This is me, Eccles

This is me, Eccles
This is me, Eccles

Saturday 5 September 2020

How to be a good pagan pope

This is of course the latest instalment in our series "How to be a good pope", providing essential advice for anyone expecting to be launched into the Chair of St Peter. (However, be warned, Pope Francis is taking the 93+ years of Leo XIII and Benedict XVI as a challenge, and has lots of exciting plans for making the Catholic Church unrecognizable in the next ten years...)

Pope Leo XIII

"Thank you for sending me the idol of Pachamama. I have thrown it into the Tiber."

It's been a frustrating summer, and you haven't been able to hold your usual audiences in front of great crowds, nor to take aeroplane trips (your usual opportunity for inventing new doctrine). True, you had another chat with Scalfari, who at 96 is even older than Benedict and Leo, even if he does make everything up from memory. But it turned out to be a bit of a non-event.

You were so desperate for company that you were reduced to allowing Austen Ivereigh to interview you - somehow he misunderstood your groans of "Let me sleep!" when he phoned you up at 3 a.m., and he is going to call the resulting book "Let us dream!" (Memo: remind Austen to brush up his Italian.) More on that some other time.

Francis/Ivereigh drivel

No, seriously...

Well, you amused yourself a little by tinkering with the Italian liturgy. The bits quoted from the Bible always looked wrong to you, so you were happy to rewrite them in the way Jesus would have put things if he'd been as wise as you. But this is merely trolling the traditionalists, so you need something bigger to keep yourself in the public eye.

Got it! For the next month we're going to celebrate the Jubilee for the Earth, the Season of Creation. That is, paganism. Here are a couple of wise things you might preach. Don't mention Jesus, sin, redemption, Heaven, Hell, or any of that stuff. It just confuses people.

Francis tweet 1

What's that strange voice I hear?

Listen carefully, folks, that's the voice of creation speaking. Forget all that nonsense about being masters of creation - rewriting Genesis is next on your list - and remember that we are all spiders in a web, not just your friend Tony Spidero.

Francis tweet 2

I got rhythm...

Speak out about the rhythms of creation. You may go down in history as the rhythmical pope, which is better than the web-bound pope. However, be warned: one of your likely successors, Cardinal Taggle-Waggle, is already putting in a claim to be the most rhythmical pope, and his dance moves are better than yours.

Tagle and Francis

"I got rhythm AND I got music."

Anyway, keep muttering about the Rhythms of the Earth, the Jubilee of Creation, the Season of the Voice, the Voice of the Season, the Creation of Rhythm, and the Jubilee of the Season of Creation of the Rhythms of the Voice of the Earth... and that will keep people in a state of confusion until your next encyclical gets written.

8 comments:

  1. This was like when the Catholic monarch I was warring with in that one video game married the man I sent to spy on him. I was so flustered, I decided to worship a deer as I was formerly a Catholic monarch too.

    No wait, that was someone else that happened to. But seriously, is deer worship now Catholicism?

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  2. 'Rhythms of the Earth' sounds much better if you're not in an earthquake zone - which is the case with Italy, no?

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  3. Stately Papa Pecci, standing on a cushion,
    Writing with a quill on parchment fine,
    Writing of the mysteries of the Holy Rosary,
    In phrases one can savour like sweet white wine.

    Papa Montini, sitting in a pizzeria,
    Scribbling with a biro on a menu for drinks,
    Writing his new liturgy designed for Modern Man,
    And everything in line with what Bugnini thinks.

    Papa Bergoglio, bored in isolation,
    Tweeting on his iPhone after lunch one day,
    With a mixture of good stuff, bad stuff, insults,
    And stuff where no-one knows what he's trying to say.

    (Apologies to John Masefield.)

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  4. Dr. Strangelove Faustci

    Scene: The most powerful men to hold a roundtable, at least since the days of King Arthur, meet in the War Room to make the world safe for saved pussons.

    Dr. Strangelove Faustci: Mr. President, I have some bad news. My advice has unleashed riots, unemployment, depression, rage. But Bill Gates says it all aids the election.

    Pres. Merkin Muffles: Whose election? Anyroad, I think Gates might be an ally? He’s making a vaccine as fast as he can. It’s something to do with software speeding things up & turning us into human GMOs. Science is not really my thing. Not sure if it’s your thing either, Faustci.

    Faustci: There is one drawback. People are beginning to say mean things about me. That I made a deal with the devil. You’ve told the states to end the riots and lighten up the lockdown, but people are more masked up than ever.

    President Muffles: Let’s hear from the world’s woke leader, The Francis.

    The Francis: One must go with the flow of mankind’s, er...humankind’s, evolutionary opiate religious impulse in every age leading us to the apex of ascendant synodal syncretism---

    Pres. Muffles: Thanks, your Wokeness. But that’s not at all what AB Vigano told me about Catholic teaching. Next let’s hear from our top brass.

    Gen. Buck-U-Uppo: Just got a top-secret message from some Fatima folks. Commies spreading their errors, annihilation of nations.
    Francis, you’re supposed to consecrate the Ruskies to the IHM. Will you do this ridiculous sounding thing if it’s the only way to stave off the Doomsday Machine? Or must we wait & pray for the next real pope?

    PF: I feel a closeness to those leading the cultural clash of race, creed, economic, ecologic & reproductive gender inequality. All of which I calmly accompany.
    Did you hear I just signed the Abu Dhabi Treaty for Liberty, Equality, & Fraternity? The French Revolution finally done right! BLM/Antifa even got out guillotines to show solidarity. I’ve got my best man on the job in Wash D.C.: Cardinal Wiltin’ the Woke.
    Is it just me or is it getting rather warm in here? Hey, did someone just throw a Molotov cocktail at me? I asked for a Chinese Commie Mai Tai.

    Gen. Buck-U-Uppo: Sorry, it slipped out of my hand.

    Pres. Muffles: Gentlemen, you can’t fight in here. This is the War Room.

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    Replies
    1. Or How I learned to stop worrying & learned to love the virus.

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