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.

How to preach today's sermon

Following a spiritually nourishing blog post from Fr Tim Finigan, entitled How to listen to the sermon tomorrow, we propose a little help for your priest/ vicar/ pastor/ worship leader/ big cheese (this is an ecumenical post) in case he/ she/ xe/ brie (and a polygendered post) has to preach on the subject of the Wheat and the Tares (a.k.a. Darnel). One of the following templates is sure to work.

Trouble at Ambridge.

Brother Bosco of the Calumny Chapel: Brothers, we is Wheat and everyone else is Dranel! Altogether now, raise your arms in the air and shout: "You is not saved, only we is saved!" And especially the Cathlics with their Babylonian fish hats, their cannibalism, and their costume holy men, they is very unsaved! For those of us what knows Jesus personally, He says to us "Brother Bosco, you is Wheat, my son, and you has a golden crown waiting for you when you pops off to the Glassy Sea. While the Pope and his Cradinals is going to the Lake of Fire!" Hallelujah! And now, Hymn 94, "Oh what fun it is to be saved!"

You is not saved, only Bosco is saved.

Father Dan Brown SJ: Today's gospel about the wheat and the darnel is based on a parable written by Mary Magdalene, the wife of Jesus, and the first Pope, who wore a dalmatic and taught God all He knows. Its message is that we are the wheat, and those who disagree with us are the darnel, the haters, who don't know the first thing about discernment. By the way, have you got your copy of my new book "Bridge-it James's Diary", or "The Jesuit guide to sexual relationships"? You haven't? Then you too are a hater!

Renowned Jesuit Jacques Martin staggered through the vaulted archway of the museum's Grand Gallery.

Father Laudatosi: In the reading today, we see the perils of ignoring the environment. Somehow, genetically-modified seeds were mixed with the original organic low-fat gluten-free vegan-friendly non-carcinogenic unleaded wheat, and as a consequence the Earth will be destroyed by climate change! As Pope Francis has told us, there is only one solution - study the spiritual enneagram and practise your circle dancing!

Some non-alcoholic salt-free unisex circle dancing.

The Reverend Alfred Narcolepsy M.A.: Today my typewriter crashed, so at the last minute I borrowed some ideas from the nineteenth-century sermons of the Reverend Chedediah Somnifer M.A. Now, the parable of the wheat and tares is of great relevance to us in this age of uncertainty. With Napoleon having escaped from Elba, and heading for Paris, vowing to "make France great again", we may think of the French army as sowing destruction among us. Now, what would Jesus have done? I think He would have backed the Duke of Wellington to rip up the tares. However, we cannot be sure that He would have endorsed the Earl of Liverpool's pledge to return us to the gold standard! Cano in pluvia as every schoolboy knows!

"This looks like a good place to plant some tares!"

Bev the Rev: Hey! A funny thing happened to me on the way to the church. I was walking past a cornfield when I decided to dance in it, just as David danced before the Lord! But Farmer Giles shouted at me, "Oi! Get out of my cornfield, fatso!" Men are such sexists! I think that's the true meaning of the parable of the wheat and tares, don't you? And my glove-puppet thinks so too, don't you, Bottley?

Pope Francis, with a trusted adviser.

Fr Antonio Spiderman SJ: Stuff this for a lark! I hate you all.

The parable of the wheat and the tares

There was a man who sowed good cardinal seed in his field: among the numerous varieties planted there were Burkeus Cappamagnificus, a traditional American grain, Pellus Boomerangus, a robust Australian variety, and Mueller Fortis, one of the few reliable German plants; but there were other spiritually nourishing varieties too numerous to mention.

But then while men were asleep, an enemy came and sowed tares (cockle, darnel) among the wheat, and went his way.

Warning - contains nuts!

Among the poisonous grains were the German weed, Kasperus Absurdus, guaranteed to induce dizzy spells, Danneelus Pervertophilus, the toxic Belgian variety, not to mention the dreaded Baldisserius Liberraptor, and Marxus Stultusbarbus the hideous German creeper. And alas, there were many others.

So when the blade was sprung up, and had brought forth fruit, then appeared also the tares.

And the servants of the good man came to him and said, "Sir, did you not sow good seeds in the field? Where did the weeds come from?"

And he said to them, "An enemy has done this." And the servants said to him, "Do you want us to gather up the weeds?"

"No," said the man, "I have a better idea. We will allow both to grow until the time of the Synod, and then we will harvest them together."

Synod time!

"At the harvest, we'll gather the tares, and bind them into bundles for burning (the CDF tells me we're still allowed to do this); but the good wheat we'll keep. But just to make it more fun, we'll get the wheat and the tares to spend three weeks voting on which of them is the true harvest, and which the poisonous weeds."

We are not sure what happened next.

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.

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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.

Time to get nasty about ISIS

In general, this is a somewhat friendly as well as spiritually nourishing blog. We do occasionally tease one or two backsliders - for example, Tina Beattie the preposterous professor, Michael Campbell the bullying bishop, Vincent Nichols the cardboard cardinal, Richard Dawkins the drivelling don, and George Carey the absurd archbishop - but these people are not evil through and through, and our comments are kindly meant.

"Caliph" Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi - or "Piggy" as he is known to his friends.

However, once in a while one has to write about real bastards: if Charlie Chaplin was able to mock Adolf Hitler in The Great Dictator, then surely Eccles can get uncharacteristically nasty about Caliph Piggy, self-styled ruler of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS), and an Allah-fearing Sunni Muslim?

"Sunni" Hundal Jim, Piggy's second-in-command.

To be fair, Piggy is mad as well as bad - and I am not going to mention his disgusting personal habits, his loathsome infectious diseases, or the fact that he smells like a dead rat. Our hero is planning to march on Rome in his quest to establish an Islamic State across Europe. However, we know that there is no chance of that, as President Obama is on the case!

Obama takes charge of the crisis.

You may have heard the parable of the wheat and the darnel (or tares) in church today. It's all dressed up in agricultural metaphors, but the basic plot is that God sends Jesus down to the world to redeem mankind, and then Satan sends Mohammed along to poison everything. Well, Satan is certainly having a great time in Mosul at present, as the ISIS goes about its business of exterminating Christians.

An Arabic "nun" letter, used to denote a Christian's house.

The above picture shows Piggy's idea of a smiley emoticon - or at least a smiley as designed by a one-eyed cyclops. There is a school of thought that says that the false prophet Mohammed - as well as being nearly as obnoxious a character as Caliph Piggy - was in fact a one-eyed cyclops. We could not possibly comment.

Could this really be Mohammed?

Oh, and late news has come in that President Obama has left the golf course and is sorting out the situation. Contrary to what some people say, we do not believe that Obama is himself a Muslim - this would be incompatible with his own sincere self-worship. No, for him it is a matter of complete indifference whether the Muslims massacre the Christians, or not.

A Nobel Peace-Prize Winner at peace with the world.

A medieval French song

The manuscript of a previously-unknown French carol has come to light. It is attributed to the medieval monk Frère Graham Quendrique.

The underdog

Chien j'y sous-chien!
[The singer complains that he is always the underdog.]
Fille d'Islande vif dit farceuse clairet.
[A girl from Iceland says he is lively, but she is a jester who drinks claret.]

The girl from Iceland.

Blé ce spire rite Blaise!
[He invokes St Blaise to condemn a ritual involving binding wheat into coils.]
Ce tour hâtes Enfer!
[This prank hurries one to Hell!]

Beware pagan rituals!

Flou rit va flou!
[Confused, he laughs and goes.]
Fleur de naissance suive graissant merci!
[The flower denotes birth, but afterwards greasing (unction) may follow, thank God!]

Frère Graham looks forward to his deathbed.

Scène de four dur verte,
[The scenery is green, even if toiling at the oven is hard.]
Lourdes en laideur Pilate!
[He goes to Lourdes to atone for the ugliness of Pontius Pilate.]

The ugliness of Pilate.

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H/T brother Ben Trovato for reminding me of Mots d'Heures: Gousse, Rames. An alternative translation of the song may be found here.