New Vatican appointments

The Vatican has announced a batch of urgent appointments as a response to the scandalous, cheeky, impudent, and impertinent request from the Four Cardinals (and most of the rest of the Catholic Church) for the pope to answer some yes/no questions about Catholic teaching.

Mgr Vino Tinto, Dean of the Rota-Weilers.

Mgr Vino Tinto has been appointed to the elite team charged with issuing silly threats against cardinals who ask the pope for spiritual leadership. "I'll sack 'em all. Then I'll cut their throats. Then I'll jump up and down on their corpses! See if I don't!" he explained to a conference in Spain.

Apparently, the cardinals' crime was to make their dubia public, whereas traditionally asking for spiritual nourishment was done in secret. See, for example, this passage from the Gospel according to St Blase.

1. And one of his disciples asked Jesus a question.

2. And Jesus answered.

3. But we shall never know what the question was, nor what the reply was.

4. For that is how our Lord always operated.

"Mercy??? I'll give them Mercy!"

Another prestigious appointment is that of Fr Antonio Spadaro, currently the chief papal lap-dog. He has been charged with new duties, namely to generate insults and snide comments about Cardinal Burke and his supporters.

However, his responsibilities do not stop there. He has also been charged with feeding the papal sockpuppets, so that he he may appear on Twitter in such disguises as @hablafrancisco and @pope_news, screaming insults at anyone who dares to suggest that Amoris Laetitia is non-magisterial, the personal opinion of Pope Francis, and almost nothing to do with what was agreed at the Synod.

"Things are getting desperate, Holy Father. I'll send in some more sockpuppets."

Fr Tom Rosica of the Salt and Vinegar corporation is still in charge of issuing charm offensives, so no change there for the time being. However, an interesting lay appointment has also been made: Austein Ivereigh of Catholic Voices, author of the best-selling book, Pope Francis, the new Messiah, has become another papal spokesman.

"Thanks, Austen. I shall lose no time in reading your book."

Ivereigh has been charged with explaining to the the sceptical that the five dubia have already been answered, and everyone know what the answers were, in fact it's so obvious that we don't even need to talk about them any more, and I'm certainly not going to give you the answers, children, go and work them out for yourselves and you will become better Catholics.