the pieces (which is why one of the eyes in missing). Moreover, the Inwood score was also reconstructed (badly) from fragments found in the waste bin. Surprisingly, the jumbled version was considered to be an improvement.

Pope Francis is 79, and also in poor health. What will happen if he also decides to retire? Will Pope Nichols/Tagle/whoever gets the job be haunted by a duo of retired popes, pinching his favourite breakfast cereal and making faces at him in church? The prospect is daunting.

Cardinal says that Jesus had two heads

The Vatican's logo for the Jubilee Year of Mercy is proving controversial, as it is based on a new theory of Cardinal Kasper ("the Pope's jester") that Our Lord had two heads.

Sr Wendy Beckett writes: What a delightful painting this is. We see a two-headed man on skis, wearing an unusual scarf.

Although the Dicephalist heresy is already embodied in pagan culture, and expressed in sayings such as "Two heads are better than one" (or the Orwellists' "One head good, two heads better"), it is certainly unsupported by scripture and tradition. Cardinal Kasper's revival of this heresy is distinctly worrying, and we are waiting for Cardinals Burke, Pell, Napier, Sarah, etc. to give definitive guidance on the matter.

St Zaphod of Beeblebrox (St Z): so holy that he grew a second head.

We did interview Cardinal Kasper, but he was having one of his less coherent days, and told us in no uncertain terms that he himself had seven heads, like the dragon in the Apocalypse. We made our excuses and left.

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IMPORTANT. Some readers of this blog have questioned whether its author is really as saved as he claims to be. However he has now installed an "Ecclestone" in his garden, which should put the matter beyond doubt.

The Ecclestone.